LEADERSHIP

July 16th, 2010 by Frank McKenna

Is leadership important to a city? Apparently very much so, if recent consultations carried out by both Preston Vision and Downtown Preston in Business are anything to go by.

There were strong indications from people across the Lancashire city’s community that the key to winning investment, creating opportunity and regenerating a city came from strong leadership.

Evidence elsewhere in the North West would back this assumption. Liverpool enjoyed its springboard to transformation during the heady days of the Mike Storey/David Henshaw axis, when the then council leader and Chief Executive were getting on. The Liverpool One project was born, the European capital of culture bid successfully negotiated, and the city council suitably modernised. Unfortunately, the ‘dynamic duo’ fell out; and things haven’t been quite the same since. New Labour leader Joe Anderson seems determined to re-introduce ambition and purpose to the city, and his appointment of a new Chief Executive, expected in the Autumn, will be key.

Manchester, of course, can boast not only the best civic leadership in the region, but arguably the country. Consistency in personalities and policies have made Manchester the UK’s second city, with strong political leadership from Sir Richard Leese supported by the impressive management and strategic skills of his Chief Executive Sir Howard Bernstein. Less celebrated, but equally effective, is the partnership of council leader John Merry and head honcho Barbara Spicer at Salford City Council, home to ‘Media City’.

Poor old Preston, meanwhile, demonstrated once again this week the damage weak leadership can do to a city. Just as the business sector were warming to the ‘new’ Preston Vision and genuinely getting behind a partnership arrangement with Eliot Ward (Vision Chief Executive) and his team, the city council have decided to ‘postpone’ the appointment of a Chairman to the Vision board. The Coalition government’s scrapping of the Northwest Development Agency has been blamed for this decision, but given the small amount of cash that the city and county council would have to find to secure the future of Vision, it is an excuse few are buying.

This short sighted and knee jerk reaction sends exactly the wrong signal to Preston’s private sector at exactly the wrong time. Leadership, indeed, is very important for a city. Preston is demonstrating very little of it at the moment.

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WHY DLIB SUPPORTS THE BID

July 16th, 2010 by Frank McKenna

The first seven weeks of the new coalition government has confirmed what many of us already suspected – if public sector cash is king, the king has most certainly left the building.

As countless head teachers, members of the armed forces and even City bankers will tell you, the present administration is trying to pick up every penny that isn’t nailed down and Mr Osborne is apparently revelling in a fine impression of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Whether the government’s response to a crippling level of debt inherited by its predecessors is a measured necessity or reactionary folly is an argument for another day, but what we do know for certain is that austerity is now an unwelcome reality and one that we as a business community must deal with robustly.

Liverpool has enjoyed impressive levels of physical, economic and social change over the past decade and, while the private sector must be praised for its collaboration and vision, we also cannot hide from the fact that a fair portion of that success has been courtesy of significant funding from central and European government and continued growth in public sector investment.

If we are to realise further growth and capitalise on the city’s burgeoning international reputation, we must ensure that any vacuum left by government downsizing is filled by substantial, enduring investment from private enterprise.

The commercial district has been a key foundation of the city’s growth curve and is certainly not alone in the need to protect its long term future. The clearest solution to lasting prosperity in the commercial district is an application for Business Improvement District (BID) status, something of which we at Downtown are fully in support.

BID status brings with it not only substantial funding for maintenance and improvements – somewhere in excess of £600,000 per year – but also a collective spirit, building upon the foundations of much of Liverpool CDP’s work and invariably proving a vital component for future expansion.

More than 800 landlords and tenants will be balloted on the proposal, which will ask them to accept a levy equivalent to one per cent of business rates. Their time to stand up and be counted will come at a final ballot in spring 2011, before which time my fellow BID ambassadors and I will spend as much time as necessary persuading members of the benefits of BID status. 

One per cent may sound a substantial ask in difficult economic times, but it must be considered in the context of the wider picture. If businesses wish to operate in a vibrant, attractive commercial location, then the funding to make that environment a reality must be sourced from somewhere. We have already seen the government freeze council tax levies, so immediately we see a dangerous trend developing toward under-investment and possible stagnation.

For many members who have actively participated in the work of the partnership up to this point, the levy would actually represent a reduction on their voluntary spend, while for the remainder of businesses in the district, the application for BID status represents a real opportunity to become involved and effect positive change to the benefit of themselves and their neighbouring businesses.

As austerity measures take their grip across Europe, we must pull together tighter than ever before to ensure that Liverpool and the commercial district remain ahead of the game.

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FIVE MINUTES WITH FRANK MCKENNA

July 7th, 2010 by Frank McKenna

Frank McKenna has never exactly been shy about being the public face of the Downtown in Business brand, which he founded in Liverpool in 2004 and now boasts operations in Preston and Manchester (the latter launched earlier this year). His weekly, “Thank Frank it’s Friday” email missives, “Frankie Says” blog and Tarantino-inspired advertisements are cases in point.

But no-one who has met him could believe he takes it all seriously. Not too seriously, anyway.

His father was a Bootle bus driver and trade unionist who moved his family out to Skelmersdale when Frank was seven years old. And McKenna says it was his father who nurtured his interested in politics from an early age – an interest that saw him become a career politician in the Labour party.

“But I was never, even at an early age, what you might consider to be radical politically,” he tells EN. “I was always fairly centrist and bought right into the New Labour project.”

Having started out as a welfare rights advisor in the mid-1980s, later becoming a community development officer, McKenna was elected to Lancashire County Council in 1989 at the age of 26.

In 1992 he became agent, then parliamentary assistant, for Colin Pickthall, MP for West Lancashire from 1992-2005. And in 1997 he became deputy leader of Lancashire County Council. Then, in 2000, it all came crashing down.

“Myself and a colleague were accused of overspending on an election campaign,” he explains. “There was never a suggestion that any financial gain had been made. However, the charge was ‘electoral fraud’.

“It boiled down to the fact that we were accused of producing too many leaflets in the 1997 election campaign.”

McKenna blames the affair on the old Labour guard trying to undermine his position and points out that when the case went to court following a threeyear investigation the judge threw it out on day one.

During the three-year period between accusation and trial, McKenna says he was unable to continue with any political activity – so he set up as a public affairs consultant.

He says Downtown Liverpool in Business grew out of a service he offered to help businesses connect with Merseyside’s cat’s cradle of agencies and quangos.

It was, he says, seen at that stage as purely a lobbying organisation: “It was never my intention to have a business networking club. It was only through people approaching me and saying, ‘Why don’t you do an event?’ ‘Why don’t you arrange business-to-business introductions?’ And that side of the business evolved, and is now probably 70 per cent of the business.”

From its foundation in 2004 the Downtown brand now has offshoots in Preston and Manchester – and a small presence in Lancaster. McKenna says he has ambitions to move into other northern cities, and that Leeds would be an obvious next step.

But, as the organisation has grown and become dominated by events that rely on sponsorship from the likes of the North West Regional Development Agency, has the “Business Club With Attitude” lost its anti-establishment edge and just become about the cocktails and “Sexy Networking”? How can McKenna successfully lobby his sponsors?

“It’s important to recognise that you don’t do a deal with the devil in that respect,” he replies. “We have never had Steve Broomhead (NWDA chief executive) try to influence any of the policy initiatives or issues that we articulate.

“And if he tried he knows we wouldn’t take any notice. They sponsor us because they can reach businesses they wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach [that’s your one plug –ed].

“As far as lobbying is concerned, you mature and hone your skills. In the first couple of years, and particularly given that we were in a city that was always quite politically fraught, we had to shout quite loudly just to be heard.”

He says Liverpool city council, under Mike Storey, wasn’t exactly supportive at first but that when Warren Bradley took the helm in 2005 relations became much more cordial.

“Warren Bradley approached us and said, ‘Can we have a conversation?’ and from that moment on it’s been a much more mature relationship. But we’re still robust. We probably say the harsher things about council policy and decisions to them directly now, because we can. We don’t have to use the pages of the Echo anymore because we’re part of the inner sanctum, if you like.

“But I hope people don’t have the impression that we’ve gone soft, because we haven’t.”

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THE COALITIONS FIRST BIG MISTAKE

July 2nd, 2010 by Frank McKenna

Less than two months in and the new coalition government has made its first major mistake in the area of economic development, strategic planning and business support.

The announcement that Regional Development Agencies (RDA’s) are to be abolished and replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP’s) has largely been lost in the noise around the VAT hike, 25% cuts to public expenditure and impending tax increases. However, the collateral damage of the decision on RDA’s, motivated more by political dogma than political pragmatism, will be enormous.

It is fair to say that RDA’s across the country have had mixed reviews. But the performance of the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA), and its reputation among the regions business community, is excellent. Indeed, this was confirmed by an independent report carried out by Ekosgen and Lambert Smith Hampton, published this week, that found that the NWDA’S return on overseas investment is on target to be £30 for every £1 spent by 2013. Between April 2006 and March 2009, the NWDA invested £3.5 million in overseas projects that have so far generated more than £56 million in GVA. The report goes on to suggest that the figure will be £104 million in three years when all the foreign direct investment activity has fully matured.

In the run up to the election, Conservative spokesmen consistently promised that there would be wide scale consultation before any decision was taken on the future of the NWDA. I’m afraid that is one pledge that has been broken.

The claim that this new arrangement will mean more decisions being taken at a local level does not bear much scrutiny. Many of the powers and responsibilities currently held by the NWDA; business support, Inward investment, Innovation and managing Venture Capital funds; will not be devolved to Liverpool, Manchester and Preston but, rather, centralised in the corridors of Whitehall, administered by faceless civil servants many of whom think that people up north wear cloth caps and keep whippets!

And even where responsibilities are to be transferred to LEPs, who within the business community can honestly say that we have confidence in the capacity of local authorities to think strategically, agree on policy and deliver initiatives that will help drive our economy forward?

Manchester can take great comfort in the governance structure that is the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA). It is a model that is rightly held up as a blueprint of good practice, and here we have a group of local councils and private sector partners that are comfortable in co-operating and expert in co-ordinating. Even here though, the political leadership cautioned against the abolition of the NWDA.

It is elsewhere in the region, however, that is of major concern. One would hope that the new leader of Liverpool City Council Joe Anderson, in his additional role as Leader of the Liverpool City Region Partnership, will be able to quickly pull together a strategy and framework among a group of local authorities who have found it difficult in the past to agree what day it is. The Mersey Tram scheme and the proposed Everton FC move to Kirkby are high profile projects that fell by the wayside and head a long list of public spats among the Merseyside political fraternity.

And what of Preston? At loggerheads over the Tithebarn project with neighbouring authorities; operating within a two-tier government structure and in a county that boasts more local councils than most of us care to remember . The idea that this bunch will be responsible for economic development in the future is, frankly, a frightening prospect. One can only hope that the districts will let Lancashire County Council simply get on with it, but I already hear rumours of not two but THREE LEP’s in the red rose county.

Of course we have to deal with the cards we are dealt; but this is a poor hand and one that may yet come back to bite the coalition government on the proverbial.

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DOWNTOWN BUDGET COMMENT

June 23rd, 2010 by Frank McKenna

When you heard the statistic quoted at the Downtown Liverpool Business Week event on Tuesday morning – public sector productivity has dropped 30% during the past decade, compared to productivity growth in the private sector of 10%, it is easy to understand why the government are targeting public expenditure as they prioritise the reduction of the UK budget deficit.

Nevertheless, whilst nobody has been as vocal as me in suggesting that the huge increase in public expenditure had not been matched by the necessary reform, I firmly believe that we need to be careful about some of the cavalier language that is being used about the public sector and those who work in it. Of course, there is waste; and efficiency savings can and will be made without impacting on essential services.

However, we should take no pleasure in telling hard working nurses, fire fighters and police that they face a pay freeze for two years. And, we should also remind ourselves that the economic crash that we have just suffered came about not because of public sector waste, but private sector greed, in the form of gung-ho bankers.

Chancellor Osborne has made some positive changes from a private sector perspective. Exemptions in National Insurance for new start ups in the regions is the most eye catching; whilst his approach on Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax are to be welcomed.

The big picture of the pain to be faced by the public sector will only become truly apparent once the Comprehensive Spending Review is completed in the Autumn. Let us hope that the recovery we have started to witness in recent months is sustained, and a more buoyant private  sector will exist to assist in helping some of those who lose their public sector jobs back into employment.

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