The Council gave the money then left them to their own devices. Some must have survived but not necessarily enacting what they promised in their bids.

Included in the 60m2 per household was an area of wetland. This was to be a low depression in the land to act as a sump into which ground water would collect and also to attract back wildlife lost during the development phase.

The area before development had been a water meadow and a haven for wildlife. The wetland area would reinstate part of the original meadow and serve to sustain and support local wildlife. Planners rolled over on this when I pressed them to force the developer to honour this condition. By not creating the wetland area the planners have unknowingly created two further problems.

They now had an area of land that was due to be adopted which as meadow would need no maintenance but now that condition had been given up, would need to be maintained. In addition to the loss of habitat this area was to act as a sump. Without this low laying area, adjoining gardens now flood indeed adjoining gardens of houses on Reeds Lane now flood, some thing that has never happened in the 70 years since those houses were built. Faced with the additional burden that maintaining this area of land would bring, the department that maintains public open space refused to accept this additional burden. No one in the council gave a thought for the additional revenue generated by the 175 dwellings now occupying the land and the amount in council tax paid by virtue of the tax band the occupies found themselves in.

The councils solution was to move the goal posts and adopt only a fraction of the land that was originally to be taken. Ironically, the developer paid thousands seeding the land with wild meadow flowers and grasses. The land was never meant to be a neatly clipped lawn. The low laying area was to open up into a wild meadow and support local wildlife. Faced with an increased burden from having to retain a tract of land that was to have been adopted by the council, the developer sold the land at auction.

So what have the residents been left with? We still have, for now, a large open green enjoyed by all those on the estate but with the spector of future development and its reduction in size. We will shortly have a play area to be built by money secured from the developer and passed on a plan of public open space twice that of what we will eventually end up with and against a back drop of over 90% opposition by local residents, supposedly the very people it is being built for???? We have an increased risk of flood and loss of wildlife habitat nothing of which we can now do anything about. By refusing to adopt the land that was to be put to this use, the developer has subsequently sold the land.

Who in their right mind gives up the opportunity of land ownership. Land has a value in what ever use it is put to. For the residents it’s value was the idea of a life style we all bought into. To the council it was delivering that idea as set in the conditions contained within the planning permission.

Council officials have shown themselves to be disorganised and uncoordinated. They have not thought through the consequences of their actions and by their incompetent actions have frittered away the amenity value of an estate that could have served as a model for future development. The one thing that the residents did not want but were prepared to accept as part of the complete package was the play area . All we will end up with is the play area.

Will the council have the integrity to reinstate the land when the play area becomes an eye sore or proves to be a magnet for anti social behaviour. I think not.

In a comment to the press over the Social Services debt Cllr Davies is using the “I knew nothing” line of argument and it’s up to the Wirral public as to what they make of that. As to “not a word of criticism”, the blog post details anomalies over the figures used and a broken commitment over the timing of the publication of the report.