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Is Liverpool gaining a reputation for being a city ‘full of great ideas, but with no delivery’?
The recent axing of William Allsop’s ‘Cloud’ project has drawn attention to Liverpool’s persistent inability to successfully deliver the city’s ‘good ideas’. In the private sector, a major issue for banks, VCs, business angels and investors when they consider getting involved in any new idea, business plan or project is ‘evidence of success’. This means looking at the people behind these ideas - what they have done and delivered before; why confidence should be invested in their ability to deliver now. This is a common sense approach - to investigate before investing.
Yet in Liverpool, this process does not appear to be followed. Over £2 million was invested in the Cloud before it was axed for seemingly the most basic of issues - its commercial viability and the suitability of the location. Were these issued not raised in the initial stages and if so, why were they ignored? Was the Cloud project deliberately chosen for being the most daring, regardless of its viability?
This is not the first time by any means that Liverpool has failed to deliver its ‘good ideas’. The Chambers of Commerce ‘Compete’ Programme was given astronomical funding from government office yet it failed to excite Liverpool’s business community - so much so that it is widely considered a fiasco within the private sector. The problem surrounding the programme was not the idea, which was essentially a good one, but in the people behind its delivery. The programme is now to get a second chance but if the people behind it have not changed, it will be destined to fail again.
What happened to ‘Downtown Week’ (that was not us!)? This received a lot of column inches and airplay before it was first ‘rearranged for August 2004’ then finally cancelled for this year altogether. The list of failed initiatives goes on and on. Will the tram system and Grosvenor Project suffer the same fate?
The positive media attention ascribed to these initiatives is out of proportion to their success. Media attention, on the whole, is through local press and local marketing. Why do they not receive wider attention, such as in EN Magazine, Insider and the serious business publications? There is a lack of objectivity in the publicity of information relating to major new initiatives. This means that perceptions of new initiatives are jaded before they even pass the investigative phase. Repeatedly, hopes are raised over exciting new projects only to be quashed when the work behind delivering them is flawed.
This trend in failing to deliver the good ideas developed in Liverpool needs to be challenged. What is needed is serious, investigative journalism that does not welcome each and every new initiative in a blaze of uncritical optimism but is careful to scrutinise what exactly is being proposed and its realistic chances of success. Public money needs to be invested in setting up an independently run business publication for Liverpool. There needs to be more open and frank information that is readily available about what are the bigger projects in the city, what deliverable ideas are being started, who is behind them and what are their backgrounds. In this way, those involved will be forced to have greater accountability and in turn, this will encourage a more capable team to emerge. In this way, Liverpool may finally develop a new trend - where the ‘artists impressions’ will give way to reality.
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