Liverpool City Region: Mayors and Manchester in focus
CHANCELLOR George Osborne’s vision for a ‘joined up’ north led by dynamic and empowered city mayors, have received backing from business leaders in Liverpool.
At micro-level, the current Mayor, Joe Anderson, is seen as someone who ‘gets things done’ – the recent suspension of some bus lanes in the city centre to help access during the Festival for Business, is just one example.
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Liverpool Vision’s chief executive Max Steinberg believes giving mayors more powers could help woo international investors, as this is a form of local leadership well understood.
He said: “Cities in China, Germany and the US understand the form of governance where the mayor is the boss of the city. It has become a model that is driving a lot of city economies in a very strong way. You have to look no further than London, where Boris (Johnson), like him or loathe him, has created the personality and energy.
“He’s created a series of infrastructure projects and created that leadership. I think the mayoral form of government is something we should investigate. For me it’s mayor of the city region. Liverpool with nearly half a million people is not going to make investors sit up in bed the same way as the city region with 1.4 million people.”
The relationship between Liverpool and Manchester has grown closer in recent years, in a civic sense at least.
The authorities of Merseyside and Greater Manchester already meet where St Helens nudges up against Wigan, and those with a global view see even greater economic and inward investor potential in the four million people living in the two conurbations.
Under George Osborne’s new mayoral proposals these two areas would be led by two mayors and perhaps linked in future by Peel Group’s long-term dream of the Atlantic Gateway, a ribbon of development between Manchester and Liverpool along the Manchester Ship Canal.
Cliff Maylor, chief executive of the North West Fund, a £150m EU-backed investment fund to promote small business growth, would like to see the region’s two major cities working more closely, perhaps under one authority.
“To be a successful economic city you need significant business and people density to produce the GDP which clearly, London has. In order to compete, Liverpool and Manchester would need to join together, because critical mass is important.
“The difficulty however would be having two controlling bodies, and
ideally there would need to be a single unified economic entity if we wanted to compete with London.”
