Community Cohesion Plan for the City Centre

I met earlier this week with the Liverpool City Centre manager to review the draft Community Cohesion Plan for the City Centre which forms a key part of our district - City and North Liverpool. As the Chair of the District and one of the council's two representatives on the Community Cohesion and Equalities Task Group for Liverpool First, I have also reviewed the draft plan for the whole authority.

There are some really good things in the plan, it is not all about Stanley Street, honest, although that is of course important - the new tentatively named Temple Quarter needs to be clean, bright, safe and accessible, which is a real challenge given that much of it is subterranean. There are some great initiatives around finding safe creative spaces for the Goths and Moshers - and punks too, all mixed in happily together on a Saturday afternoon - and away from St Johns Gardens and the Pier Head. We need to find new ways to fund that. I was also pleased with the progress we are making around engaging leaseholders, I know Nick Small has put on at least two annual conferences thus far. We are also making some headway with improved relations through community involvement with city centre residents, like the highly successful YCM event for the Chinese Community that I was part of. We need to do more of that, I would like to see a YCM for the LGBT community for instance.