The Party can reveal that, by using the new Freedom Of Information Act, our campaigner members, who have fought long and hard for the upgrading of the Hesketh Park public toilets, have received documentary evidence totally vindicating them from the false slurs that:

[a] they were trying to derail the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid of the £1,870,481 now granted for the park's refurbishment and

[b] that they had no authority to contact or even speak to the HLF.

These vicious and unfounded accusations by some of Sefton's administrators to try and cover up over 30 years of neglecting the park's public toilets was also compounded by an ‘economy of the truth' when they sent only one photograph of “The Ladies” and NONE of the “The Gents”, which would have shown their appalling state, in the November 2003 presentation document to the HLF.

Quite rightly the regional director of the fund saw through this ploy and insisted that the Council must upgrade both of these park user toilet facilities as required by community concerns. But a generous time limit of 1-2 years was given by the HLF for the work to be carried out and only a proposal of intent from the Council was required on this issue in order to confirm the granting of a successful bid.

This great news came through in December 2003, much to the pleasure of all concerned including our Southport Party campaigners. Sadly it is now over 14 months since we received notification of this successful bid but residents can see that the park's toilets are still in their original appalling state with only a notice pasted up stating that they are going to be refurbished but with no indication of timescale.

We consider that the Heritage Lottery Fund and our Southport park campaigners have been very patient on this issue and it is time the authority fulfilled their obligation to renovate the park's public toilets, before another busy summer season gets underway which is likely to once again attract many thousands of visitors to Hesketh Park .