Total commitment

Jul 9 2007 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

SEEMS strange to me how Merseysiders have a knack of spending a King’s ransom on international headhunters to track down the best in the world for jobs we need doing. Then what happens? We take a peek over the garden wall and all the time, the person we were looking for lives just around the corner.

We could spend a couple of bob putting a bit of a jobs-ad in the Wirral News or Merseymart and the end result would be the same.

The latest recruit – after a global search – is local person Lorraine Rogers, chairman of middling, and occasionally struggling, Third Division outfit Tranmere Rovers. They may call it Football League One, but if the Third Division was good enough for David Coleman, it’s good enough for me.

Ms Rogers has been hired for £120,000 a year as chief executive of the Mersey Partnership, the £7m-a-year agency charged with attracting inward investment and spearheading the sub-region’s tourism drive.

Part of the deal is that she will be allowed to keep the balls in the air by retaining her role at Prenton Park, oh and she is also chair of the board at the RLPO, and is on other bodies in and around the area.

I’ve never met Ms Rogers, never been to watch Tranmere Rovers, though I remember once driving past the ground. I have no idea whether, compared to other applicants, she was top of the pile.

It’s the wisdom, or more likely lack of it, yet again, of hiring somebody unable or unwilling to devote a minimum of 100% of their working time to what is a vital task. In Liverpool we continue to smart from the choice of Australian Robyn Archer as part-time and distant artistic director for Capital of Culture.

A condition of the job offer should have been Ms Rogers having to hang-up her footie boots and concentrating totally on the TMP, rather than traipsing off to watch games in Yeovil or Brighton. We deserve nothing less, even more so when you consider the lamentable unemployment figures for Merseyside.

The TMP is, de-facto, the sub-regional development agency that is supposed to be attracting investors from all over the world into Merseyside. Each week I scan planning applications coming into our town halls, and more often than not projects such as loft conversions and household conservatories dominate.

Rarely – and in this case the use of even that word is being over generous – do I spot applications for major industrial and commercial projects. The result is around 35,000 Merseysiders picking up unemployment benefits every week, and if the hidden dole queue (masquerading as disability benefits) is added, the number rockets even higher.

Liverpool, despite the crowing about the cranes of the skyline and the renaissance, continues to have, by a massive margin, the highest unemployment level in the North West and one of the highest in the UK.

Welcome to the real world Ms Rogers, and good luck. You and the Mersey Partnership will need it.