Wirral Council environmental project helps to rejuvenate borough

Residents across Wirral have been seeing the benefit of a one-off injection of funding that has allowed the council to undertake a significant environmental project targeting some of the worst affected alleyways in the borough.

Nearly £400,000 has been invested in the programme to recruit dedicated teams on a temporary basis and purchase specialist machinery to clear alleyways in places where issues were so bad that routine cleansing was not able to be carried out there.

The two teams set to work in July and wasted little time in making a big impact on these areas, largely doing the clearances by hand to begin with while they awaited the delivery of the new machinery to assist.

Streets in Wallasey, Birkenhead, New Ferry and Meols were all treated early on in the project with the likes of fly-tipped items, furniture, general waste and vegetation all having to be removed.

The alleyway project is just one part of the £2.2m funding allocated by elected members to a one-off ‘Neighbourhood Investment Fund’ for 2024-25. This compromises of £1.2 million in revenue funding – this is money for ongoing costs such as additional staffing – and a £1m capital investment for one-off spending on things like machinery and infrastructure.

Other improvements being funded under the ‘Neighbourhood Investment Fund’ include £100,000 for gully cleaning, including investigating and fixing potential blockages, £300,000 to tackle known ‘grot spots’ which are areas of often private land that attract a disproportionate amount of illegal dumping, and £300,000 to transform rewilded areas into new pollinator sites.

Wirral Council leader, Cllr Paul Stuart, explained the reasoning behind council agreeing to create the fund from this year’s budget.

“Council staff work extremely hard in increasingly challenging circumstances to deliver high quality services to residents. Often, though, elected members like me, as well as residents, will ask them for help on local issues that for capacity or resource reasons they simply can’t deliver as part of their daily duties.

“For that reason, members approved the creation of this combined revenue and capital fund to enable a widespread programme of environmental improvements that would provide a visible, lasting impact on neighbourhoods in all parts of the borough.

“The result is a wide-reaching set of activities to take place up until the end of March next year which will see additional weed removal, the clearance of problem alleyways, clearing of ‘grot spots’, increased grounds maintenance across the borough, gully cleansing and repairs and new or renovated public benches.

“The fund is enabling the council to employ additional temporary staff to deliver the programmes and at the same time invest in specialist equipment, such as ‘weed ripper’ machines, that will then stay within the council for many years to assist the existing teams.”