Good evening ladies & gentlemen and welcome to the spectacular setting of the Sefton Park Palm House for the 6th annual Liverpool business Oscars, brought to you by DLIB in association with the NWDA and Business Lnk.
It is great that we have a full house once again for tonight’s event, which is also supported by CBG insurance group, Grant Thornton, Paver Smith, NSG, Ollie & Darsh, NONAME kitchens, Ph.Creative and Panorama kitchens.
The strong line up of nominees that we have for this evening’s awards demonstrates that despite the turbulence experienced in the economy during the past eighteen months, we still have some great businesses across our city who are doing great things.
When this awards dinner comes around, it’s always a good time for me to reflect on the progress downtown Liverpool as an organisation has made in the preceding twelve months.
In the past year we have continued to organise some of the biggest and best events around, including the first Liverpool leaders debate between Warren Bradley and Joe Anderson, our third annual business week, which included contributions from leading decision makers, entrepreneurs and academics, and of course, our now legendary sexy networking evenings.
But what has also happened during the past year, very markedly, is that the business club with attitude has become the business club with influence.
We won our campaign to stop the council introducing evening car parking charges in the city centre.
With the help of two of our members, Iliad and aurora communications, we alerted the council and partner agencies to the opportunities for the city around the re-location of civil service jobs from London.
And, since the new labour administration took control of the town hall in may, a range of policies that Downtown Liverpool have consistently been promoting for several years have been implemented.
The city has a full time political leader; a business representative will be appointed to sit on the cabinet in the autumn; and a review of the various agencies that govern the city has been started. I‘m also confident that we will see a more efficient procurement process introduced, and much smarter planning arrangements in place before too long.
Of course the political colour of our government in Westminster has changed too. And I think is vitally important that, whatever difficult decisions are made in the next five years around public expenditure, and like all other places Liverpool will feel the consequences, we cannot go back to a situation that sees our city isolated from central government.
Early indications are encouraging, and it was good to see the prime minister in town on Monday to launch his big society initiative.
We have to build on this, and Joe Anderson and his team should aim to be David Cameron’s favourite labour council!
The new govt agenda around economic development and local economic partnership’s is also a major challenge for greater Liverpool.
We in the private sector need to work together to get our local authority partners in the public sector to work together if we are not to fall behind competitor city regions.
Collaboration and co-operation across the business and political spectrum is the way forward, and downtown Liverpool is determined to play a constructive role in making that happen.
We will be arguing not for a reconfiguration and accommodation of existing agencies and structures, but a new way of working.
We should free ourselves from the constraints of artificial geographical boundaries. We are twinned with New York and Shanghai for god’s sake, so why not forge stronger links with the Isle of Man, Cheshire and North Wales to help drive forward our regional economy?
There are many good people and personalities involved in the many agencies that currently govern our city, but the structures are too bureaucratic, too messy, too public sector driven and totally irrelevant to the new govts agenda.
A new approach has to be adopted that has a place for those talented individuals that are currently running and managing those agencies, but the strategy and delivery mechanisms must be more flexible, more focussed and private sector led.
