LIVERPOOL City Council is creating a team of “Business Champions” – key senior staff whose job it will be to engage with the private sector.
Council leader Warren Bradley, who once proclaimed himself to be the city’s business champion, will launch the initiative today.
It will seek to bring about a culture change in the way council departments deal with business.
The move was given a cautious welcome by private sector lobby group, Downtown Liverpool in Business (DLIB), which claimed it first suggested the idea to the council three years ago.
The Business Champions will come together for the first time today at Liverpool John Moores University’s The Automatic.
They will be briefed on current business issues, the role of the city’s economic development company, Liverpool Vision and its partners, to understand more clearly the needs of business.
Their work will be the first steps to build on just-released findings from the Liverpool Vision-commissioned Foundations for Growth major independent survey and the feedback received from out-of-town companies by Liverpool Vision’s area managers.
The event forms part of European SME week which features a number of events to support and promote the role and importance of small and medium sized businesses.
Cllr Bradley said: “We have a long-standing commitment to build on our reputation as a business-friendly city and, by creating business champions in key departments, we are improving the way we listen to the aspirations of business and act on their concerns – never more important than now during difficult economic conditions. This is just the start of changing our culture in relation to business and our staff are to be well briefed to understand fully the pressures that businesses are facing and so we are shifting our corporate culture towards a more business-focused approach.”
DLIB chairman Frank McKenna told LDP Business the city council’s record to date of engaging with business was poor.
He said: “The private sector is still not a formal consultee on key decisions made by the council.
“ This was demonstrated recently on the issue of car parking charges. We think this is a good idea – it’s something we first suggested three years ago – but, as with everything, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The council has come up with plenty of slogans and initiatives in the past – but what happened to them?”
