UNESCO bid triggers £1.5m Birkenhead Park improvements

The park’s historic buildings, gates, railings, lake will all be upgraded over four years if a £1.5m funding allocation is approved by Wirral Council’s tourism committee on Thursday.

The funding follows the park’s inclusion in April among the UK’s list of five sites being considered by the government for a bid to the UN heritage body for World Heritage Site status.

A formal bid could take up to two years to pull together and Wirral expects judging to take place by UNESCO in summer 2026.

Council officers said in their report for this week’s committee meeting that “there needs to be a real drive and focus on completing the required preparatory work to support nomination, including…priority improvements and restoration to the site’s physical historic assets and its presentation.”

These improvements to the park, created in 1847 and the inspiration for New York’s Central park, include:

• Full-time community engagement officer: £54,000 a year, for four years
• Commissioning surveys and advice: £310,000
• Restoration of Grand Entrance, Swiss Bridge, Roman Boathouse: £230,000
• Replacement gates and railings: £120,000
• Furniture, lake platform, boundary improvements: £180,000
• Refurbish visitor centre: £150,000

Birkenhead is already a grade one-listed historic park and has 42 listed structures within it.

Generally, World Heritage Sites are shown to attract further investment, from the National Lottery Heritage Fund typically, as well as increasing visitor numbers and helping regenerate local areas, the report said.

There are 33 sites in the UK with World Heritage Site status. However, Liverpool was stripped of its ranking in 2021 due to perceived overdevelopment of the waterfront.

The designation has long been controversial among developers as limits the scale of development that can take place.