JUST Centre Launch - Merseyside

In late September 2025, we launched the Merseyside strand of the JUST Centre at Blackburne House, Liverpool.

Amongst the attendees were friends and colleagues, new and old, who are all working on various elements of climate action, sustainability and energy in and around Merseyside. Some have worked with either myself or Pete North in various shapes and forms in recent years, and all reflect a really rich landscape of action that is happening in the area. This was important to us, because as we begin our journey, we wanted to avoid the academic folly of swinging in from the rafters as if we have all of the ideas. Instead, we want to begin JUST in the spirit of its title: Joined Up Sustainability Transformations. We wanted to hear from, and listen to, as many people as we can to understand how we can put the JUST centre to the best possible use.

After hearing from JUST Director Sherilyn MacGregor, who spoke about some of the high level goals of our Centre, our first intervention came through Lucie Middlemiss who presented the findings of a Rapid Evidence Review of the current state of JUST climate transformation work across Northern England, including in Merseyside. One of the standout findings here was that Merseyside – and Liverpool in particular – still struggles under the burden of a decade and a half of austerity¹. The result is that whilst we have lots of technocratic and well-meaning solutions that do what we need to do, often we haven’t given the time and space to communicating them, or bringing everyone along for the journey. Similarly, at the tables, which were vibrant across the day, one thing we talked about was how despite so many people working in the sector, often we don’t know where everybody is, or what they’re doing – often resulting in duplication.

Our second intervention came through Anne Owen and Beverley Searle, who talked about their work on some indicators which show Readiness for Net Zero – and ostensibly designed to show where our climate interventions might have both the most effect, and deliver the most positive benefit for people. This was really fascinating to see how this shaped out for Merseyside, and the feedback was really positive. Importantly, one of the strongest bits of feedback is how this could be used for the private sector, and how businesses might be able to ethically target where they make their interventions to deliver transitions in that just way.

Our final intervention of the table threw the conversation to our guests. We wanted to hear how they saw the work of the JUST Centre. What was going on, and how could we help? This was invaluable to us and we really valued the act of friends speaking truthfully and giving us their honest views. There is too much to say in one blog post, but the biggest output from the day was the ability to keep talking. In the weeks since, we’ve had plenty of further conversations, follow-ups and discussions, and we left it saying that this was just the beginning. We’re looking forward to what the next 5 years has in store for JUST, and for doing it with Merseyside, and to putting what we are finding on Merseyside along with lessons from the other four case study regions, and beyond.

On a final note… as a personal reflection, it was also great to be working with Pete North once again. Pete and I have worked together in this area for a long time, and wrote extensively about how the city grappled with climate change in the early 2010s. I’m really excited we have the space and time to work together on this once again