The two-year programme – being run by the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity – looks to support cities to improve their approach to helping arrivals from abroad to settle. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool is one of five cities chosen to take part in an international project designed to help people coming to live here from overseas feel more welcome.

The two-year programme – being run by the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity – looks to support cities to improve their approach to helping arrivals from abroad to settle.

Inclusive Cities will be run by Oxford University and the project will draw on ideas and experience from within Europe and approaches from cities in the US as part of the highly acclaimed Welcoming America initiative.

A local taskforce will be set up by the end of 2017 to put together and implement an action plan to help make sure newcomers and their neighbours integrate.

Liverpool has been chosen because it has experienced significant migration over the last decade and has a diverse demographic and economic profile.

Councillor Frank Hont, Liverpool Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing, who will lead on the initiative, said: “Liverpool has a proud reputation dating back hundreds of years as a welcoming city and our population is growing at a rate we have not seen for many decades.

“We’re fortunate in that there is lots of regeneration happening in communities right across Liverpool, but that can cause challenges as some places have seen rapid changes their population.

“People understandably get nervous when they see the dynamics of their community changing, and in some parts of the city that has been considerable over the last decade or so.

“Our job is to work with others to help communities through that process, whether their new neighbours are students or others moving here from both home and abroad.

“The Inclusive Cities programme has the potential to help us become a leading city in doing that.”

It comes as the city council’s Cabinet has today approved the recommendations of a year-long look at community cohesion.