The Regenda Housing Group is submitting planning applications to build over the entire Wirral Council owned car park at Woodhead Street, New Ferry. The car park serves the community's district centre where some shops survive following the New Ferry explosion in 2017 and both previous and subsequent decades of neglect. Not only do businesses' staff park in the car park, so do their customers. The council plans that anyone who comes to the centre by car should park in a smaller car park off Grove Street - but this is already used by the staff of Grove Street Primary School during weekdays and will never be large enough to serve the shops and businesses in the central area and southern half of the district centre.

The rest of New Ferry's streets around the centre are double yellow lined, and the car park also currently has 10 disabled spaces which will be permanently lost. The loss of the car park will result in the surviving shops losing customers and their livelihoods and is totally unfair. The council's argument that less parking "will encourage more people to come to the centre by foot or public transport" is yet another sneaky way to rid Wirral of cars and the freedom to use them, particularly when they are a vital tool for disabled people to quickly and safely get around. It will also deflect yet more cars to park in the nearby surrounding residential streets which are already clogged with parked cars on a daily basis as it is.

The council consulted on the masterplans back in 2020, and following public criticism of the proposals to build on all of the car park back then, submitted a revised masterplan as part of the Outline Planning Application which kept 50% (or 70 spaces) of the current car park. The latest proposals show no consideration for the wishes of residents and businesses that were expressed back in 2020, and undermines the whole process of public consultation on plans which affect a community so deeply.

We, who sign this petition, demand the following:

1. The Council to conduct a full survey count over no less than a full month of both car parks at Woodhead Street and Grove Street to ascertain their daily use;
2. To reconsider the proposal to lose ALL of the car parking and go back to the 70 spaces which was what was agreed following the extensive public consultation held in 2020 and approved in the outline planning application;
3. Wirral Council to acknowledge that when it holds public consultations in future, these should respect the wishes of the community expressed during the consultation, and not to treat consultations as a box-ticking exercise that chooses to ignore the outcome in favour of its own pre-determined conclusion.