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Metro Mayor tells property sector:- "City
Region must raise its ambition to compete and prosper."
LIVERPOOL
City Region Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram has told a gathering of some of the
region's leading property professionals, that the area must raise its level
of ambition to create the long term prosperity necessary to support a
vibrant property market. Speaking at the Business Insider Regional property
Awards at Liverpool's Titanic Hotel last night, he told his audience:-
"The most important single message that I want
to deliver tonight, is that our City Region must upscale its level of
ambition and we must define our future economic vision as a place that
creates and sustains more high value employment, builds more successful
businesses and attracts greater levels of UK and international investment.
The property and development industry are driven by demand for space and
fuelled by economic growth. Our agendas are perfectly aligned."
Setting out a compelling and confident prospectus for the
future, the Metro Mayor set out 6 key objectives that will underpin his
approach to drive economic growth and attract additional investment into the
region. These were:-
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A Strategic
Economic Review and Industrial Strategy to provide a robust evidence base
and clear priorities for future economic growth.
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A review of the
roles of the City Region's different marketing, investment and economic
agencies to create a single organisation aiming to make the area one of the
UK's top international investment destinations.
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A new joined up
approach, where the region's boroughs would no longer compete for investment,
but pool their assets and strengths for mutual benefit, with closer
integration of planning, housing, skills and economic development policies
across the City Region.
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A more targeted
and sophisticated approach to pursuing investment leads, directly targeting
key investment decision-makers and focusing on areas where the City Region
had a specific competitive edge or usp.
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A much stronger
partnership with private business and the property sector, utilising the
influence and relationships of key business leaders as ambassadors for the
region.
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A closer and
more collaborative relationship with our neighbouring City Region, Greater
Manchester, recognising common interests and our increased economic
interdependence.
Steve Rotheram also identified the need for the City
Region to ensure that it was providing the right kind of development to meet
the needs of its future economy and residents. He said that:-
"To be genuinely competitive we need to be
delivering a competitive and appropriate product. We need a pipeline
of high quality Grade A offices as well flexible and innovative work space
configured to the requirements of a new kind of urban entrepreneurialism. We
need to be building homes that are attractive, affordable and in the right
place, close to transport, connected to work and in well designed and
sustainable neighbourhoods."
Promising a new era of
ambition, realism and joined-up thinking, he suggested that in
an increasingly unstable and unpredictable world, the less able the City
Region was to control events beyond its boundaries, the more it needed to
create certainty, stability and consistency within them.
"Strong relationships, mutual
trust, shared goals, policy and political consistency, a long-term
perspective and the right institutional architecture are the foundations for
future prosperity. They are powerful signals to the outside world, that we
are open for business"
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