Major cuts to Wirral's leisure services are on their way, but that is just one thing we found out after last night's crunch council meeting.
After several hours of intense and passionate debate, the meeting gave us many vital clues as to the future of the beleaguered local authority and the important services it provides for residents.
Here are the five biggest things last night’s full council meeting told us.
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Leisure centre and libraries down but not out
The budget will see the council withdraw funding for Woodchurch Leisure Centre and nine of its 24 libraries, after a period of several months in which local groups can bid to take them over on a community asset transfer scheme.
The budget setting process has seen passionate community campaigns against the cuts, with some calling the plan to close Woodchurch Leisure Centre “disgraceful” and thousands signing an online petition to save it.
Community groups will have until September 30 to come forward with plans to save the centre and the council will provide £330,000 to support any group successful in bidding to run it.
All 24 of Wirral’s libraries will remain open until November 1, at which point the nine at risk of closure will only remain open if community groups put successful bids together to take them off the council’s hands.
Golf courses and tennis centre in big trouble
Those wanting to save Brackenwood and Hoylake golf courses, the two municipal courses up for closure, will also have the chance to put plans forward to keep them going.
But this effort will be made much more difficult by the fact that the council will stop maintaining them on April 1, something Keith Marsh, club secretary at Brackenwood, said would see the course go to “wreck and ruin”.
Wirral Tennis Centre, in Bidston, is set to close for 12 months from April, before seeing half of its six indoor courts go permanently, after a Liberal Democrat amendment seeking to keep the courts open was voted down.
The three tennis courts set to go will be replaced with an “extensive” soft play and gymnastics offer under the council’s plan.
Some things have been saved
The budget setting process over the last few months has seen several cuts plans change.
Among the changes is the decision to keep school crossing patrols, the full climate emergency budget and the move to give community groups time to save leisure services such as Woodchurch Leisure Centre.
Cllr Janette Williamson, the Labour leader of Wirral Council, said last night that the budget looked after vital services in the borough and supported the most vulnerable.
The Liscard councillor added that she was pleased to have scrapped the planned increase in parking permit fees, and given Woodchurch Leisure Centre a “lifeline”, as well as the borough’s libraries and other services so that bids for community asset transfers can come forward.
A new political divide in Wirral Council?
The budget was passed by 52 votes to 11, with Labour and Conservative councillors in favour, while the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and Independent councillor Jo Bird voted against.
Wirral Council is led by a Labour councillor, but the party does not have a majority on the council meaning it needs to gain the support of other parties to get its plans through.
The authority also abolished its cabinet of 10 Labour members in 2020 and replaced it with a committee system, which spreads power more evenly across all 66 Wirral councillors from all parties.
Some of the comments from Labour and Conservative councillors last night showed they were using similar arguments to support a budget they both backed.
Labour’s Brian Kenny said no one was pleased to be making cuts, but the meeting must agree a legal budget or else the government would send in commissioners, which would lead to “severe and unacceptable cuts”.
Cllr Tom Anderson, Conservative group leader, said that although the budget was “far from perfect”, he supported it as it removed the council’s “eye-watering structural deficit”, protected the borough’s most vulnerable in areas such as social care and built on Wirral’s “great regeneration ambitions”.
But the leader of the Lib Dem group, Cllr Phil Gilchrist, said the council needs a fair funding system and should not have to “beg, grovel or crawl” to get money that residents need from the government.
He added that tonight’s budget gave a chance to those interested in keeping golf courses running.
Cllr Gilchrist also gave the example of the Lawn Tennis Association offering advice on how to turn Wirral Tennis Centre around and said the budget was too restrictive on things such as this and the council needed to be more adventurous.
Cllr Pat Cleary, the Green Party group leader, wanted to change plans which will see just Greasby and Rock Ferry library saved and replace it with a plan which looked at all 11 of the libraries originally up for closure “in the round”.
Former Labour councillor Jo Bird, who now stands as an Independent, thought the cuts being proposed did not need to be made and that there were other ways, such as using earmarked reserves, that the council could make up its budget deficit.
Old wounds die hard
Despite voting in the same way and making similar arguments in some cases, the tribal divide between Labour and Conservative councillors was still there for all to see.
Cllr Williamson said £225m had been taken from the authority’s budget since 2010 and it had lost £450m in spending power, something she said was in the name of austerity, a “cruel, ideological punishment” which hit northern Labour councillors in particular.
Cllr Stuart Whittingham, her Labour colleague, backed his leader and said what some called a structural deficit was actually a structural funding gap, and that Levelling Up means nothing unless local authorities are supported to fund local services.
Tory group leader Tom Anderson said errors the council had made were responsible for the current financial situation, rather than the government.
Cllr Anderon referred to the money spent on the now ditched Wirral View newspaper, and a £500,000 sum paid out as compensation to a developer for the council’s pulling out of the Hoylake Golf Resort project.
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He noted the government had given £265m to the council to support it through the Covid-19 crisis.
Fellow Conservative, Cllr Simon Mountney, said the Labour group had controlled Wirral Council for 10 years and that it was Labour’s poor decisions in Wirral which were responsible for the council’s financial position rather than a lack of central government funding.
