City council proposing to borrow £280m at ultra-low interest rates and then pass the loan on to Everton with a £7m-a-year profit margin built in – but many in the city have criticised the deal. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson is promising full transparency on the proposed deal for the council to lend £280m to Everton FC towards the £500m cost of its new stadium.
In January the Mayor and the club revealed the loan deal that would allow the arena plan, at Bramley Moore Dock on the waterfront, to go ahead.
State bodies such as local authorities can borrow money at interest rates significantly lower than those available to private companies and the deal would see the council borrow the £280m and hand it over to Everton.
The club would pay back up to £7m a year over 25 years giving the council a healthy profit plus an extra £1.4m a year in extra business rates.
Since the announcement there has been a significant amount of criticism over the deal from both the Lib Dem opposition on the council and from many other Liverpool residents on social media channels.
Scrutiny panel
At Wednesday night’s full council meeting the Mayor said he was setting up a scrutiny panel to oversee the deal and at an event at Liverpool Town Hall on Thursday morning he told an audience of local business people there would be full transparency.
“When Liverpool One was built a few years ago that was a £1bn investment into the city and I regard the Everton stadium plans as important as that because it will kick-start the Liverpool Waters regeneration project,” said Mayor Anderson.
He also rejected the view that the deal would significantly reduce the council’s borrowing capacity for other projects, adding: “We are one of the lowest borrowers of any city in the country.
“I have been committed to full transparency on this deal all along. We have set up a scrutiny panel and the final decision will be made by the full council. This deal will only be done if it is a good deal for Liverpool.”
Liverpool Waters
Other speakers at the Town Hall ‘Regenerating Liverpool’ event included Lindsey Ashworth director of development at Liverpool Waters; Prof Denise Barrett-Baxendale, a director at Everton FC; and Colin Sinclair, chief executive of Knowledge Quarter Liverpool.
Mr Ashworth talked about how the £5bn Liverpool Waters project, first revealed more than a decade ago, had had to adapt to a changing economy and market conditions.
He said residential developments at Princes Dock and West Waterloo Dock and the Everton stadium at Bramley Moore Dock would “bookend” the whole development.
He also said the Central Docks element was having to be remastered. He added: “When we first unveiled the plan for Central Docks we thought we would get big enquires for office space – but they never came.
“A lot of occupiers are staying put and not moving. We cannot control the market but when it takes off then we will build. This was always a 30-year plan.’
He added new plans for the waterfront site would be inspired by Copenhagen, a city he said had “given us some great ideas”.
Goodison legacy
Prof Barrett-Baxendale talked about Everton’s commitment to the Walton area where its current home, Goodison Park, is located. She explained: “In the past other football clubs have relocated and sold their previous grounds to housing developers or supermarkets. We will not be doing that.”
She went in to talk about both completed and planned regeneration and community projects in the Walton area including the Everton Free School, The Peoples’ Hub and plans for a new community hub called The Blue Base.
New hotel
Mr Sinclair said there would be “exciting” announcements at next week’s MIPIM expo in Cannes around the £1bn KQ Liverpool project which, he said, covered almost half the city centre.
These plans included a new hotel for the Paddington Village scheme which he said would have a “fantastic” design.
“The opportunities here in terms of the prime land development sites simply don’t exist in other cities,” he added.