FOR the first time in decades, the Liverpool and Merseyside's economy has withstood a recession better than the rest of Britain.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, while economic output per head for the UK shrank 2.7% in 2009, Merseyside fell by just 1.5% and Liverpool by 0.6%.

The resilient economic performance will have been aided by Liverpool One’s first full year of trading and the opening of the Arena and Convention Centre. However, the sub-region had the fifth lowest economic output per head of the UK’s 37 sub-regions.

Professor Tom Cannon, head of strategic development at the University of Liverpool Management School, said: “For the first time since the Second World War the Mersey economy has not done its usual act of being the first into a recession. The progress that has been made in recent years is reflected in these figures.”

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce chief executive Jack Stopforth added: “This is welcome documentary evidence to support the evidence of our own eyes. Anybody who has lived in Liverpool has been aware that the city has been doing well.

“Ten years ago, if UK plc caught a cold we caught pneumonia. Nowadays, if the UK catches a cold, we catch just a cold.”

The Mersey Partnership chief executive Lorraine Rogers said: “This can in part be explained by the fact that the downturn was at that time being experienced most acutely in the private sector, and, to some extent, the greater reliance on the public sector in the city region reduced the impact.“