Labour’s announcement of plans for a new State Bank have led to speculation that the national headquarters could be sited in Sefton.
There are thousands of square feet of empty office space in Bootle which was also once a major start up home of the first State Bank, the Giro Bank. Giro went on to be incorporated in the Alliance & Leicester Buliding Society and was finally sold to Santander Bank. Besides the copious spare offces in Bootle, extra space is likely to be available to convert to offices in the empty shops of the Bootle Strand.
The first pillar of the Labour plan is their proposed National Investment Bank which would be modelled on successful state investment banks in other countries, such as China. Labour say this would provide much needed capital for vital infrastructure, with a particular focus on growing the cooperative sector.
Labour have yet to announce precisely how they would structure the new bank and where they would recruit staff with the skills to fill the top jobs. Given the new bank’s proposed focus on the cooperative sector, a key actor in the Labour plan could well be former Rochdale Social Services Chairman Councillor Paul Flowers who, in addition ro his council duties, served for a number of years as Chairman of the Co-op Bank.
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