Labour’s Delight after Airport Losses Leads to Increased Strand Worries

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson’s expression of delight over new figure revealing continued loss-making at Liverpool Airport has led to increased fears over Sefton Council’s secret Bootle Strand purchase.

The Bootle Labour bosses’ tax-avoiding offshore purchase of the Strand shops will come under scrutiny at a special Scrutiny Committee meeting on Wednesday evening at Bootle Town Hall.

At Thursday’s Council meeting, Lib Dem councillor Iain Brodie Brown reminded Council Leader Ian Maher that his promised answers to several questions asked of him at the November Council meeting had still not materialised.

There are increasing worries that Sefton Council’s attempts to ‘play at business’ with public cash may go the same way as Liverpool City Council’s.

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson’s funneling of £9.5 million of public money into loss-making Liverpool Airport has been followed by that business losing £2 million at year end on top of the previous year’s losses of £6.5 million.

Liverpool Airport is suffering badly by being in the shadow of booming international Manchester Airport, which has a proper rail and motorway links enabling millions more passengers to reach it easily.

As for when taxpayers can expect a return on this investment of their public money, yet again Labour refuses to answer.

Mayor Anderson pointed out under Lib Dem questioning that the extent of the losses being made by the Airport company is because of muliti-million pound interest charges.

It is interest charges, too, which cause much of Sefton Council’s loss-making every year at Southport Indoor Market and the Council has also recently revealed massive loses over Crosby’s Lakeside Centre, but Sefton Labour has ‘gone bigger’ with its tax-avoiding offshore purchase of the Strand.