"Developing a world-leading innovation district at the heart of a thriving City Region"
Where will we be by 2025?
We aim to be at the forefront of global innovation and invention in life sciences and technology, with our knowledge intensive economy driving the post pandemic recovery and future growth of the City Region.
KQ Liverpool’s world-class specialisms in medical research including infection and disease, public health and clinical informatics, surface science and biofilms, materials chemistry, sports science, manufacturing technology, modern methods of construction, immersive technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics will be the focus of that growth, underpinned by a strong cultural offer and a renewed emphasis on the environment, housing, green transport and quality of life.
Ultimately, we will aim to be in a stronger position within the UK, as a brand and as a force for good, with KQ Liverpool seen as integral to that. A place that is greater than the sum of its parts. A place that brings together like-minded businesses, academics, clinicians and scientists for the greater good.
Navigating Uncharted Waters
The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis that has changed the business world and left our economy shaken. KQ Liverpool’s vision will be crucial to pave the way through what will be an incredible period of uncertainty, as we emerge from the crisis and begin to rebuild our economy and discover our new normal.
We want to frame Liverpool as a city that leads the way through what could be a period of deep recession, using innovative ways to economically empower its people and keep our business community afloat. At the heart of this we want to support our culture and tourism sectors, which have played such an important role in the regeneration of the city, to ensure they not only survive this crisis but thrive again. We want our universities to remain at the forefront of academic achievement and civic society and we want our global specialisms in open health innovation to continue to set the city apart as the best place for future investment.
This vision must acknowledge the unprecedented times we are currently living in and adhere to the social changes that now affect our everyday lives but it must also keep a high level of ambition for the future, with a determination that by 2025 our economy will be restored, and social contact will be not only safe but encouraged.
“The world is currently in a state of change, we are in the midst of much uncertainty and it is imperative that we position Liverpool and the City Region to adapt quickly and push forward with positivity into the future. We must turn this crisis into an opportunity, however hard that might seem. The way we do business will never be exactly the same again and so it is crucial that KQ Liverpool embraces this change and uses it to create and seize new opportunities, focussing on what has made us great in recent times; culture and the visitor economy, the creative and film industries, health innovation, science and technology. These are the things that we were good at before the pandemic and these are the things that will power our recovery out of it and deliver our future inclusive growth.”
Colin Sinclair, CEO KQ Liverpool & Sciontec Liverpool
Building on Success - A Place-Based Strategy
When we started on this journey, the KQ Liverpool Board agreed to never accept the norm, to positively disrupt the market, and to establish KQ Liverpool as a world-class Innovation District.
By assembling a powerful Board of key stakeholders from the city, including the health and higher education sectors, we have demonstrated that we are driven to work collectively to show others – both in the UK and further afield – that Liverpool’s ambition knows no bounds.
Working with Liverpool City Council, and with financial support from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, we have seen Paddington Village rise from the ground in under four years. Now, as Sciontec Liverpool takes forward much of that development mantle, KQ Liverpool can focus even more on the innovation district’s strategy, place making and people, driving sustainable inclusive growth, through partnership and collaboration.
The 2025 Vision
Fuelled by Culture, Powered by Knowledge
Following from the success of the past four years, the KQ Liverpool team set out to complete a consultation process with an array of city leaders and changemakers. The team has met with over 60 consultees to create and shape a vision that is aligned with the city and regional agendas (including Liverpool’s recent Economic Recovery and Renewal Plan).
Our timing couldn’t be more relevant, as we in Liverpool, the City Region and across the globe, plan our economic recovery from coronavirus. The need to focus on joined up health, life sciences and tech innovation will undoubtedly take centre stage. Liverpool’s response to the pandemic will need to demonstrate to government and commerce that we have the research capability, the talent and the ambition to recover faster and in a more sustainable way than our competitors.
The 2025 Vision will encompass five main areas of focus: attracting and retaining talent, growing business and attracting inward investment, collaborating with purpose, being a better neighbour and creating a smarter greener city.
The vision sets out clear objectives and targets for the next five years that will be carried out through collaboration with stakeholders and through the KQ Liverpool team.
Liverpool has a broad, and largely untapped, graduate talent pool that can act as a unique offering for businesses looking to invest in the city region. However, we currently export far too many graduates to Manchester, London and overseas.
As home to one of the largest cohorts of graduates in the country, it is imperative that we do our best to not just produce these talented people – but to retain them, whilst also attracting the best talent from elsewhere in the UK, and around the world, into our city region.
Our ambition is to increase graduate retention figures by creating new ways to better connect students whilst they are studying in Liverpool with businesses. Thus giving students immediate access to entry level careers within innovation-led companies across the city region when they graduate.
What will we do?
• Collaborate with the Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), University of Liverpool (UoL), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and Liverpool Hope University careers departments to provide unique and bespoke graduate offerings to indigenous and incoming businesses.
• Act as the conduit between academia and business, offering a unique service.
Creating Bespoke Business Offerings
By collaborating with our university partners, we aim to produce bespoke graduate packages for future investors. Often during an investment process, recruitment – more specifically graduate recruitment – is a priority that is only picked up at the last minute. We are presenting our untapped graduate talent pool as one of our USPs in our discussions with potential occupiers for Paddington Village and Sciontec’s other schemes and looking at how each incoming company could work strategically with our university partners.
We are in early discussions with each of the University careers departments to understand their current graduate employment offerings and looking at how we can work more collaboratively to bring together business and academia.
Connecting graduates to SMEs is also crucial to supporting business growth and enhancing employment opportunities. By utilising our position within our science and tech assets, such as Liverpool Science Park and Sensor City, we aim to bring a collection of SMEs to partner with the universities' careers departments to explore recruitment possibilities.
The talent across Liverpool City Region is not just focussed on graduates but on apprentices and young skilled workers as well. By working closely with the City of Liverpool College we will look to collaboratively create skills packages that will route young people into practical skilled jobs across KQ Liverpool.
Access to Mentors
KQ Liverpool is full of world-leaders and changemakers that are all doing incredible work across the Health and Life Sciences, Tech, Education and Cultural sectors. Identifying and creating a network of mentors across the innovation district will create tangible aspirations for the younger generation of business associates who are keen to develop their careers and step into the shoes as the leaders of tomorrow.
Continuing to Support Current Graduate Schemes
On leaving higher education many graduates are often facing the reality that there is a lack of entry level opportunities in the city. After spending over three years in higher education, graduates are also leaving with little or no practical work experience. Programmes like Agent Academy are pivotal in bridging the gap between higher education and employment, offering young talent in the city region the chance to engage with businesses and earn vital experience, setting them in good stead for their professional careers. We will help to promote and grow such initiatives.
Supporting Start-ups and Commercialising IP to Attract and Retain the Most Talented People
Liverpool’s Universities are world leaders in research, but more has to be done to promote this, in the UK and overseas. This is not only important for our own health and economic outcomes but also in attracting the best and most talented students, doctors, postgraduates, change makers, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world.
Whilst statistically the number of university start-ups and spinouts in Liverpool has risen dramatically within the last few years, more can be done. We need to continue to work with these new companies to ensure that we are able to provide appropriate places for commercialisation to happen, whilst providing the required wrap around business support and pipeline of talent to help them take their intellectual property to the market.
Skills Innovation
Creating a skilled workforce is the key to the success of any city. As the KQ Liverpool innovation district continues to develop and continue its journey of growth, it is important that we bring along with us a workforce of skilled individuals who can be supported into the thousands of employment opportunities that will be presented in the coming years.
As we continue to strive for more inward investment opportunities, we must ensure that we are able to fill the positions that this level of investment would create with a highly skilled workforce. By working with Liverpool’s Combined Authority, we look to support the skills initiatives being rolled out across the region as well as working alongside other Northern cities, such as Manchester with a joined up thinking approach that will aim to tackle the skills shortage.
Supporting Partner Initiatives
With new developments cropping up across the city, it is imperative that we continue to support the work being done by our partners in improving student facilities.
LJMU Copperas Hill
The Copperas Hill scheme is a major capital development for Liverpool John Moores University. The phase one student life and sports building will become the heartbeat of the city centre campus and will be a thriving hub of student activity with an extensive public realm offering that will benefit the wider community, as well as thousands of students. The development will stand at the bottom of Brownlow Hill and will become a gateway into KQ Liverpool.
The HILL (Health Innovation Liverpool)
The first phase of Health Innovation Liverpool (the HILL) will utilise the current knowledge assets within KQ Liverpool and the wider Liverpool City Region to support the current demand for businesses to help with the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on integrated health data.
The second phase of the HILL would see the creation of a new state-of-the-art medical institute at Paddington Village that would complement the current health offerings across KQ Liverpool such as the new Liverpool Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital, RCP North at The Spine, Rutherford Cancer Centre and the Centre of Excellence in Infectious Disease Research (a joint venture between Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Liverpool).
LSTM Strength in Places
The LSTM Strength in Places Fund will deliver an innovative project focused around integrated therapeutic solutions for human infections. 'The project will accelerate economic and regional productivity by creating 8 specialist, commercially sustainable research platforms for infectious diseases therapeutics in North West England that will transform the efficiency of new product discovery, development, evaluation and impact assessment.'
The delivery of this project will further promote the regions international strengths in preventing and fighting infectious diseases whilst also attracting further investment and talent into the region.
Why is it Important that we Support These Initiatives?
Supporting partner initiatives such as Copperas Hill, LSTM and Paddington Village – North, South and Central - will set KQ Liverpool apart as a world-leading innovation district, creating thousands of new jobs alongside tens of thousands of training opportunities, whilst contributing to the well-being and improvement of public health across the region. These developments will instil a new lease of life into our economy, boosting future student cohorts by attracting the brightest minds from all over the world to choose Liverpool as their place of study.
Whilst it is recognised to be easier to work in order to grow the businesses you already have, it is also true that new inward investment is a crucial element in growing a world-leading city region. Inward investment is proven to increase innovation and productivity and grow supply chains. This is why our efforts in growing our existing businesses should be combined with demonstrating to potential investors that Liverpool is a ‘city region of opportunity’ and should be the first place on their location shortlist.
What will we do?
• Work with the LCR Growth Platform to support and promote their business, investment and skills initiatives.
• Help our indigenous businesses to grow and to reach out and trade internationally.
• Forge stronger links with the Universities' overseas bases, including XJTLU in China
• Brief the leading inward investment consultants and national property agents so that they fully appreciate the scale and quality of our offer.
• Further develop our international relationships, through local, regional and UK government, business and cultural partnerships, with a focus on key markets including: North America (especially East Coast USA), China (through Shanghai, Suzhou and Hong Kong), India and Central Europe (in particular France and Germany).
• Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a global shift in focus toward the health and life sciences sector. This is an opportunity for Liverpool as a city region to showcase its global specialisms in health and life sciences, fighting and preventing infectious diseases and promoting KQ Liverpool as a leading destination for investment.
• Further develop our relationships with London and the South East, looking at opportunities to attract the public sector and domestic investment North and into the city region.
• Promote the new Liverpool brand, working with the City and the LCR Growth Platform, to attract potential investors.
• Promote and celebrate the vast cultural offering in the city and continue to use it as a USP for future investors in KQ Liverpool.
• Support the KQ Liverpool hospitality and leisure sector by backing initiatives to help these businesses survive and then prosper, such as Liverpool icons like the Art School Restaurant, The Quarter and Hope Street Hotel.
• Launch our soft-landing programme ‘KQ Lite’ to target foreign owned businesses and encourage them to locate at Liverpool Science Park, Sensor City and The Spine.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
Over the past four years, KQ Liverpool has established strong international links through its annual presence at the MIPIM Property conference in Cannes and its work on the US East Coast, in Hong Kong and in Shanghai. The team have used the international platform to promote strategically important milestone announcements and build a globally renowned brand. KQ Liverpool has maintained a strong, close relationship with Liverpool’s key stakeholders and thought leaders as well as international conference attendees and industry peers.
Building on this success, we have identified our key international target markets for FDI and will continue to build relationships in these regions as well as ensuring, with our City and City Region partners, that Liverpool is represented at relevant overseas conferences and as part of any associated delegations when it is safe to travel again and when taking environmental concerns into account such work cannot be done by video conferencing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has meant the business community has embraced remote working and in doing so has utilised online platforms to host meetings. Having access to these platforms has now sparked the realisation that international relationships can be maintained more easily and has opened up an array of opportunities for international exchange.
Northshoring
In recent years there has been a trend amongst London/SE based businesses and some public sector agencies to ‘Northshore’ to cities such as Manchester and Leeds with an aim to recruit talented people, especially multi-disciplinary graduates, and to trim property and other operational costs.
By securing investment from the Royal College of Physicians, Liverpool has recently demonstrated its capability to compete with our Northern counterparts for such inward investment opportunities. We plan to build on that success.
The Physical Legacy
The past four years have seen monumental change across KQ Liverpool, including the development of the new £1billion Paddington Village site. The new grade-A office space that is being erected on the site includes The Spine, a 120,000 sq ft, BREEAM excellent rated office building that has been built to a Platinum WELL standard and will be one of the world's healthiest buildings.
Paddington Village has already attracted investment from world-leading organisations such as the Royal College of Physicians and Rutherford Health. We aim to continue to bring investment of the highest standard onto the site and create an invaluable ecosystem with a focus on health, science, tech and education.
Market Trends & Connections
We are always striving to attract new business into the city, whether it be domestic, national or international. A key part of this, is working with colleagues at the Department for International Trade and at the LCR Growth Platform to monitor investment trends and secure appropriate opportunities.
In order to maximise our international offering we will look to launch our soft-landing programmes across our science and tech assets to encourage international businesses to set-up in the Liverpool city region.
Our soft-landing programme ‘KQ Lite’ will provide rent free office spaces across our assets, including Liverpool Science Park and Sensor City for businesses looking to branch out into the UK, looking to make Liverpool their home. The programme will consist of space at the heart of KQ Liverpool as well as a package of personalised business support from local experts including marketing assistance and legal advice.
Global Cultural Capital
Culture and the arts are very much intertwined through every aspect of KQ Liverpool, through our architecture, street art, restaurant offering and entertainment. These offerings are what sets us apart as a knowledge-intensive destination and act as a unique selling point to potential investors.
Hope Street sits at the heart of KQ Liverpool and is home to many culturally diverse organisations including our two world-renowned cathedrals, the UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra (The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic) and one of the world's most acclaimed performing arts schools (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts). It is a destination that comes alive in better times in the evening with a vast offering of fine dining, a four-star hotel, with another being built, and a choice of first-class performances at the Philharmonic Hall, Everyman and Unity theatres.
In order to continue attracting big players into the city it is vital that we showcase the Liverpool way of life. By that, we mean offering more than just office space. It is about showcasing the city of Liverpool and what it has to offer away from the workplace. We aim to continue celebrating and expanding our cultural offering and making the arts a key part of what makes KQ Liverpool unique, by working with companies like Hope Street CIC and the Liverpool Biennial.
Our cultural sector and visitor economy will be highly impacted from the effects of the lockdown period. It is imperative that we work with our city partners and Hope Street CIC, utilising initiatives like ‘Liverpool Without Walls’ to secure a future for these businesses and ensure that our unique cultural assets thrive once more.
The Royal College of Physicians
Securing investment from world-leading organisations such as the RCP will have a huge impact across the region. Representing over 37,000 hospital doctors, the RCP is dedicated to improving patient care. Opening in Paddington Village in 2021, The Spine will be the RCP’s northern home, bringing superb educational and assessment facilities closer to its members in the north, and enabling the RCP to partner with local and regional organisations on projects to raise the standards of patient care.
Situated next to the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital, The Spine will become an integral feature of the medical landscape in Liverpool, promoting academic excellence and medical leadership. The RCP presence in the north as a beacon of public health excellence, will also provide opportunities to be involved in research that could contribute to healthier lives and reduce early deaths and health inequality.
Our wide and diverse network of connections throughout KQ Liverpool, the City, the City Region and beyond offers us the power to ‘make things happen’. We are a pivotal link, where business meets academia, private meets public sector, and whilst on occasion we rely on our partners to fill the gaps in delivery, we can often be the spark that helps establish unlikely connections, whilst further solidifying existing ones.
By 2025 we aim to be connected across the city region with a bigger and even stronger network of organisations. We want to promote the success and triumphs of our stakeholders and encourage new collaborations to form between them.
What will we do?
• Create an even bigger programme of virtual events and as social distancing becomes more manageable, an innovative programme of social networking opportunities (using new video technologies, where social distancing for the time being at least prevents face-to-face meetings). These will encourage even greater collaboration between key stakeholders, aiming to create further business engagement.
• Once again host a thought provoking and change making annual conference that will build on the success of the previous KQ Liverpool/Heseltine Institute conference, with an aim to repeat the event biannually.
• Strengthen relationships that will contribute to the KQ Liverpool ecosystem and connect at all levels.
• Identify and empower change makers, innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs.
• Collaborate with the Growth Platform, Liverpool BID Company as well as contacts in the business and professional sector to provide business support.
• Partner with business networks and agencies to foster enterprise and entrepreneurial activity, such as; Downtown in Business, Professional Liverpool and the Innovations Agency.
Focussing on our City Strengths
Liverpool has long been recognised globally for its strengths in music, culture, computer games, film-making and football. Our waterfront city has been showcased globally with ambassadors from The Beatles to Mo Salah representing us across the globe. After successfully securing the title of Capital of Culture in 2008 the city has gone from strength to strength as regeneration has seeped through the different sectors leading to the next generation of developments such as Paddington Village and Copperas Hill that will position Liverpool as one of the most progressive cities in the UK.
Liverpool is a city doused in history with many ‘firsts’ being established here such as the first school of tropical medicine that was opened in Liverpool in 1898. Our world-leading strengths in fighting and preventing infection and disease have existed since the early 1900’s and have been recognised across the globe.
Following from the COVID-19 pandemic, Liverpool is presented with an opportunity to showcase our perhaps lesser known strengths such as digital health and integrated data, surface science and biofilms, advanced manufacturing and robotics, healthcare and immersive technologies and sports science. By working with our partners and collaborating purposefully with our stakeholders we look to focus on these strengths providing a platform for greater positive exposure.
Promoting Success
By 2025 we aim to be connected across the city region with a bigger and even stronger network of organisations. We want to promote the success and triumphs of our stakeholders and encourage new collaborations to form between them.
We will utilise our increasing social media presence to spread positive messages and celebrate our partners' achievements.
Connecting at Every Level
The creation of the KQ Liverpool Board allowed many of the senior key players in the city to come together to positively disrupt the norm and push boundaries through innovation. In order to continue spreading the message and strengthening our current relationships it is crucial that we are embedded within our partner organisations and that we are connecting at all levels of seniority – not just at executive level.
Growing Our Ecosystem
Since our inception in 2016, KQ Liverpool has focused on ‘making the place’ and collaborating with organisations that fall under our physical, geographical boundaries. The 2025 vision will see this expand and begin to work closer with organisations outside of our boundaries, but who are still very much a key part of our ecosystem. A good example being our plans to work closer on innovation with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
Case Study - Alder Hey
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital pushes the boundaries of paediatric healthcare through their use of innovative technologies. Whilst they are located outside the geographical borders of KQ Liverpool they are pivotal to the development and ethos of our vision. By engaging with organisations such as Alder Hey we expand our vision to complement Liverpool’s leading strengths in health and life sciences and exploit how digital and immersive technologies can lead to medical breakthroughs by showcasing the work being done at the Alder Hey Innovation Centre. These advanced technology methods will have a great impact on our reputation as a progressive and leading city. By bringing Alder Hey into our ecosystem through relationships with Liverpool Health Partners, we demonstrate the importance of collaborative thinking and how this can lead to a wider impact on the regional health statistics.
Expanding Our Network
Connecting and collaborating with people across the city region has proved invaluable to the success of KQ Liverpool. By hosting and attending various events across the city we have formed a network of brilliant minds who all contribute to the success of our work.
Our monthly ‘In the Know’ events bring together like-minded individuals to discuss relevant topics and promote solutions. Over the past few years, the popularity of these events has grown extensively, and we are now reaching maximum capacity in terms of audience numbers, with a ‘virtual’ series planned for the Autumn. These events have allowed us to connect with new groups of people across different sectors both in KQ Liverpool and further afield.
Growing on the success of these events, KQ Liverpool will look to create a calendar of events that will include larger conferences, digital webinars, social networking opportunities and roundtable discussions. We will work with organisations such as Downtown in Business and the BID District with an aim to market our events to a range of different audiences from students to entrepreneurs, working online where necessary.
Along with establishing the KQ Liverpool brand and promoting the partners within our geographical borders, it is paramount that we reach out to the surrounding communities. We border three of the most deprived wards in the city and engaging with them, offering opportunities and drawing up new partnerships that reach outside our borders is an important step for our development, and for our work with the City Region as a whole.
What will we do?
• Work with Liverpool City Council to create an outreach programme that will deliver educational workshops to young people in and around KQ Liverpool, in order to capture and engage with the ‘youth voice’ and provide tangible aspirations.
• Bring schools and colleges into our Science and Tech facilities, initially at Liverpool Science Park, Sensor City and Paddington Village.
• Assist in creating thousands of new employment opportunities that will economically empower the surrounding communities, with access to knowledge intensive and supply chain jobs.
• Link our activities in KQ Liverpool to other key spatial initiatives across the City including the Baltic Triangle, North Liverpool and the City’s Commercial District, whilst always sharing best practice with the rest of the City and City Region
• Continue to play an active role in the UK Innovation Districts Group to learn from other cities and regions and bring that innovation here.
Educational Engagements
By working with the Liverpool City Council and educational partners we will look to signpost young people to the career opportunities that will be available across KQ Liverpool in the future. We will look to work with local schools and colleges to arrange for young people to visit our science and tech facilities. This type of physical engagement will create tangible aspiration for the local, younger generations to become economically empowered through their educational choices and will contribute to the continuing talent pipeline that will fill the knowledge intensive jobs of tomorrow.
Promoting Inclusive Growth
KQ Liverpool borders some of the most deprived areas in Liverpool including Everton, Picton and Kensington. It is our social responsibility to ensure that the residents of these communities feel that they are part of the KQ Liverpool's journey. By 2025 phase one of Paddington will be complete and work will have begun on the next phases of the development. This work will create thousands of knowledge intensive and supply chain jobs.
We have already started to look at ways of helping the local communities to feel a connection to Paddington Village. We have created a new campaign, to feature on the construction hoardings around the site, which focuses on the ‘people’ aspect of the site. By rolling this kind of messaging out now and building on it as we open various aspects of the site, we are able to remind people that everyone is welcome, and that Paddington is not just for doctors and people in white lab coats.
Through our partners and stakeholders, we will engage with communities with an aim to bring local people into our ecosystem and promote KQ Liverpool as a place that drives inclusive growth.
Economic Empowerment
By investing in developments such as Paddington Village (including Paddington Central, North and South), the Liverpool Health campus, Upper Central and Central Park we are actively working to increase the number of employment opportunities, creating a demand for both knowledge intensive and supply chain jobs. In the short to medium term these developments will also create thousands of construction jobs as well as tens-of-thousands of training opportunities.
As KQ Liverpool continues to grow it is paramount that the local people become a key part of our narrative. By creating thousands of employment opportunities we hope to economically empower local people into taking a sense of pride and ownership over KQ Liverpool as they join our invaluable ecosystem.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be a rise in unemployment figures across the city region. It is crucial that we work with the City and Liverpool City Region, supporting initiatives such as the LCR Ways to Work employment programme that will support its people during this financial hardship and provide routes into various forms of employment.
The Positive Effects of Employment
Providing local people with employment opportunities not only increases their economic stature but also has long lasting effects on living conditions and health inequalities. Liverpool has some of the worst health outcomes in the UK with statistics conveying that infant mortality is still rising rather than falling. We cannot let that continue.
Joining up Across the City
KQ Liverpool covers over half of the city centre. As a key part of the city landscape it is important that we link up with the other spatial initiatives that make up the rest of the city, such as the Baltic Triangle and the Commercial District. By linking up with these districts and Liverpool BID Company we are able to share methods of best practice whilst working holistically to showcase Liverpool as a world-leading city with specialisms that span across multiple sectors.
Morgan Sindall’s Knowledge Quad
The Knowledge Quad is a multi-functional training and education facility located on site at the new Paddington Village development. The Quad is used as a platform to engage with local communities through apprenticeship days and as an external classroom for those looking to pursue a career in the construction industry. The Quad is also being used to run initiatives such as project Reccy, a programme that assists UK veterans in gaining skills that will assist them into a position of employment.
It is these kinds of initiatives that we look to support that will economically empower our local people whilst driving the inclusive growth agenda.
Environmental issues have never been higher on political agendas world-wide than they are today. Working with partners to ensure that we are all playing our part towards the 2040 target for carbon neutrality, along with our plans to implement public real and green space, will all contribute towards making Liverpool a ‘smarter’ city region. It is crucial that KQ Liverpool does not simply react to environmental changes, but that it becomes an entity that uses innovation as a tool to create these changes.
What will we do?
Establish a zero carbon economy by pioneering new approaches to living, travel and doing business.
• Establish a zero carbon economy by pioneering new approaches to living, travel and doing business.
• Develop, with partners, a spatial masterplan for the whole of KQ Liverpool, and its neighbourhoods. Joining up the Health Campus, Paddington Village and the Universities' estates plans, with Upper Central, the Fabric District, Hope Street, Central Park and all of our other key assets and developments – working and thinking holistically, not in silos.
• Continue working on sustainable travel plans including the Paddington Lime Line rapid transit vision, aiming to see the project through to completion.
• Create a wayfinding strategy, with Liverpool City Council and other key stakeholders, that will better connect and signpost the city and lower carbon emissions, through the promotion of cycling and walking, with user friendly new public realm and facilities.
• Explore solutions to make the future and existing Sciontec developed built environment more sustainable and research and employ new forms of energy provision and smart technologies in our buildings.
Innovation at the Forefront of the Future
In 2019 Liverpool became one of the first UK cities to access the 5G network. As our homes, transport and healthcare are now becoming more connected and reliant on technology it is important that we continue to investigate and look to utilise 5G technologies and support initiatives that will harness the power of 5G and push Liverpool forward as a progressive and technologically advanced ‘smart’ city.
Following the government issued lockdown in March 2020, the business community was thrown into remote working with little time to prepare. Moving forward, the way we work will never be the same again and so it is imperative that we are constantly adapting and looking for new innovative technologies that push us forward as a future smart green city.
Reaching our Carbon Neutrality Goals
In May 2019 the UK government declared climate change a national emergency and in response to this Liverpool city region pledged to be completely carbon neutral by 2040. This will be done by harnessing the power of our untapped alternative energy sources such as wind turbines, hydrogen power and utilising the tidal barrage from the River Mersey. Liverpool as a city is well positioned to adapt to climate change and will work collaboratively as a region to achieve the 2040 goal.
KQ Liverpool will play a role in this as we begin to explore new alternative solutions for powering our science and tech facilities and by introducing new green transport solutions. We will also utilise our new public realm spaces to promote walking and cycling.
Connectivity is Key
KQ Liverpool covers over half of the city centre and provides arterial routes to multiple outer boroughs and the M62 motorway that leads directly to Manchester.
The impact of Paddington Village in KQ Liverpool has changed the employment axis of the city centre, creating an unprecedented need for a new, green, transport solution that complements the existing network.
The Paddington Lime Line would be the solution to that ‘last mile’ connectivity that is needed to bring the workforce up the hill and into the heart of KQ Liverpool. The Paddington Lime Line is currently in its consultation period - by 2025 we aim to see the project through to phase one completion.
The KQ Liverpool Spatial Masterplan
KQ Liverpool is currently overseeing several large areas of development. It is key that we as the overarching body look at how these developments will impact the landscape of the area. We aim to carry out a piece of work that will join together all of the current and near future estates strategy plans to create the KQ Liverpool Spatial Masterplan. The masterplan will be created to ensure that each development area is complementary to its surroundings in terms of delivery.
In addition to this we will look to further develop a public realm strategy that coincides with the KQ Liverpool Spatial Masterplan, looking at how we can create thriving green neighbourhoods across KQ Liverpool and install pockets of green space across our assets by utilising roof garden space and ensuring that any new developments are considerate of the importance of providing public realm space.
Way-Finding Strategy
It is important that people feel a sense of place when they cross the threshold into KQ Liverpool. Like Liverpool ONE has successfully done down in the commercial district, we want to create a place that is recognisable on entrance with a clear visual brand.
As part of our 2025 vision we aim to bring together our partners with the city planning department to create a wayfinding strategy that encompasses all of our individual stakeholders whilst creating a sense of place across the KQ Liverpool boundaries.
“In times of crisis, it’s wonderful what the imagination will do” - Ruskin Bond
Liverpool is a city fuelled by culture and powered by knowledge. These are challenging times, but there is a clear opportunity for us to play to our strengths, to imagine a better future for all our people and to rapidly progress our priorities in science and tech including open health innovation, digitalisation and tech for good. Joining up with Manchester and Cheshire too, creating innovation at scale on a global level. Together we are greater than the sum of the parts.
Thank you to all of the city leaders, innovators and change makers who consulted on this piece of work.
Contact Us
Rachael Patterson - Marketing and Policy Manager
KQ Liverpool & Sciontec Liverpool
E: rachael@sciontec.co.uk T:07896851559