The gang of three

The chief executive of Knowsley Borough Council Sheena Ramsey left her post this week with little or no fanfare.

Her departure was officially said to be driven by ‘cost cutting’ although speculation around child care services, or even a fall out between her and the council’s leadership have been rife.

Whatever the reason, the reality of financial pressures across the city regions local authorities is acute – and is set to get worse with further budget reductions on the way.

Largely behind the scenes, Liverpool councils have done deals to share back office services, and despite the many fall outs that are usually very publically aired at Combined Authority level, there has been genuine progress in administrative co-ordination and savings.

This still doesn’t get local councils anywhere near meeting the reductions that have been demanded by the austerity agenda embarked upon by the coalition government and, it has to be said, likely to be continued by whichever party wins power at the General Election next year.

Library closures, community and leisure centres disappearing and the third sector decimated, how long will it be before even the statutory provision that councils are duty bound to provide begin to be a thing of the past? Already many such services are said to be at breaking point.

The arguments about a more co-ordinated, streamlined organisational structure at city region level have been well made by Downtown and many others in recent years. The multiple layers of governance seem at best unnecessary and at worst wasteful.

But with the removal of a chief executive on the grounds of ‘cost cutting’, has the agenda and debate about simply stacking the existing deckchairs more effectively and efficiently moved on?

If Knowsley cannot afford a chief officer then how long before Sefton or even Liverpool is in the same boat? Could these three separate local authorities share a chief executive? Could they share a chief Education Officer, a head of social services? Indeed, is it time to seriously debate merging Liverpool, Knowsley and Sefton and creating a Greater Liverpool council – resulting in not only millions of pounds worth of savings, but a more coherent model of governance.

Including Wirral, St Helens and Halton in the recently established Combined Authority model is proving just as hard as all other previous ‘Merseyside’ coalitions have been. A lack of cultural consistency, genuine community connectivity and the politics of personalities have all been part of the problem in working together.

But where people in St Helens fail to fully accept that there town is a part of Liverpool, Sefton’s community fails to accept that it isn’t a part of the city. Wirral winces at the prospect of being a cog in the Liverpool wheel. Knowsley already thinks it is.

A Greater Liverpool Council? It’s worth a discussion, surely.

It’s Liverpool: the Business Conference – A Manifesto for Liverpool takes place at the Hilton Hotel, Liverpool on Wednesday 26th November. CLICK HERE for further details.

Can Leeds Airport Survive?

Manchester Airport announced record passenger numbers earlier this week. Blackpool Airport announced it was closing. Airport’s in other provincial cities like Liverpool and Leeds now have to seriously ask if they have a sustainable future over the next decade, as airlines look to ‘hubs’ in order to gain the best commercial bang for their buck – with the pressure on their costs only likely to go one way!

For Leeds in particular, the debate is pertinent, and already on the agenda. Council leader Keith Wakefield has already raised the prospect of the Airport being relocated, with almost everyone accepting that if we were building it today, the Airport would not be located where it is.

The cost of such a move is likely to prove prohibitive, and so the next best option is to develop a significantly improved infrastructure that starts to connect the Airport to surrounding towns and cities.

Unsurprisingly this is the strategy favoured by the Airports management team, but is a huge investment in this type of infrastructure regeneration wise?

The debate over the Airports location has arguably been overtaken by its ability to compete with a genuinely International Airport just over an hour away.

Since Manchester got over its snobbery towards budget flights, the low cost airline owners have flocked there, and it is difficult to see how this trend can be reversed given the development of Airport City on the back of an enterprise zone, and the high speed link from Manchester to London.

It is too early to advocate throwing the towel in yet. But it’s not too early to have the debate about the future of Leeds Airport.

Skills Programme Shows Lancashire Is Listening

lancs skill supposrt

It’s easy to level accusations at the public sector, particularly when it comes to engagement with the business community.

For example, the apathy that’s often shown towards public sector business support must be quite disheartening for those working hard behind the scenes in local authorities to come up with a service offering that can genuinely add value.

However, I must doff my hat to Lancashire County Council and the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (LEP) who appear to have come up with a great project to solve one of the major headaches facing businesses at the present time.

We all read in the news about how skills shortages are hindering business growth across the UK. Last month, the county council and the LEP launched Lancashire Skills Support for the Workforce (LSS) – a £5.6m workforce training programme aimed at helping Lancashire plc up-skill its employees to achieve growth.

Using cash from the European Social Fund, LSS will support almost 4,000 employees aged 19 and over by giving their employer access to free and accredited training from leading providers, such as their local college, based on their skills requirements.

This is great news for Lancashire businesses and, in my opinion, it shows that the county council and Lancashire LEP are listening to businesses and responding quickly to genuine business need.

While all SMEs (up to 250 employees) are eligible to apply, the programme is particularly keen to attract businesses in the following growth sectors:

  • Aerospace
  • Advanced engineering & manufacturing
  • Energy, environment and low carbon
  • Financial and professional services
  • Creative and digital
  • Leisure, tourism and visitor economy
  • Health occupations
  • Professional, scientific and technical occupations

The LSS delivery partnership currently comprises Accrington and Rossendale College, Age UK Lancashire, Blackburn College, Blackpool and the Fylde College, Burnley College, Joint Learning, Lancashire Adult Learning, Lancaster and Morecambe College, Myerscough College, Nelson and Colne College, Preston’s College, Runshaw College, VIA Partnership and West Lancashire College.

The fund operates across the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area, which consists of Lancashire, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen local authorities. It will run until July 2015 – with places allocated to businesses on a first-come, first-served basis.

Businesses looking to benefit from the programme can find further information and apply through a new website www.lancashireskillssupport.co.uk.

Lancashire Needs To Make Some Noise

frank

It’s not been a good week for Lancashire. The disappointing, though expected, announcement about the closure of Blackpool Airport was quickly followed by a BAE statement about the potential loss of around 300 jobs.

As we prepare for today’s Lancashire Growth Conference at Brockholes, the mood will be upbeat, but this double whammy will inevitably lead to a discussion about how firm the economic recovery is – particularly in this part of the world.

The challenge for county’s like Lancashire is to maintain profile and attract investment despite being in the middle of the two big city regions of Manchester and Liverpool. Losses of high paying, quality jobs are not part of the plan.

Nonetheless, the glass is still very much half full for Lancashire and the key for that to continue is private sector growth in the small and medium business sector.

The days when any area can or should rely on big employers such as BAE are long gone. They are ‘very nice to have’ but local economies need to be built on a diverse range of businesses, and inevitably the vast majority of those companies are more likely to employ 50 people than 550.

For a county that is blessed with some of the best hotels, restaurants and countryside in the UK, and sits on the doorstep of the Lake District, perhaps we need to be focussing a little more seriously on the tourist and hospitality sector? The professional services offer we have here is top class too, but our lack of ability in shouting about what we have got to the outside world continues to be a frustration to me.

Ruth Connor, the excellent head honcho of Marketing Lancashire, is doing her best to change this unfortunate psyche – but she needs our help and our support.

Being loud, bold and brash may not be the Lancashire way, but we need to develop a strong narrative and a more robust way of presenting the county if announcements such as those made this week are not to have a long term negative impact on our aims and objectives.

Groundhog Day

The case for a city region governance structure is now won. On the back of the recent Scottish Referendum, and the concession of a huge number of powers to the Scottish Parliament, Westminster politicians reluctantly acknowledge that the devolution of powers to England’s regions can no longer be denied.

In terms of managing this transition of powers effectively, city regions are seen as the most natural model for a new level of government, and many existing structures are set up in this way anyhow, including Local Enterprise Partnership’s.

In Liverpool, depressingly and predictably, war has broken out once again between Liverpool’s elected mayor Joe Anderson and the leaders of the Merseyside borough councils over how such an organisation would look here.

The argument, on the face of it, may appear to be based more on personalities than anything else, but recent history tells us the problem of our disconnected city region goes back a long way before Joe Anderson came to lead Liverpool.

Mike Story and Warren Bradley had their own challenges with their neighbouring authorities during their time at the helm of the city council. Back then the shenanigans were put down to the fact that the Liberal Democrat led city was surrounded by Labour controlled boroughs.

Now the city and all the boroughs are ‘red’ too, it is obvious that a simple lack of support for brand Liverpool to be the focus for investment, marketing and economic growth is the real problem.

Does this matter to the business community? It absolutely does.

Whilst Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle get ready to celebrate being named as pilots for super combined authorities, with additional powers and more importantly resources, Liverpool once again engages in a bout of civil war which has led to:

  • Liverpool sharing an exhibition stand at MIPIM UK in London next week with Manchester – but Knowsley taking its own place at this expensive conference!
  • £18 Million of training and skills money being sent back to central government from Merseyside, as agencies failed to engage with businesses effectively or lobby government to loosen the burdensome bureaucracy that surrounded the initiative
  • The Marketing Liverpool agreement that saw all promotional activity come under a single management structure for the past year thrown into doubt as partners squabble over who should be doing and getting what.

It is this sort of internal chaos that has civil servants shaking their heads in disbelief and running to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle. When you have a limited amount of cash to dole out, you invest it where you have confidence in delivery.

Capital of Culture, the Global Entrepreneurship Congress and the International Festival for Business are all very recent examples of the city of Liverpool delivering. Unfortunately, the city region partners choose not to accept this; or the need for a more co-ordinated and coherent approach across Greater Liverpool – and so here we are again – Groundhog Day!

We need a strategic Combined Authority. It needs to be led by a full time politician and figurehead. We need to get on with it before we fall further behind our northern counterparts.