Scaling Southport — understanding the needs of a business community

Southport is a living case study of the challenges and opportunities facing so many places across the North. We’re an ‘SME-led’ business community — grappling with a changing identity and a clear, pressing need for greater investment in connective infrastructure.

These aren’t unique to Southport but shared by towns across the region. The solutions, therefore, won't be found in isolation. They’ll come from sharing a playbook, learning from each other's successes and failures.

That’s why Patrick Hurley, MP for Southport, wanted to bring together some of our most passionate local business leaders — to try and create the first chapter in that playbook with the support of the True North network. 

We were joined by Claire McColgan, Director of Culture for the Liverpool City Region, who shared a vital lesson from the city’s regeneration. She described the "sweet spot" where a cultural programme — the "shop window" that changes perceptions — is backed by the physical and emotional legacy of regeneration. This is our task. With the 2026 Open at Royal Birkdale and a year of cultural activities on the horizon, we have our "shop window”. 

What follows is Patrick’s summary of the discussions, exploring how we can build a lasting legacy that other places can learn from.

The lesson on talent — incubate, don't just 'skill'

Our schools do a fantastic job of raising aspirations, but we must avoid — in the words of one business owner who attended — being "a fast train out of the town" for our most ambitious young people.

The challenge isn’t just a “skills gap” — it’s an aspiration mismatch. Our local economy is dominated by brilliant SMEs, but a 17-year-old doesn't see the shiny corporate headquarters or obvious career ladders that they see in Liverpool or Manchester. The result is a “youth flight” that we simply can’t afford.

The answer is to stop talking about skills as if people are just cogs for a pre-built machine. We must start incubating talent.

We have a generation of young people who are more interested in “what problem they want to solve” than what job they want to do. They’re driven by social entrepreneurship. The opportunity is to fuse their passion with our town's needs. We need to create the physical and social infrastructure — the "safe space" — to wrap our business and community support around these young entrepreneurs, allowing them to build their ideas and their futures here.

The lesson on infrastructure — build the destination, demand the links

Retaining that talent is impossible without the infrastructure to support it and a lack of connectivity is a fundamental barrier to growth.

This is a story we hear across the North. For us in Southport, it can be quicker to walk to Ormskirk — less than ten miles as the crow flies — than to take the train. This isn't just an inconvenience, it divides us from the entire talent pool at Edge Hill University or from Manchester and Liverpool Airports — the distance from which will be the first question any major conference organiser asks when we pitch our brilliant new Marine Lake Events Centre (MLEC).

For one local SME, the challenge of recruiting from a talent pool constrained by geography is a daily frustration. Infrastructure is the difference between scaling a business or stagnating.

The lesson for us and towns across the North is about creating catalysts. We often wait for a "business case" to be proven before we demand investment. The reality is that infrastructure follows ambition. The MLEC and the new Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot are the perfect examples. These projects are our "catalyst". They create the destination, which in turn builds the undeniable case for the infrastructure to support it. 

The lesson on community — curate your identity

This all leads to the central, emotional question — what kind of community are we building? Many Northern towns are facing an "identity crisis". We’re no longer just a seaside resort — we have to be much more than that.

Our discussion was a reminder that we must be the custodians of our own story. We have an incredible, diverse and multicultural food scene, yet our night-time economy is a shadow of what it could be. Visitors and residents alike are often drawn to surrounding cities while the town centre quietens down.

Crucially, any town’s growth strategy must be "place-specific" and authentic. We can’t copy Liverpool's model or anyone else's. We must strategically curate our own. 

A brilliant, practical example emerged from our discussion — why is our fantastic Food & Drink Festival held in a park where it competes with the town centre when it could be at the heart of it? It's a missed opportunity and one that somewhere like Altrincham in Greater Manchester learned. Its regeneration was built by placing its market at the heart of the town, creating a ripple effect that lifted every surrounding business. 

We must use our assets — our wellness credentials, our ‘green’ beach, our iconic Lord Street — to our own strategic advantage, as any place should.

The golden thread

The pillars of talent, infrastructure and community aren’t separate, they’re a ‘golden thread’. Talent won’t stay without the infrastructure. Infrastructure has no purpose without a thriving community and our community will falter without new talent and new investment.

The reason I wanted to engage with the True North network was to have these frank, business-led, collaborative conversations — the type that lead to practical considerations that can drive place-based improvement.

While our Southport event was a case study, the findings are part of a playbook for any Northern town. My job as an MP is to take our unified, ambitious and investable proposition to Parliament, to the Combined Authority and to the investors who can help us realise it. For True North, I hope it’ll be the start of more conversations like this across the region.

Inspiring positive change as part of the True North network

True North exists to bring together the people and places shaping the future of the North. The conversations that we started in Southport — about talent, infrastructure and community — are exactly the kind of practical, collaborative discussions that move places forward. 

If you want to be part of that shared effort, join us.