Liverpool City Council's Corporate Director of City Development at Here East
Above: Nuala Gallagher Corporate Director, City Development, Liverpool City Council (courtesy Liverpool City Council)
Future Cities Forum is delighted that Nuala Gallagher, former Director of Planning, Environment & Placemaking at Limerick City and County Council, and now Corporate Director of City Development at Liverpool City Council, will be joining our 'Innovation Cities' forum at Here East this September.
Nuala was appointed by Liverpool City Council last March and her role will focus on driving the city's economic growth and delivering sustainable development across the city centre and communities, including overseeing major schemes such as Anfield Square, King's Dock, Paddington Village, Festival Gardens and the Littlewoods site.
Paddington Village is a £1bn flagship development site at the eastern gateway to Liverpool’s thriving Innovation District, KQ Liverpool. Owned by Liverpool City Council, Paddington is an urban village that has Science, Tech, Education and Health within its DNA. With places to work, live, stay, eat and socialise, Paddington is being developed in three phases, with the first phase, Paddington Central, already well underway.
Nuala will lead a team of 300 staff and will be responsible for a budget of £86 million, helping to create jobs and opportunities that are accessible to all. Nuala will also be responsible for overseeing planning, property and asset management, investment strategy, as well as skills, adult learning and environmental and sustainability policies.
Her previous roles include Head of Regeneration for the London Borough of Newham, Director for Economy of Place at Bristol City Council and Director of City Centre Development at Belfast City Council.
Nuala has also spent time working in New York, leading on sustainable urban development and teaching at Columbia University. She is a registered architect and a graduate of Columbia University with a Masters in Urban Design. She will work closely with the Mayor of Liverpool Joanne Anderson, interim Chief Executive Theresa Grant and the Government Commissioners to continue the transformation of the City Development directorate.
In other news, Liverpool’s travel and tourism sector is welcoming a post-Covid resurgence. New figures published recently have calculated vital information relating to Liverpool’s tourism sector, and show that last year’s economic boost of more than £3.5 billion has outstripped previous city records.
Reflecting on 2022, the new statistics also highlight the number of visitors the city attracted, the accommodation usage and the number of local jobs supported.
Although not back to pre-pandemic levels, the city is seeing a significant recovery in the sector which is expected to continue in the wake of hosting events such as the Eurovision Song Contest 2023. In the first six months of 2023 alone, 934,000 hotel rooms were sold in the city centre – the strongest sales in five years.
Liverpool’s figures for 2022 show:
The Liverpool-specific data has been collated since 2011 and shows that visitor figures peaked in 2018 with 38 million recorded – coinciding with the year-long celebration programme which marked a decade since the city’s European Capital of Culture title.
Some of the City Council-organised major events to take place in Liverpool during 2022 were the World Gymnastics Championships, the Liverpool Football Club Victory Parade, River of Light and Chinese Lunar New Year. The figures are produced by STEAM (Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor) – a nationally recognised measure of the UK tourism industry – and were commissioned by the Visitor Economy team at Growth Platform – Liverpool City Region Growth Company.