Posts Tagged ‘Liscard Hall’

This once fine public building (Pictured left with Adrian in foreground) was razed by arsonists a year ago.  (See Cllr John Salter’s photograph of it, right, taken at the time of the disaster.)

All that now remains is the grassed area next to the War Memorial in Seacombe’s Central Park .   When the  building first came back into public hands it was immediately the subject of controversy.  At first local community organisations wanted to take it over for community use; but with no lifts and riddled with asbestos it became obvious that the cost of repairs would be prohibitive. Meanwhile Local Liscard Councillor Fraser had other ideas – she argued strongly for it to be given over on a ‘peppercorn rent’  (in otherwords all but free) to a private school.  Labour argued at the time that although we have no objection whatsoever to private schools they should be just that – private and not subsidised with peppercorn rents by the Council Tax Payers of Wirral.  

The Council’s professional officers then did excellent work in attracting interested outside parties with a commercial interest.  Our favoured outcome would have been for a developer who might have brought a quality restaurant, or some other popular amenity, to Seacombe with an agreement to also provide meeting rooms for the community organisations.  But in the time when they were working on a development that could have provided this for our own people the Hall was destroyed.  Cllr Fraser at that time immediately issued a demand that the then Cabinet member (Liberal Cllr Simon Holbrook) should answer a litany of questions about why he had not introduced security measures sufficient to prevent the disaster.  She seemed, however, to have not quite noticed that the body responsible for the care of publicly owned buildings was one of the Council’s very own scrutiny committees.  And guess who chaired that Council Committee, and had been its Tory spokesperson before that?  None other than the same Cllr Fraser who was hurling questions at somebody else!  After Labour pointed out that she in fact chaired the committee, but seemed not to have noticed that small fact when blaming somebody else, she became very quiet about it indeed for a long time.  But when a report appeared about the Hall in today’s Liverpool Post she couldn’t resist criticising the Council of which she is a member, and on which she presided over that very committee.  

But despite the lack of care that led to the disaster something might yet rise from the ashes.  (See Adrian’s picture, left, showing the grassed area, where the Hall stood, to the the right of the War Memorial.) 

One way or another it is likely that there may soon be a new centralisation of many services in Wirral.  We cannot yet predict the outcome of the Charteris Inquiry but if the result is that a new Super Centre goes ahead then what better location for a new state of the art library than right here in Seacombe, only a short distance from the present library?

Please let us know your views.  Should we keep it as a grassed area and spend on an expensive new site, somewhere in Liscard, or use a free site that we already own right here in Seacombe, yet within easy reach of Liscard shopping centre?