Merseyside will slip further behind its competitors unless it drops a “business as usual” approach to economic growth, political leaders and industrialists warned

Oct 7 2009 By Ben Schofield

MERSEYSIDE will slip further behind its competitors unless it drops a "business as usual" approach to economic growth, political leaders and industrialists will be warned today.

The region saw a boom over the past decade that outstripped its rivals.

But recent – though pre-recession figures – reveal they are now picking up and the gap between the Liverpool City Region and other regions such as Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and Tyne & Wear could open up again.

The statistics are published today in The Mersey Partnership’s (TMP) annual economic health check for the region. It says the solution is to abandon "business as usual" and push forward with four "transformational sectors": culture and heritage; superport; the low carbon economy; and knowledge.

TMP, the city region’s inward investment agency, says Liverpool and its surrounding boroughs saw a rise in its overall value of 58.5% between 1996 and 2006. Liverpool alone boomed by 72.9%. The city outperformed Manchester, which grew by 70.2%, Sheffield (63.3%) and Leeds (60.1%) over the same period.

But the city region’s Gross Value Added (GVA) – which measures total economic contribution – grew by just 4.4% in 2006, which lags behind the UK and the North West averages. In the same year, Greater Manchester’s GVA grew by 5.1% and South Yorkshire’s by 4.9%.

The report, which is being launched by TMP at Liverpool University’s Foresight Centre today, warns: "The underlying prospects for growth in the Liverpool City Region show an improvement on their historical performance although the underlying prospects for a long-term growth, as indicated by a ‘business as usual’ scenario, are weaker than for the UK and the North West."

It adds that an assessment of projects in the pipeline for the next decade concludes they have the potential to create 120,000 jobs, but more than half – some 62,000 – could be displaced jobs from elsewhere in the city region.