Metro mayor’s driving ambition

“I sat down with Andy Burnham a little bit over a year ago and discussed whether we should both think about becoming metro mayors,” says Mr Rotheram. “We sat down on a sunny evening and had a pint and just talked it through. Our conclusion was that what was happening in government wasn’t working for areas like ours.

“We thought, we could stay there – because I had the safest seat in the country – for a long time trying to push things through. We were demonstrably successful in a lot of campaigns, but sometimes you just think, ‘I’ve worked stupid hours – from early in the morning until late at night – and we’ve voted on stuff and I’ve not really made an impact’. We thought we could do that on a much more local level to a greater extent.”

Just over a year later, he is three months into his new role as mayor of the Liverpool City Region after being elected with 59% of the vote (Mr Burnham is the mayor of Greater Manchester).

So what are Mr Rotheram’s plans for the region where he was raised? Inside Housing met him to find out.

Sitting back in his chair on a top floor of One Mann Island – the swanky headquarters of the combined authority overlooking the Mersey – the 55-year-old mayor is easy to relax around. While the photographer snaps away, Mr Rotheram chats about his love of the Liverpool music scene and dislike of flying.

“Private landlords have bought up housing and are sitting on properties.”

He is upfront about the challenge to improve the quality of housing, particularly in the private rented sector. “There’s no doubt we have problems with stock. We’ve got absentee landlords, and areas are blighted by private landlords who have bought up housing when the market was at rock bottom and who are sitting on the properties.”

Various tactics have been tried over the years to spruce up areas. Perhaps the most eye-catching, or gimmicky according to its detractors, was the homes for £1 scheme launched two years ago. Liverpool City Council offered up to 150 boarded-up Victorian homes, for people who had lived or worked in the city and were looking to buy their first home, for the grand sum of £1. These homes had been gutted so required a complete refit, including gas and electrics. Critics said it could cost up to £60,000 to refit the homes, making the £1 price tag meaningless in the long term. But the thinking behind it was to encourage locals to get into homeownership and take pride in their area.

Goodison Park demise

For Mr Rotheram, it’s more about intervention where it’s needed – the “big picture” – rather than relying on individuals to do up a couple of homes. He offers Goodison Park, where Everton FC plays, as an example of an area that requires intervention. “That area was a fairly settled community but private landlords bought housing there and we’ve seen the demise of the area where it’s very rapid turnover and it’s also become an area of disposal for refugees and asylum seekers. That isn’t a criticism of those people but if you don’t know who your neighbour is month by month then it’s less likely you’re going to get that social cohesion.”

Mr Rotheram says the combined authority is working with local councils to see what strategies are needed to tackle some of these issues.

He’s more vague when it comes to the nitty-gritty, however. When Inside Housing pushes him on what those strategies could be, he jokingly protests: “We’re only 10 weeks into it!

“There’s no magic wand so we haven’t transformed a whole area yet! Give us time to develop the ideas.”

He has a housing summit in his sights where some of those big ideas could come to the fore – a meeting of housing associations, local councils and developers to discuss strategies.

Despite his emphasis on collaborative working, however, a tense relationship has reportedly developed between him and Liverpool city mayor Joe Anderson, with Mr Anderson claiming he will not attend the metro mayor’s cabinet meetings, as reported by local paper the Liverpool Echo. This is perhaps partly why Mr Rotheram is keen to stress throughout our conversation that the combined authority will work with the six local councils, rather than instructing them.

The importance of close working between the mayors and housing associations is emphasised by Julie Fadden, chief executive of South Liverpool Homes. “For us working in Merseyside, how politicians prove themselves is by results,” she says. “We’ve got three mayors in Liverpool and we want to work with all our politicians to bring about better living conditions for those people we serve.”

Mr Rotheram is ready and willing to use his new powers, which include using compulsory purchase orders to seize housing and land, the power to buy and sell land, and the chance to set up a mayoral development corporation for certain sites. He has prioritised a brownfield land register – which the combined authority has to complete in the next 12 months as part of its devolution deal – partly to keep track of what land developers are eyeing up now that the Liverpool region is becoming a popular destination.

“At the moment there are large international investors crawling all over the region and they’re desperate for a fairly low to medium risk – 3-4% returns but over a longer period. They don’t just want to develop housing, they want to develop place. That’s something that excites me, and that’s something we need. For far too long we’ve built in a sort of speculative manner and it’s never been joined up. With the strategic planning powers we can do that, we can start to say you can’t just build 100 houses there and a 100 there and you’ve got no doctors and infrastructure.”

Inside Housing quizzes him on how he’ll stop developers from trying to wriggle out of affordable housing commitments, but he says Liverpool is well past its days of desperation when any developer interest was jumped on. “We don’t need that now, we’re a city region on the up so we can be a bit more discerning about what we accept.”

He makes no bones about considering green belt land for development, despite it being a hot potato for many politicians, saying that “if you are to get that economic growth then you have to think the unthinkable. At some stage when brownfield has been utilised, if we’re still growing as a city region, what are people’s solutions? Build up into the sky? We’ve seen with Grenfell the choice for a lot of people now will be against living on the 20th floor of a high rise.”

Housing First approach

The region was recently chosen to pilot a partly government-funded Housing First scheme. Housing First is designed to house formerly homeless people with high support needs in their own permanent homes as quickly as possible with wraparound support, rather than waiting for other support needs – such as treatment for mental illness or addiction – to be addressed first. Inside Housing’s Cathy at 50 campaign has been calling for a Housing First approach across the country.

The report by Crisis into the Liverpool City Region pilot found there is “high demand and unmet need” in homelessness support and only 60% of people assessed for homelessness were given accommodation. Under a Housing First programme the region could save up to £4m compared to the current system, the report’s authors concluded. Mr Rotheram backs the findings and is keen for the government to roll out Housing First on a more permanent basis.

Housing associations in the city region have agreed to provide the accommodation – one of the biggest hurdles for Housing First. Mr Rotheram is full of praise: “Associations have not just reacted to it but they were proactive to say if this is what you want we can help.”

“International investors want to develop place. That’s something we need.”

Barbara Spicer, chief executive of Plus Dane, and recently appointed as Mr Rotheram’s advisor, praises his ability to bring people together. “If you look at Housing First, he knows that homelessness isn’t his duty, he knows the council are doing a really good job, but he’s using his role and power to say we could do this dramatically differently with much better outcomes for everybody and therefore he pulls our sector, health and others to the table.”

Before taking up the metro mayor mantle, Mr Rotheram was MP for Liverpool Walton for seven years. Prior to that, he was lord mayor in 2008 and a councillor. But despite his fairly typical journey up the political ladder he initially tried to avoid politics altogether – “turned off” because his dad was a councillor in Kirby.

His mind was changed when he went to his son’s nursery and saw “it had more buckets than teachers – it was leaking everywhere”. He complained to his MP, Peter Kilfoyle, who told him, “It’s no good moaning, you’ve got to get involved if you want to change things.”

Mr Rotheram shakes his head: “Famous last words.” From that point, he never looked back.