It’s not often you get everyone from a Premier League CEO to a bishop in a room talking about everything from video games to Paul Hollywood.
But that was all on the agenda at Liverpool’s Maritime Museum last week as the University of Liverpool brought together some of the city region’s biggest names to talk about what the city’s future might look like.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Conference, hosted by Professor Tim Jones, saw speakers debate all the changes the city region needed to see in areas from technology to diversity. And BusinessLive was there.
Among the speakers was Liverpool Football Club CEO Billy Hogan, who said he believed Liverpool was ready to “take off” - we reported on his comments here.
And the event also saw the official launch of the Liverpool Strategic Futures Panel to plot a roadmap for Liverpool’s governance once Government commissioners have left - . Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and Liverpool council leader Liam Robinson were also among the speakers at the showpiece event, which was hosted by regeneration expert Professor Michael Parkinson.
Why regeneration is like the Great British Bake Off
The keynote speaker was former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, now chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He said Liverpool’s regeneration was clearly “unfinished business” but that the city region had lots of things to shout about.
He said the city’s history was “era-defining” and that Liverpool’s name still had massive worldwide recognition - “Among non-capital cities it ranks in the top ten globally”.
Mr Haldane said Levelling Up and other grand Government plans over many years had failed cities like Liverpool - due to “poor leadership, lack of money, or inept execution - or often all three acting in combo”.
He said that economic development wasn’t a simple affair, and couldn't be done with one-off missions. It was, he mused, much more like baking a cake - “take multiple ingredients and mix them together in the right sequence and the right proportions. That’s the only way of getting a city and a cake to rise”.
And looking out at the leaders in the room, he said they all together had a mission to assemble, mix and bake the cake and “be judged on the cake Paul Hollywood-style” Mr Haldane said cities like Liverpool “fly below their potential altitudes” and that if Ƶ cities outside London could match the economic performance of their global rivals, they could boost the country’s income by £100bn per year in perpetuity.
He said that the world was awash with cash from potential investors but that Ƶ cities were getting too little of it. If Liverpool could attract that investment and close the gap with its world rivals, that could be worth £7bn a year to the city - creating thousands of jobs and lifting thousands out of poverty.
And he said: “There are dark clouds nationally and internationally but locally there are beacons of light”.
‘We need to build more labs’
Maritime is one of Liverpool’s best-known industries; video games and life sciences are among its hidden gems. So the cornerstone morning panel debate called “How will we improve our economic performance?” gave a great overview of what Liverpool was doing well - and what it needs to do better.
Colin Sinclair, CEO at Knowledge Quarter Liverpool and Sciontec, talked about the development of Paddington Village. His core message was simple - “we need more labs”.
He said that while Manchester had hundreds of thousands of square feet of lab space under way, Liverpool was falling behind - and that made it harder for the city to attract companies and retain its successes. Those labs could also help to create high value jobs to keep graduates in the city.
Maritime is part of Liverpool’s future
Phil Hall, Mersey Division port director at Peel Ports Group, reminded the audience that the Port of Liverpool was as busy as it ever has been. He said: “Maritime has played a key role in Liverpool’s history and in my view Its got to play some part in Its future as well .”
He said decarbonisation offered opportunities for Liverpool, with potential growth in areas such as carbon capture and storage. And he said the maritime sector offered great employment opportunities as it pays 36% than pay on average nationally.
Video games: ‘Our ambitions are boundless’
Liverpool has a long and proud history in video gaming, thanks to firms like Psygnosis. And it remains strong to this day, with firms ranging from ambitious start-ups to Sony and its flagship city centre office. One of the biggest players today is Lucid Games, which employs more than 150 people in the city and was acquired in June by LightSpeed Studios, a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Tencent.
Lucid’s business director Brian Woodhouse explained that video games companies around the world now collaborate on projects - “Gone are the days when one studio produces one game”.
That has allowed Lucid’s teams to work on games from Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to EA Sport PGA Tour, as well as working on its own IP. Lucid in turn can work with other smaller companies in the sector - “That allows us to bring other companies with us rather than doing it all ourselves,” Mr Woodhouse said.
The Lucid boss showed a video of a company intern talking about her passion for the industry, and said he wanted to make it easier for the next generation of young people to find work in the industry.
“The opportunity is huge”, he said. “Our ambitions are boundless”.
What Liverpool can learn from Manchester
Jessica Bowles, director of strategic partnerships and impact at property group Bruntwood, offered a property investor’s perspective on what Liverpool needed.
She said there were three things investors wanted to see in cities: Stability and predictability; A strategic vision; and shared leadership from “strong institutions”. She said those factors had helped Manchester grow its professional services and science sectors from the 1980s on.
As an example she talked about how when she went to work in Manchester she was told to look at an old local plan- which talked about the need to repopulate the city and build transport links. It turned out that plan was from 1984 - and that strategy was “the same story and the same strategy” that inspired Greater Manchester’s forward planning to this day.
Why Liverpool's diversity is good for business
The meeting also heard a passionate call for more diversity in business from Lorna Rogers, Assistant Director of Mayoral Programmes, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Ms Rogers said Liverpool had one of Britain’s oldest black communities, but that it had historically been under-represented in Liverpool city centre.
She said: “Liverpool’s black community has been raising this lack of representation in the city centre since the 1970s” - and said that while there has been improvement, there is still work to do.
Ms Rogers talked about Liverpool city region’s Race Equality Hub, which aims to drive race equality in employment and business across the boroughs. She said diversity was good for business, showing figures that racial inequality costs the Ƶ economy £40bn per annum - costs Liverpool city region £400m per annum
She said: “I call on leaders to work with us to disrupt and rebalance the system.” And she added: “Let’s not just dream of a more inclusive Liverpool and let’s build it instead.”
Later, Bishop of Liverpool John Perumbalath spoke about the need to tackle “economic inequality” - and he called for organisations across Liverpool to join together to help the city’s people.
Vice-chancellor Tim Jones - we need to think globally
The vice-chancellor brought all the big names together - so it’s only fair to give him the last words.
Prof Tim Jones said: ““A number of priorities have been discussed today including the scale of our ambition – it is clear we need to think globally. Partnership between the public and private sector will also be critical to the city’s success in the coming years, and knowledge and innovation leaders like the University of Liverpool have a critical role to play.
“Inclusive growth to benefit all parts of our community is key, and the barriers to opportunity in our organisations and elsewhere must disappear. We’ve talked a lot and now it is time to deliver. “It’s in our hands to make the changes, working together with local and central government and the private sector.”
