Liverpool launches City Plan for Covid recovery
The city council will today unveil a roadmap to drive Liverpool’s economic recovery following a battering from the coronavirus pandemic, focussing on boosting public services to support deprived neighbourhoods.
At the same time, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has set up a £40m ’emergency fund’ to support the hospitality and leisure sector as local lockdown restrictions tighten.
Half of Liverpool’s neighbourhoods are among the 10 per cent most deprived in England, according to Liverpool City Council, “which creates a pressure upon, and demand for, local services at a time when public spending is becoming scarcer.”
The council’s City Plan is intended as a commitment from public, private and voluntary sector partners to tackle inequalities that have deepened as a result of the pandemic, the council added.
The strategy, to be launched at 1pm today, is focused around six themes:
- A healthier, happier, fairer Liverpool for all – working together to tackle health inequalities and improving wellbeing across all age groups, through a ‘Starting Well, Living Well and Ageing Well’ approach
- People are educated to succeed throughout life – ensuring that children are ready for school and everyone has access to an inclusive, high quality education that enables them to live fulfilled, happy and productive lives. Also ensuring employment prospects improve through lifelong learning and access to technical and professional skills
- Safe and thriving neighbourhoods – making sure that all residents live in safe, inclusive and welcoming neighbourhoods, where people choose and aspire to live, raise their families and grow old. Public services need to be aligned with local need to reduce inequalities within the city.
- A strong and inclusive economy – Creating a productive, innovative, sustainable and fair economy, where businesses thrive by nurturing talent from communities and providing good jobs with fair pay, conditions and career progression
- A low carbon, connected and accessible city – Developing a city with smart, clean, accessible and integrated infrastructure, where organisations, businesses and residents play their part in responding to the climate emergency and speeding the city’s transition to zero carbon
- The most exciting city in the UK – maintaining culture, sport and creativity as Liverpool’s USP and making the city attractive for residents, workers, visitors and investors.
Liverpool City Council said it is “proposing a fundamentally different approach that shifts power to people and communities, which aims to give people a voice to shape the way we deliver public services across communities”.
Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson said: “2020 has delivered the greatest challenge of our times and Liverpool’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has again shown the resilience and community spirit which makes this such a great city.
“We need to challenge systemic racial and indeed, all aspects of inequality, we must change and do better. The City Plan will focus upon creating greater equality and opportunity for everybody in everything from health to wealth, education and employment.
“Now more than ever, we need a partnership between local stakeholders and citizens as we drive our city forward in this new landscape. It will require radically rethinking the way we deliver public services. The focus will be on how we work collectively to build upon the strengths of all our employers, residents and communities.”
Steve Coffey, chief executive of Torus Housing Group, added: “We’ll challenge all of our own organisations and consider how our combined effort, working with partners across the city, can deliver our shared outcomes and shared aspirations.”
The plan can be viewed here.
Meanwhile, business leaders in Liverpool and Manchester have today written to the chancellor and the health secretary asking for an emergency package of funding and other support to sustain the visitor economy throughout the pandemic.
Great idea, looking forward to the detail. Hope they resource it properly.
LL
By Liver lad
These are very noble targets and there is no harm on setting the bar at a high level, but if you look at this council over recent years some of its achievements ,or ideas that it has supported , have been average eg zipwire, giant puppets , which are not the kind of things that dramatically move the city forward.
Dynamic things are needed like modern quality office space to cater for well paid jobs now, we need an effective tram network in the inner city at least to lessen the number of buses clogging the streets eg Old Haymarket, the cruise terminal needs building, also we need to get more apartment blocks in the downtown zone to boost the poputaion there in order to sustain the central shopping/hospitality area post Covid.
By Anonymous
Taking Liverpool back to the eighties. Sigh.
By Michael McDonut
Is this plan in conjunction with the LCR and are they duplicating resources and efforts. Some of these ideas seem to be recycled from past campaigns.
They still need to restore confidence for investors in the property sector for investors and landlords. They say one thing and yet their officers and elected officials often take a different course. For example, welcoming investors, but too often, the planning department restrict the size and scale of new builds by reducing height and volume, this is often triggered by certain cabals in the city, who seem to undermine genuine developments for political reasons, such as Pall Mall and the reduction in height of a 40 storey mixed development in a desiginated zone to 32 then 14 storeys and in effect losing new jobs in the hotel and offices that were planned there. Yet other ideas seem to get the freedom of the city and fail and fail again.
By Drain the Swamp
@Michael wishful thinking but Liverpool is too far advanced to go back to the 80s , try Manchesters dress sense and haircut they are still in that era haha.
By Graham
Does anyone even bother to read their nonsense these days?
How many times before an election can vague promises and aspirations (never achieved) be trotted out?
The only thing they’ve consistently delivered is failure. They appear to be so devoid of any clue or ability, it’s a wonder they are even able to write.
By Mike
Hospitality and Leisure will suffer, which is unfortunate. But blowing our meagre local public funds on this sector has to be a bad idea – £40m won’t touch the sides, meanwhile the same value could fund 1 or 2 meaningful projects that would delver high-value jobs.
I sympathise with small business owners but this is caused by the UK government and for national government to solve through sector support. Liverpool risks throwing good money after bad and missing out on delivering a high-performance knowledge-based economy, which I had previously thought was the long term aim. The tragedy of our bars and restaurants suffering shouldn’t change that.
By Knowledge Economy
Liverpool is not alone in having deprived areas, but what this council or it`s parochial NIMBY councillors don`t seem to grasp is that the city needs jobs,lots of them, to reverse this malaise.
Where is the verve and imagination from the council to attract the huge numbers of well paid jobs that end up in other cities, of course part of doing that is building modern workplaces and offices to house them, but we cannot even get Pall Mall off the ground, we cannot just rest on our laurels because of Paddington Village , it`s an ongoing struggle to attract work.
So Liverpool City Council get your finger out and lift your head up from your navel, you will not provide the jobs you need by just waiting for local businesses to flower, go out in the world and make yourself attractive for investors, and for the electors you need to think before you vote and ask do I want my local area to remain deprived or should I elect someone with ideas who will positively seek to achieve an economic upturn.
By sound
Extra £40 million for tarting up L8.
Never mind North Lpool living in squalor
By Fred
Sounds good hope it comes off… Let’s be honest thing’s can’t get much worse ..
Good Luck
By Rose
That’s a good idea for Liverpool city centre better then lockdown we all need to start living again. Now
By Mark lowe
My question would be how? Its all just fluffy words.
By Lizzy Baggot
And how much detail on real Jobs, getting offices built, getting companies to want to come here instead of setting up down the east Lancs. I would trust anyone but this council , they seem to want us to be a dormitory town.
By L8 dreamer
By putting all of us on lock down will bring us down if we have no pubs restaurant to go to the economic will sink. we don’t need this all small businesses will go under people get sick all walks of life the next four mounths. There is no point in it locking us down, in London they are not locked down and they have more people then we have in liverpool they just pick on the North we are one of the poorer cities and we don’t need this, it is causing people to have mental problems.
By Anonymous
I dont get it if things r so bad. Is the filming of batman in liverpool next week realy necessary. I dont get how this hasnt been stopped.
By Gillian
You always blame the government for lack of funding. This Conservative government is the best ever. Boris is fantastic. His cabinet are fantastic. Why don’t you get all the council tax owed by the people of Liverpool and Manchester. Then we will have plenty of funding to spend were needed.
By Micky