Liverpool Waters will directly benefit a local construction workforce

Email from Councillor Nick Small, Cabinet Member for Enterprise and Skills explaining the benefits particularly for jobs with the passing of outline planning permission for Liverpool Waters. Something he describes as "fantastic news for the city".

Under the Lib Dems, the Council refused point blank to include local labour under Section 106 agreements; something Labour campaigned for in opposition for many years. Instead the Lib Dems preferred to use Section 106 powers for parks and open spaces. This meant that the city didn't maximise on the jobs when Liverpool One, the Cruise Liner Terminal and the Arena and Conference Centre were built. (This means that we have been able to insist that a good proportion of jobs which come as a result of the scheme must go to local Liverpool people - LB). (The LibDems used the same powers only to say that official cash "sweeteners" from developers must be spent improving parks and open spaces - not an unreasonable thing in itself - but they could have insisted on much more than just that when contracts or planning permission was being granted in the city. They too could have insisted on builders using a proportion of local labour in the workforce rather than let everything go to Manchester firms - LB)

Liverpool Waters is the first major planning scheme that the Council has agreed a detailed scheme of targetted recruitment and selection with a developer as part of the Section 106 agreement.

This new model has separate stretch targets for (1) the four wards of North Liverpool, (2) the Council's priority areas across the city, (3) the City of Liverpool and (4) the City Region and these targets will be monitored regularly by the Council and Peel.

More importantly than this perhaps, the relationships we've developed with Peel over the last 20 months mean that we've got their buy-in to work together to exceed these targets. Even before planning permission was in place we've been talking in detail to Peel about delivering training, apprenticeships and jobs, should they have been successful.

This will ensure that those communities that need it the most will benefit from the 17,000 direct construction and end-user jobs created by Liverpool Waters.

We're using this same model with other major development like the Royal, Alder Hey and University of Liverpool - total investment of £1.6billion.

This demonstrates what can be achieved by a progressive Labour Council working in partnership with business.