Chancellor Rishi Sunak has confirmed in the Spring Budget that Liverpool has been granted freeport status, with the hope being that the move will create 13,800 jobs and deliver 675,000 sq/m of commercial floorspace.
Freeports – special economic zones that have their own rules in order to make it cheaper and easier to do business – are typically located around airports and shipping ports, with goods arriving in these zones from abroad not subject to tax charges usually paid to the government.
The tariffs are only paid if these goods leave the zone and transported elsewhere around the UK. Mr Sunak announced eight new freeports, including the Liverpool City Region – East Midlands Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich, the Humber region, Plymouth, the Solent, the Thames and Teesside, all due to begin operations later this year.
According to Business Live, Liverpool will have three tax sites, one in Parkside in St Helens, one at Wirral Waters and one at 3MG – the Mersey Multimodal Gateway in Halton.
Jennifer Lee, office senior partner in KPMG’s Liverpool office, explained that the benefits of a Liverpool freeport would extend beyond the limits of the metropolis, stretching across the whole of the north-west.
“The opportunities presented by a freeport in the city is wide-ranging for the whole region. Take trade, for example, where flows through the Port of Liverpool and other City Region gateways will increase and become more efficient, in turn spurring activity among manufacturers and logistics companies and provide a desirable hotbed for innovation-focused SMEs to be based at.
“The creation of clusters like this drives inward investment, in turn fuelling the regeneration of deprived areas and enabling social mobility and creating jobs,” she was quoted by the news source as saying.
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