Speaking as he signed his acceptance of office as Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor, the Mayor said that the next tranche of the Combined Authority’s devolved gainshare funding would “form the bedrock of our COVID recovery fund”.

Steve Rotheram was resoundingly re-elected with an increased majority of over 132,000 on the first round of voting in Thursday’s local elections, winning almost 60% of the vote across the region and a majority in each of the six local authority area.

In his election manifesto, Mayor Rotheram promised that he would secure £150m in funding from government and use this to create a city region COVID recovery fund to create jobs and support businesses as the region emerges from the pandemic. This new investment is expected to formally be confirmed by government in the coming days.

Announcing the new funding, Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said:

“I promised people that if they put their trust in me again, that I’d get to work straight away on rebuilding and improving our region after COVID. I’m delighted say that after talks with government we are set to receive this new funding for the city region.  

“This is new money that will help us get a jump start on our recovery ahead of the rest of the country, investing in projects that will power our economy and creating and safeguarding jobs, and delivering much-needed hope to people and businesses across the region.  

“But this is just the start of my ambitions. This money will underpin hundreds of millions of pounds in investments from other funds from transport, to skills, to housing.   

“I’ve just received an overwhelming mandate from the people of the Liverpool City Region and I’ll be using it to press the Government to invest in our Economic Recovery Plan, which would deliver nearly £9bn of benefit to our region and create over 120,000 jobs. “