Merseyside

Merseyside is a ceremonial and former Metropolitan Council in the North West of England. Rich in history, it is closely associated with the current Mayoral Combined Authority – the Liverpool City Region. Our reading of Merseyside blends those two worlds, and involves the local authorities of Liverpool, Halton, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral. This area, with its population of 1.6 million people, is a diverse area. It is a mixture of heavily urban and rural areas. It is home to some of the UK’s cutting-edge industrial activity, culture and more. Its city regional Combined Authority is at the forefront of the English devolution experiment. Yet is also contains some of the most extreme instances of deprivation in the UK.

Within this space lies Liverpool, formerly a thriving global city which, by the 1980s, had just about every government intervention imposed upon it while others argued for strategic disinvestment. While it has in many ways turned itself around through culture led regeneration it remains a divided city with entrenched social exclusion that is suspicious of panaceas imposed from the outside. The legacies of hard times, a lack of economic growth, and austerity linger and shape how the city thinks about a just transition. This makes it the perfect place to explore what a just transition would look like in difficult conditions.