Sefton Council Chief Executive Phil Porter welcomed the group to Sefton, highlighting it as a place of both heritage and innovation, balancing historic achievements like Formby’s first-ever lifeboat station with future-facing projects such as Maghull’s £1bn plans for a life sciences park.
Porter described the priorities that drive him: community, collaboration and ambition – “to do the things we need to do locally”; “we achieve much more together,” he said, amidst a need to be ambitious. “In spite of financial struggles and reductions, we need to be ambitious for the things that we still do and the things we will do for the place in the future,” fostering spaces where new ideas take shape.
Investment is reshaping key areas in Sefton said Council Chief Executive Phil Porter, from Bootle’s £30m Strand redevelopment to Southport’s £73m events centre, its aim is to boost resilience beyond tourism. Infrastructure like the Hibernia Express digital link strengthens its economic potential, while regeneration efforts are designed to create sustainable, long-term growth.
MerseyCare’s Professor Dan Joyce introduced Maghull Health Park aims to innovate in mental health care, focusing on community-based solutions and leveraging simple technology like smartphones for mood monitoring. The NHS foundation trust works across 230 sites across the region serving 1.4m people – where, in contrast to other NHS services, 96% of activity clinically happens in the community. MerseyCare’s ambition is to create a flexible and agile environment for rapid innovation – building on the successful M-RIC project in Liverpool.
Professor Nicola Wilson, COO at MerseyCare, picked up the story of Maghull Health Park. Liverpool City Region could host the UK’s first science park dedicated to mental health, combining digital research, innovation and specialist care on a 42-hectare site. This is a major step in tackling mental ill-health, a crisis costing the UK economy £300bn annually – double the NHS budget.
Mental health innovation is moving beyond treatment to prevention and design, with specialist facilities prioritising safety, green spaces and co-produced solutions, said Wilson, “turning the tide on the historical underfunding” of mental health. Maghull’s innovation development comes alongside connections to transport hubs and infrastructure to position it as a key player in reshaping mental health care – on both a national and global scale.
Sunil Mistry, former Director of AI at Atos, described our current place in the roll-out of AI as ‘narrow AI’ – making use of facial recognition, chatbots and recommendation systems. Within the next five to ten years we’ll see ‘AGI’ – artificial general intelligence, like self driving cars, with a human-like response across all tasks; taking into account routes, weather systems, and roads, he said. That will be followed by ASI – artificial super intelligence. “We’re only at the starting blocks of this technology, but it’s here and we have to be able to navigate that.”
Mistry shared a three-point strategy for AI adoption in businesses:
- Identify a pain point – a bottleneck or inefficiency – that is manageable and can showcase a return on investment
- Pilot a targeted solution using AI – small-scale intervention where you can test effectiveness and provide a real world example
- Scale – understand how to expand the intervention and monitor its outcome
The key to successfully embracing AI, said Mistry, is through inclusivity and training – making people feel part of the change. It’s an opportunity to integrate beyond simple tasks and move towards strategic thinking, he said, by working with organisations that can help dismiss that fear.
Novum AI’s Ben McLoughlin led an interactive session on AI tools. He demonstrated Claude, Gemini and the Ada AI chatbot to run marketing, operations, customer service and sales analysis for a new product. The best AI, he concluded, is the tool that integrates with your environment and the other products and services you’re using.
Halton Borough Council CEO Stephen Young spoke about the importance of collaboration between public sector and private sector to create impact and accelerate change. Devolved powers, strengthened under Labour, create opportunities for political accountability, partnership-driven growth, and targeted investment – especially in the private sector – to maximise impact, he said.
Innovation is central to Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s vision said Young, from AI and digital connectivity to public service reform. With a goal of 5% GVA in R&D by 2030, projects like the tidal barrage, full-fibre network and Office of Public Service Innovation (OPSI) aim to drive productivity, inclusive growth and better life outcomes.
Dr Jen Davies took us back to Novel’s first chapter as she demonstrated how venture building has transformed the music industry, from Motown’s assembly-line approach to K-pop’s rigorous talent development. Models like Syco Music and SM Entertainment shape artists as brands, using AI, virtual identities and strategic scaling from local to global – but sometimes at the cost of ethical concerns and industry monopolisation.
Thinking about Liverpool City Region’s ambitions for innovation, Dr Jen Davies suggested that the music industry’s talent pipeline has narrowed, driven by fleeting TikTok trends and increasing elitism. Liverpool, she said, has an opportunity to build a different kind of venture model – one based on collaboration, not control – where diverse expertise nurtures both industry-driven artists and independent world-builders.
