Panel set outs ambitious roadmap for change in Liverpool

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The Panel tasked with supporting Liverpool’s long-term future beyond government intervention measures has published an ambitious roadmap for change.

The Liverpool Strategic Futures Advisory Panel, chaired by Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, has released its initial findings today at the University of Liverpool’s Vice-Chancellor’s Conference which will see a range of high profile speakers discussing how best to create a more successful Liverpool.

Following six months of engagement with more than 300 stakeholders, the Panel has developed the outline of a reform agenda to accelerate the city’s progress towards a stronger and more sustainable future.

Three broad priorities have been identified for Liverpool over the next 10 years; rebooting Liverpool’s regeneration, 21st century public service reform, and turbocharging the innovation economy.

The report recommends initial proposals to transform these areas:

  • Establishing a regeneration partnership to kickstart stalled projects and rejuvenate regeneration in the city.
  • Piloting an integrated, data-led approach to service delivery focused on multiple complex needs, with the potential to establish a first of its kind Office for Public Service Innovation in the city region.
  • Ensuring the region capitalises on its strengths in life sciences, using the Investment Zone status to accelerate growth in the Knowledge Quarter and spread its benefits more widely.

The Panel believes these priorities should form the basis of Liverpool’s economic strategy in the coming decade, and the outcomes used to measure its success will be set out in the Panel’s final report.

Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: 

“This report is a culmination of months of engagement and evidence gathering with the people who know our area best. Those discussions gave us a much clearer picture of the direction local people believe the city is going in, and the areas where we need to steer the ship to keep things heading in the right direction.

“This report doesn’t claim to have all the answers, it’s just part of the solution to the puzzle to revitalising Liverpool’s economy. At this stage, our priority is planting the seeds for leadership and supporting sustainable growth for the long-term, some of which we have already seen with new leadership at the council.

“Liverpool has all the ingredients of a fantastic, truly global city. Through the Panel’s work, we want to help the city seize the major opportunities that lie ahead and and ensuring that all our residents can share in the benefits this will bring.”

Taking stock of where the city sits today, the report states that “Liverpool is rightly regarded as one of Britain’s most dynamic and distinctive cities… yet economically, [it] punches below its weight.”

The interim report provides an in-depth analysis of Liverpool’s economy today, listing strengths like Liverpool’s tourism appeal, growing student population, and emerging strengths in areas like life sciences, advanced manufacturing, digital and culture. However, weaknesses remain – productivity lags behind the national average, earnings are lower, and there is an over-reliance on low productivity sectors. It estimates £4.5 billion per year could be added to Liverpool’s economy by raising productivity levels to the UK average.

Leader of Liverpool City Council, Councillor Liam Robinson, said: 

“I am pleased to support this report, which outlines the huge opportunities for Liverpool. Working in partnership with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, other stakeholders and businesses, we are absolutely committed to doing everything we can to improve our city.

“In recent decades, there have been great strides in making Liverpool a fantastic place to live, work and visit. Now is the time to accelerate our work, moving it to the next level, making sure we deliver for all of our residents.”

The report has been approved by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP.

Mayor Rotheram is joined on the Panel by two major local government figures, Baroness Judith Blake, the leader of Leeds City Council from 2015 to 2021 and Sir Howard Bernstein, who was chief executive of Manchester City Council from 1999 to 2017.

They have worked with Liverpool City Council and its Cabinet, officers at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, external experts, and stakeholders to deliver a long-term masterplan for the growth and success of the city.

Further detail of this reform agenda, and delivery milestones, will be the focus of the Panel’s final growth strategy report in 2024.

The ‘​​Liverpool Strategic Futures Advisory Panel: Interim report’ can be found here.

Liverpool led way in reopening big cultural events

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Liverpool researchers have authored a new study detailing definitive population-based evidence of risks of Covid-19 transmission around the early reopening of mass cultural events before restrictions were lifted.

Liverpool City Region hosted the world’s first regional cluster of experimental reopening of mass cultural events after Covid lockdowns as part of the UK Events Research Programme (ERP), including a business festival, two nightclubs (Circus’ First Dance) and a music festival (the Sefton Park Pilot).

All ticketholders were required to take a lateral flow test ahead of the events – a negative test would allow them access. Attendees were encouraged to take a PCR test on the day of the event, and a second one five days later, and gave consent for their routine NHS Covid testing data to be linked.

The analysis, published today (23 June 2023) in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, finds that of 12,256 individuals attending one or more events over 5 days, there were just 15 linked cases detected through research, public health and clinical testing using population-wide linked data.

Half of the cases were likely primary or secondary, reflecting transmission no higher than the background rate at the time, in contrast to a concurrent outbreak of more than 50 linked cases associated with a local swimming pool.

The key strengths of the study are its population-wide design and the realistic way the events were run. The Liverpool City Region was the first region in the world to introduce voluntary open-access asymptomatic testing, and used real-time linked data systems to study patterns of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and coordinate public health responses from November 2020 through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University of Liverpool’s Professor Iain Buchan, Principal Investigator for the Events Research Programme in Liverpool, said:

“Around the May Bank Holiday of 2021, the Liverpool City Region ran the world’s first experimental reopening of a realistic set of mass cultural events after COVID-lockdowns. We studied the feasibility and effects of risk-mitigations including supervised self-testing, contact-tracing and joint communications between event organisers and public health teams. The events were designed to be realistic, so mask-wearing was not compulsory. Out of 12,256 eventgoers there were 15 event-linked cases detected through research and routine NHS testing – no greater than background rates, which were low then – just before the Delta variant surged. The same surveillance system detected over 50 cases linked to a swimming pool in the area at the time, which did not have pre-attendance testing.”

He added:

“This public health initiative was a response to the social development and mental health needs of young people, who were last to be vaccinated, and among whom mental health referrals were rising. It was also a response to rising unemployment in the events and hospitality sector, and the importance of this sector for social wellbeing. Future pandemic recovery might take greater advantage of digital links between ticketing, events management, and public health systems, including testing and risk communications.”

The live links between different data sources, including events ticketing and public health testing were built by the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative (CDC), which is funded by Mayor Steve Rotheram and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, and hosted by the University of Liverpool. The CDC is the UK’s first Civic Data Cooperative and was launched just before the COVID-19 pandemic to mobilise health-related data across the city region to improve the health and wellbeing of its residents.

Director of Culture Liverpool Claire McColgan CBE, said: 

“The Events Research Programme remains one of the most challenging projects I have ever been involved with and one that I’m incredibly proud of. At a time when restrictions were in place, we couldn’t mix indoors with family and friends, and mask wearing was the norm – Liverpool stepped up to be the focal point of a pilot project which would help shape national policy and breathe life back into the culture and leisure sector.

“This industry represents more than half of our local economy and it was in our interests to do everything we could to start to bring a sense of normality back. The eyes of the world were on us as we blazed the trail, and worked around the clock with the University, Government and event organisers to make each activity a safety success, and help unlock live events for the rest of the country.  And in terms of legacy, our learning from those projects has been invaluable, shaping how we now deliver major events, such as the highly-acclaimed Eurovision host city programme, and as a result are regarded as an exemplar of best practice in this field.”

Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, Steve Rotheram, said:

“Being the first region in the country to reopen its hospitality and events sector in the midst of a global pandemic was no mean feat, yet we knew it was essential one – not only for our economic recovery, but for our collective wellbeing.

“While the rest of the world watched on, we worked with our world-leading scientists, researchers and our ethical Civic Data Cooperative, to safely reopen our visitor economy to the public. Few areas can claim to have made a bigger impact on global health than the Liverpool City Region – and it’s a legacy that we’re proud to be continuing today.”

Click here to read the full paper.

(Image credit: Blossoms Perform / Liverpool City Council)

£6.9M funding to better understand child mental health

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Further funding to enhance the flagship birth cohort study Children Growing Up in Liverpool (C-GULL), which opened this spring, has been announced today (4 July 2023).

The new ‘Microbes, Milk, Mental Health and Me’ (4M) strand, supported by £6.9M funding from the Wellcome Trust, seeks to better understand the early-life origins of mental health conditions.

Poor mental health is a growing public health challenge, particularly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet there is still much to be learned about their early-life origins. Compelling evidence suggests that gut microbial colonization, strongly influenced by breastmilk, impacts neurodevelopment and mental well-being, but more research is needed to fully understand the underlying mechanisms.

This funding will enable the collection of additional bio-samples for the diverse birth cohort, including state-of-the-art gut microbiota and breastmilk profiling. Researchers will utilize large-scale genomic and epidemiological data to perform experiments, discover new biological insights, and carry out epidemiology and translational science. They will also establish an internationally unique archive of paired bio-samples from mothers and babies and identify keystone bacteria and milk constituents that influence neurodevelopment and mental health.

The findings from this study will inform new methods for preventing and treating adverse mental health conditions in children. The Children Growing Up in Liverpool (C-GULL) program is the first large-scale birth cohort study in the Liverpool City Region and will follow 10,000 first-born Liverpool babies and their families from early in pregnancy through childhood and beyond.

C-GULL is a partnership between The University of Liverpool, The Wellcome Trust, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Liverpool City Council, The Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and NIHR Clinical Research Network North West Coast. The study will also introduce further collaborations with University College London, The Wellcome Sanger Institute, and the University of Manitoba.

“The Children Growing Up in Liverpool (C-GULL) study represents a unique opportunity to explore the complex interplay between early-life exposures, gut microbiota and mental health,” said Professor Anthony Hollander from The University of Liverpool.

“We are thrilled to receive this additional funding from The Wellcome Trust which will allow us to further advance our understanding of how we can improve the mental health of children.”

Dr Catherine Sebastian, Head of Evidence for Mental Health at The Wellcome Trust, said:

“Poor mental health is increasing in children and young people, and we need to understand more about how these problems develop to better tackle this public health challenge. The 4M strand of C-GULL will generate important new insights into the relationship between gut microbes, breast milk, and mental health during child development, and will provide a foundation for future research in this field.”

The official opening of the C-GULL research centre will take place later this month in the academic unit at The Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Participants and prospective participants can find more information on the study at the patient-facing website: http://www.cgullstudy.com/

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