Why has it been necessary for Southport residents to campaign for over 30 years to have our town upgraded, kept clean and free from the stench of urine because of inadequate and poorly maintained public toilets?

Why has it been necessary to form our own Southport Party in order to shame the personally ‘well-heeled’ Sefton Council administrators into tackling the ‘old chestnut’ problems of our resort (with some over 3 decades old)?

The reason is really quite simple – they are over-bureaucratic, wasteful, out of touch and some departments often fail to speak to each other, especially about town cleaning matters. It is only since our party was formed just over 3 years ago to fight for improvements, that we have finally seen a long delayed upgrading of our resort, but many basic needs are still being neglected and much needs to be done to get rid of all the rubbishy grot spots and the continuing lack of town user facilities.

Even the appalling vandalism to the new Marine Parade Bridge has been encouraged by what is frankly a bad design fault consisting of some lighting being placed only 3 feet above the pavement. This lack of common sense was just asking for trouble – and up to the time of writing the damage and wasteful use of taxpayers’ money is still there for all to see.