Richard Kemp’s article describes how Liverpool’s Lib Dem-led council started to address the deep-rooted social and  economic problems of the city when it came into office in 1998.
 
The situation the Council inherited was extremely challenging. 27 of the 33 wards in Liverpool were in the bottom poverty decile in the country, the city has the third worst service and taxes ran 20% higher than the next highest tax council. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the Council only controlled 10% of public sector spend in the city.
 
The steps the Council took were as follows: centralise service delivery, adopt a customer-focussed policy towards the people of Liverpool, work with other levels of government on joint delivery to improve performance and set up pilot projects to devolve service delivery to local managers.
 
The greatest evidence of success for these initiatives? After 70 years of population decline, the population of Liverpool stabilised in 2002 and rose in 2004.