what does ‘good growth for all’ look like?
Last week, as Andy Burnham delivered his pivotal speech to the Labour Party Conference, against the backdrop of Liverpool’s waterfront, shedkm and Civic welcomed property leaders, policymakers and innovators aboard the Daffodil at Canning Dock for our second fringe event at the conference.
With the country poised for transformation, our roundtable tackled three critical questions: how do we create good growth, what are the barriers and how do we ensure it benefits everyone?
Here’s a quick summary of the three main themes:
1 unlocking growth through partnership and smarter policy
Real growth requires true public-private collaboration backed by bold policy levers such as scrapping VAT on retrofit to drive sustainable development across our communities.
2 shifting from outputs to outcomes
Good growth isn’t just the number of houses built. We need to shift the focus to long-term human outcomes, treating housing as vital infrastructure. This echoed Burnham’s push for a 10-year restructure of politics and core public services inc. council housing.
3 empowering the regions and tackling the viability gap
To beat the barriers of red tape and financial viability we need deeper devolution that allows regional powers to go further and faster. This must be backed by long-term funding certainty to build investor confidence. New MDCs are a good example of how we deliver this.
The overriding consensus was clear; the vision is there but to maintain momentum we must now back the vision with decisive action and joined-up thinking.
A huge thank you to everyone able to join us and share their insights, and we look forward to ongoing conversations on how we capitalise on the core message of ‘Hope again’ in Burnham’s speech.