LIVERPOOL City Mayor Joe Anderson has delivered his assessment of the Metro Mayor’s first year in charge, stating “it’s going to take a little time for things to embed."

Mayor Anderson’s words come a year after Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram was elected into the new role, having defeated the current Liverpool city chief to secure the Labour nomination for the role.

In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, the City Mayor strongly backed his Metro counterpart, saying that “not having devolution would disadvantage the whole city region enormously."

He said: “This is an enormous change in terms of how we govern the city region, and it’s going to take a little time for things to embed, for things to work and for us to get things done.

“But if you keep the faith, you’ll see a real difference over the next couple of years because the vision and the targets that we all set under Steve’s leadership is going to pay real benefits for us in the future.

"So I’m confident that was the right thing to do, I’m confident we have got good quality leadership and a great team, and things will start to happen soon.”

Mayor Anderson said he posted the video to Twitter on Friday after noticing people in Liverpool having their say about what devolution and having a combined authority – covering Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens, Halton and Wirral – actually means for the region.

The relationship between the two has not always been a smooth one, with a war of words last year resulting in the City Mayor telling the Metro Mayor he would no longer attend meetings of the region’s combined authority.

But it has improved since then, and Mayor Anderson highlighted in his video how Mayor Rotheram has helped the region so far, also calling for more help from central government.

He said: “We have got £900m in what we call gain-share funding. This year alone, over £350m has been allocated from what we call the strategic investment fund.

"That’s being overseen by the Metro Mayor and as the leaders in the City Region working with him, we intend to actually do more for the whole city region and grow the economy of the city region.

“However what we do need is government to give the combined authority more powers and more money so we can do more.”