Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Executive Director of Corporate Services.

            Louise Outram, Deputy Chief Legal Officer and Deputy Monitoring Officer, updated the Chair and Members of the Transport Committee on the progress to develop a Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Social Value Policy and framework to support its implementation. The Social Value Policy and Framework had been approved at the Combined Authority’s meeting on 4th March 2022.

            Transport Committee Members had been involved in social value considerations for some time now and had been urging the organisation to state its policy. The policy had been developed in synergy with the Corporate Plan and around Fairer, Greener and Stronger communities and the organisation generally. It was designed to align with the organisation’s plan and there were some specific transport considerations highlighted at paragraph 4.4 of the report. As could be seen from paragraph 4.6 there were areas for future development and paragraph 6 talked about identifying further developments in the future.

            Councillor Ged Philbin stated that social value related to a whole host of things and not just transport. It was also related to things like planning. Organisations seemed to go for large developments in order to cram as many houses on a site as possible with space that was not really suitable for modern day transport. Local transport tended to have a bit of a snob value and it would be necessary to start to change that by making sure developers made accommodation for transport links. That was the connection between the transport and social values that it would be necessary to take on board.

            Councillor Gordon Friel thought that this was an excellent report to include within the area of transport. It was a very complex subject, and he knew there had been a push on completing equality impact assessments and that had now been embedded within the organisation and he felt that this was something he would also like to see taken forward in that manner. He felt that it linked to the Metro Mayor’s 2021 Manifesto that no-one should be left behind in this City Region. He referred to the question that had been asked earlier by Councillor Rowe in relation to the costs for the Boxing Day rail service, but he highlighted the fact that the social value or health value of a service was seldom considered.

            Councillor Liam Robinson noted that this was a Combined Authority policy of which transport was a subset. He thought that this was a journey and not an end destination. The whole principle of social value had been maximised in our impact as an organisation to deliver the maximum good for the public and the area that it served. A lot of the things that had been highlighted at this stage it would be necessary to get on and do but other things quite rightly would then come forward which would need to be included in that journey going forward. He felt that one of the key areas was how the Fair Employment Charter would be rolled out across the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 61