Liverpool to repay £9m after cruise liner row

The Queen Mary 2 visiting Liverpool last autumn

The row over Liverpool becoming a turnaround port for cruise liners has ended with a demand for the city council to pay back a £9m grant.

Civic authorities in Liverpool and Southampton have been involved in a bitter dispute over the money which was claimed to give the northern city an unfair commercial advantage.

Cruise ships only dock at the liner terminal after starting from a different port.

The controversial plans would allow it to become a turnaround port - where ships begin or end their journey and are serviced inbetween cruises.

The council had originally offered to repay £5m used to rebuild the liner terminal to the goverrnment but was told to offer more.

Leader Joe Anderson said: "We can now get on with bringing cruises back to the city."

The Pier Head development used public funds and the new terminal opened in 2007 on the condition of stop-offs and not turnarounds.

The project received £9m in government funding and a further £8.6m from Europe.

Mr Anderson said cruises to start and end at the city within three months and said the inital repayment offer was what the council thought was fair.

He said: "If you buy a new car, three years later you don't expect it to have held its price, so we don't think it will be £9m that we pay back.

"But we are willing to compromise and accept the figure that they come up with to get on with it."

Campaigners in Southampton handed in a petition to 10 Downing Street claiming public funding of Liverpool's terminal was an unfair advantage in September last year.

Southampton Council leader Royston Smith said "if Liverpool pay back the money, they will be competing on a purely commercial basis and everyone will be content with that".

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