Title

After 40-plus years of travelling throughout the country to conferences, at long last, one is coming to me. The Lib Dem spring conference is taking place just down the road in our new £180m Liverpool Arena and Conference Centre and it is going to be a lively event indeed. Contentiously for councillors, there will be proposals to create stand-alone, democratically-elected health boards, although all the signs are that a compromise will be reached to have partly-elected health boards with a strong number of councils placed on them and stronger powers of commissioning and scrutiny for councils. This may detract from other aspects of an excellent paper and policy motion which puts patients at the heart of the NHS, not bureaucrats. Housing will also take centre stage, with a motion calling for a range of activity to stimulate affordable housing, including the introduction of community land auctions and a defence of council housing, with a demand for the ‘fourth option' to allow investment in council housing. A consultative session will take opinions on the development of a new transport strategy and Eastleigh Council Group will make a presentation to the full conference about its very successful work in running an excellent council. As usual, councillors will be playing a major role throughout the conference. The LGA Lib Dem Group's ever-popular council group of the year awards will launch our social programme. As one of the judges, I cannot reveal the winners, but I have been struck by the energy of so many of our groups. I really believe local government, as a whole, is improving steadily, and I am proud that Lib Dems in control and opposition are clearly a part of this positive transformation. There will also be new booklets launched on planning and regeneration, from some of the rising stars of the LCLG's Next Generation Programme and two separate booklets on different aspects of community politics and localism. We feel, particularly, that throughout the three main parties there is more rhetoric than reality to localism. One of the booklets will, therefore, set out the intellectual case and the other will be a good practice guide to encourage Lib Dems to do it better. We will, of course, also be taking the opportunity to showcase Liverpool. We are delighted to be welcoming the party to a city which we have transformed in the last 10 years. In addition to the new arena, a new £1bn retail centre comes on stream in May, and a new museum is being built at the Pier Head. In fact, the city centre alone will have received more than £2bn of private sector investment over a five-year period. Liverpool has a long way to go to deal with decades of underinvestment and hopelessness, but we are proud to be able to show our fellow Lib Dems the major strides we have taken on the road to recovery. Cllr Richard Kemp is a Liverpool City councillor and leader of the Lib Dem Group at the LGA

Title

WHITEHALL

All roads lead to Liverpool

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING