When you think of the most picturesque waterways in the region, the Bootle stretch of the Leeds Liverpool canal might not instantly spring to mind.
As the longest canal in Britain, it takes in swathes of green space along the Pennine trail, but its passage through South Sefton nestles between densely packed residential areas - driving straight into the heartlands of industrial Liverpool. Though much of that industry has now departed.
It has left the canal much quieter, albeit bruised by its demise as a crucial economic artery. But it remains a symbol of hope for Bootle, especially to Brian Dawe.
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“It's beautiful,” he tells the ECHO, standing on the canal side as it sweeps around Merton Road and down the western tip of the Linacre ward. “We said to ourselves ‘imagine if we could do something here. Imagine if we could really develop something that wasn't the norm’.”
Mr Dawe is the CEO of Safe Regeneration, a social enterprise that’s been based on the edge of the canal in former St Mary’s school for the last 17 years. The organisation specialises in business and employment support, as well as offering space for artists and creatives.
The Safe team also opened the Lock and Quay pub, which faces on to the canal, in 2018 and has since become a hub for a range of community activity. It’s the only community pub of its kind in the north west, with all profits going back into local projects.
But more recently, Safe Regeneration has turned its attention to community-led housing - working to support the launch of Community Land Trusts (CLTs) across the city region through its ‘Breaking Ground’ initiative. It’s currently in the process of applying to become a registered provider of social housing under Safe Community Homes CLT.
Last year, Safe Regeneration submitted plans to build what would have been the largest community-led housing project in the UK - a £33m ‘neighbourhood’ that would have seen new, affordable housing built along the banks of the canal and the creation of 110 new jobs. It was estimated it would contribute £3.8m annually to the local economy through its homes and proposed commercial units.
However the plans were rejected by Sefton council’s planning committee based on advice that such developments should include two car parking spaces for every home. Looking back on the decision in February, Mr Dawe reiterates claims that only “29% of households have a car in Bootle, with only 5% of households having two cars.”
The decision has since been appealed and the project will find out its fate at a hearing on July 12. Mr Dawe added: “We're confident of a positive outcome. The first scheme is always the toughest one to get through. It's always a race to second after that. We're working as closely as we can with Sefton Council.”
More than bricks and mortar
There’s more to housing than simply building homes, according Brian Dawe. In Bootle, there’s no shortage of new flat conversions and places to rent - but there’s generally a missing link between what ties the people who live in them together.
Mr Dawe told the ECHO: “We wanted to think about creating a neighbourhood rather than just building houses. That's the difference in our scheme that I don't think most other developers approach.
“They want to get in, spend as little as possible and get out as quick as possible. We want to spend as much as we can, and we're not going anywhere.”
If Safe is concerned with building more than homes, then Mr Dawe is more than your average developer. Inside the Lock and Quay, after talking through the community-led housing plans, he joins a weekly guitar group playing together on the far side of the room.
After playing a couple of solo numbers with the guitar in hand, he told the ECHO: “When I reflect on where Bootle is now, I think it’s similar to where Liverpool was 20 years ago. You wouldn't get visitors coming to Liverpool 20 years ago. Bootle is kind of in that space. But it's changing.
“That's what this pub is all about. Cheese clubs, music festivals. That's about changing the perception of Bootle.”
‘Nothing coming our way’
In the guitar group is Bob Doyle, who's lived and worked in Bootle for over 60 years. He notes how the residential areas of Bootle were formed by those who worked on the docks and at sea and “made this city great”. But while he shares Mr Dawe’s positivity about Bootle’s direction of travel, he believes the area is having to make up for lost time as a large portion of its communities have “all been forgotten”.
Mr Doyle points to a growing gap in “living standards, housing standards and life expectancy”, especially in the Linacre ward of Bootle. Linacre, which borders Kirkdale and is the most southern part of Sefton, is in the top 1% of most deprived areas in the country.
Its life expectancy is roughly seven years lower compared to the rest of England (72 for men, 76 for women) with almost 50% of children in the area receiving free school meals. This hasn’t been eased by Sefton Council having had almost £300m cut from its budget since 2010 while receiving no backing for any of its levelling up fund bids for towns south of the borough.
Earlier this month, the Government announced that Sefton would remain in category three for Levelling Up funding - seen as least in need, despite the high levels of deprivation in Bootle. In the view of Mr Doyle, the Government is overlooking the challenges the area faces.
He added: “They talk about Levelling up, but there's such a huge gap it would be impossible for any government to level up. The whole area I feel is in need of regeneration and an uplift. There's a lot of wonderful decent people here. They deserve better.”
In the view of Sonny Phillips, Mr Doyle’s friend and other player in the group “Bootle always seems to be pushed to the side.”
He added: “There's a hell of a division in Sefton between places like Southport and Bootle. There’s nothing coming our way.”
Southport, the only Conservative run constituency in Merseyside, has been backed with close to £40m to lead on wholesale regeneration as it recovers from the pandemic. In Bootle, there’s a fear that public amenities are closing at a quicker rate than they can be opened.
Just outside of the Lock and Quay the former Wharf Inn lies dormant and almost derelict. In The Strand shopping centre, a matter of metres away, a number of big name traders have abandoned the town.
Mr Doyle added: “The pubs used to be the centre of community life in Bootle. So were the local shops. But so many local pubs have gone, there’s only the remnants of local shops. Sadly, that's why people find it difficult to locate the centre of a community any more.”
Both men are quick to point out the importance of the Lock and Quay and how it’s become a bastion of a changing, community-led Bootle - an unexpected lifeline in an area that has been so harshly cut off in recent decades.
Carol Mortimer, part of the group, points to her uprising in Kirkby as an example of how more houses does not equal community and that a wide array of provisions need to be maintained in an area. “It's mainly just houses now in Kirkby - no community centres and nowhere for the kids to go,” she told the ECHO, “there's no heart in it any more.”
Taking back control
Ben Ashcroft, 28, has lived in Bootle his whole life. He now works behind the bar at the Lock and Quay and told the ECHO how he left a better paying office job to take on the role. Coming through one of Safe’s enterprise schemes, he explained how he’s had the chance to learn about community-led housing and can now consider “doing things for Bootle what nobody else was doing.”
He told the ECHO: “Everyone is turning things into flats - that's what it seems. New housing, but it's not affordable housing.
“Before coming here I'd never really been shown how we can change an area [through our own community housing]. It’s like taking back control from the council, in a way.
“It’s as though you just get things thrown at you otherwise. It’s like ‘here you go this is getting built, have this’. But do we want it? Not really, no.
“To be asked a question and be able to say ‘this is what the community want’ and for them to be part of it, I think that's massive.
“Do we want green space with cheaper housing? Yes, we want that. But it’s not just Bootle - every community needs that.”
You’re part of it
Walking along the canal side and outlining Safe’s vision for the area, Brian Dawe points to the land adjoining The Strand shopping centre that comes into view. It’s here where Sefton Council is attempting to develop a new canal side food and drink events space which, according to Labour Group leader and the most recent leader of Sefton Council, Cllr Ian Maher, will be a “catalyst” for the local area.
However the council’s £14.5m Levelling Up bid was rejected last November. The project has received support from the City Region Combined Authority but Cllr Marion Atkinson, Sefton cabinet member for regeneration, told the ECHO last month that the council will be “looking at all angles to get the money” to realise the project.
The Strand and the adjoining canal side perhaps exemplify the challenges Bootle has faced in more recent years, but there is scope for Safe and the Council’s vision to one day meet somewhere in the middle - quite literally - should the project get the green light at the planning hearing in July.
In many ways, the canal itself could be symbolic of how Bootle sees itself; an area filled with vast potential, or somewhere neglected and gradually deteriorating. Ben Ashcroft sides with the former.
He said: “The canal doesn't always seem like an asset as we grew up with it. But it has the chance to change the dynamic of Bootle. If [us and the council] did something with the canal, a place often vandalised, maybe people would show a bit more respect after they’ve seen it being used properly.”
For Brian Dawe, there’s a renewed sense of pride and optimism gradually bubbling to the surface in Bootle - something which could be fully unlocked through the canal side projects.
He added: “If the two schemes can work together for the benefit of the people of Bootle, it'll be transformational. You want to create something people can be proud of. If the things you deliver are of quality, people know that.
“If you can invest real energy and deliver real quality, that sense of pride returns to areas in Bootle. People have a bit of a swagger now. It's nice to see people taking pride.
And the pride in your town comes from true community ownership. You're a part of it rather than having things done to.”
