“I think everyone appreciates that it is a major regeneration scheme with huge potential benefits for the region.

“We’ll report back to the Liverpool City Region Cabinet in March on our progress.”

The cabinet also said it was not prepared to remove any transport schemes from the Regional Funding Allocation (RFA) in order to finance Merseytram – it had been suggested that money could be taken from the delayed Port of Liverpool access improvement scheme.

Wirral Council leader Steve Foulkes who was at the meeting said: “We put down a resolution which sets fairly tight deadlines to see if there is any prospect of a funding package being arranged.”

“We don’t want to sacrifice any other ongoing schemes in the RFA and we have said the money should come from new sources.

“It should either come from government or possibly some sort of private finance initiative.

“It’s a pretty tight ask because we don’t want it to impact on the levy.

“We have also set down a marker and said that we would not want any tunnel toll income associated with the funding package.

“There needs to be a realism at some point in the future.

“But we can all see the benefits of Merseytram Line 1.

“We have put the onus back with Merseytravel to realise this scheme. We need new money from new sources.”