Frank McKenna was a young Skelmersdale politician with the world at his feet. Chairman of the North West Regional Assembly, leader-elect of Lancashire County Council, he was destined for a safe Labour seat in the House of Commons where a ministerial career surely beckoned. Then rumours of election fraud surfaced in satirical magazine, Private Eye, forcing him to resign from public office. After a £3 million police investigation, the judge threw out the case but his political career was over. Now he is back in Lancashire as the head of Downtown Preston in Business – a high profile lobbying group which is sure to create waves. Editor Andrew Calvert went to meet a man who is remarkably sanguine about his experiences.

When you are awaiting trial on fraud charges, your chances of finding a job are somewhat limited. “There’s not a lot you can do other than work for yourself,” recalled McKenna, reflecting on the events back in 2001.

The sharp-suited, fast-talking Scouser had never been short of contacts in both the public and private sectors. A public affairs consultancy business was the obvious choice of a new career and McKenna was soon winning work throughout the North West.

He had built a reputation in Liverpool for his work with property developers on planning issues and came up with the idea for Downtown Liverpool in Business.
“I was working with a number of Liverpool companies which had similar issues,”
he said. “I was going to the same meetings, making the same points to the same people. I thought if they acted in a more collective way they could be more successful.”

Downtown Liverpool is now three years old and has ruffled more than a few feathers in the bear pit that passes for politics in the city. In its advertisements, it describes itself as “The business club with attitude” over a moody black and white photograph of McKenna, looking like a young Bryan Ferry.

So what can Lancashire expect from Downtown Preston? “In Liverpool we have established a very dynamic business club to allow the more entrepreneurial and enterprising of Merseyside’s business community to come together as a group,” McKenna said.

“Downtown Liverpool is helping to shape the political agenda. We campaigned very hard against the Liverpool planners’ tall buildings policy which would have made it virtually impossible to build a tall building. We are also tackling the myriad of public sector agencies on Merseyside – would you believe there are 82 QANGOs running the place?”

Downtown Liverpool now has more than 300 member companies, drawn mainly from the property world, the professions and new media companies.

Downtown Preston will operate in the same way, hosting events, networking dinners and award ceremonies. Membership costs vary according to the size of the business, starting at £250 a year and rising to £500 for companies with more than 20 staff.

McKenna said he had been invited to take his business model to Leeds, but opted for Preston after an approach from the University of Central Lancashire, which wanted to set up an entrepre- neurial business club.

“I still have a massive affection for Preston and Lancashire,” he said. “Preston, at the heart of the Central Lancashire City Region, will play a major role in ensuring that the county fulfils its potential.

“Central Lancashire is bigger than Liverpool and it is important that this is recognised by Preston City Council. We have to have a strategic vision and our ambition is to help the private sector drive that agenda forward.

“It is now five years since Preston won city status and there is a feeling that we need to do a little more to push Preston’s case as a place to do business.”

McKenna insists he wants to work with the public sector, which should regard him as a friend. However, he warns that he will not be slow to criticise if he feels businesses are being given a raw deal.

“Because we are independent, we can say things that other people will not say publicly,” he said. “If we find some of the decisions being taken are, in our members’ opinion, stifling growth and not business- friendly, then we will be the first to shout about it.”

McKenna has been accused of setting up Down-town Liverpool as a political front in advance of a bid to become Mayor of Liverpool. “If the position of elected mayor was to be established, I would be interested,” he concedes. “That is a million miles away from saying that I would run for mayor.”

Once a politician, always a politician.

Despite his highly-public fraud case, he is still a card-carrying member of the Labour Party. “It wasn’t the Labour Party which put me on trial – it was a faction within the West Lancashire Party which had a problem with me. It was personal, not political.”

Born in Bootle in 1963, McKenna’s family joined the exodus from Merseyside to Skelmersdale where he was brought up. He attended St John Rigby Sixth Form College in Wigan where he started his working life as a welfare rights officer.

After a brief spell in Leicester he went into community development work, first in St Helens and then in Skelmersdale. His first foray into politics came at the age of 26 when he was elected onto Lancashire County Council.

“I had been working in some of the most deprived communities in the UK,” he said. “It was right in the middle of the Thatcher years and it struck me in my job that if you wanted to effect real change, you had to be involved politically.”

Under the leadership of Louise Ellman, his progress at County Hall was swift. After chairing the Welfare Rights sub-committee, he went on to become vice-chairman of Social Services, juggling politics with his job in community development at St Helens.

McKenna was the agent for Colin Pickthall when he became MP for West Lancashire and later worked for him as a parliamentary assistant. He was elevated to deputy leader of Lancashire County Council in 1997. Four years later, he was chairman of the North West Regional Assembly and leader-elect of the county council when his political world collapsed around him.

Allegations were made that, in the 1997 general election while acting as agent for Colin Pickthall, he had falsified election expenses. After a three-year police investigation costing £3 million, the case finally went to trial at Chester Crown Court in January 2003.

Judge Roger Dutton abandoned the trial, famously stating that the courts were not an “appropriate forum” for resolving political grievances in the West Lancashire Labour Party.

“The allegation was that I had overspent on electoral expenses,” he added. “It all boiled down to the fact that we had been given a lot of leaflets for nothing. We valued them at one price and the police valued them at another.

“When the allegations first came out, my solicitor said he would show his ‘arse’ in Kendal’s window if they went any further.

“It took three years for it to come to court and I don’t think my solicitor has kept his promise either.”