IN PICTURES: A SUNNY SOUTHPORT AFTERNOON IN AUGUST

 

A few casual images of life around Southport's Marine Lake this summer...

 

CORPORATE PROFITS AGAINST NATURE: From Sandbrook Way to New Cut Lane - UPDATED!

Above: the overgrown Fine Jane's Brook on New Cut Lane with the new houses of Blowick Moss in the distance 

While the corporate wall of silence remains firmly built around the Sandbrook Way Lime tree here in Woodvale, another threat is quietly gathering pace just down the road on the rural border of Halsall and Southport.

Above: the Sandbrook Way Lime - under threat from Aldi developments. 

NC Developments (NW) Ltd wants to push a 72-dwelling estate right onto the rural fringe of New Cut Lane under planning reference 2019/1257/FUL.

Just like the corporate planners looking to chainsaw our mature Woodvale greenery for tarmac and car parks, this cross-border sprawl threatens to fundamentally strip away our local heritage and overwhelm our already struggling infrastructure. This isn't just a "green" issue - this is a common-sense fight for the future of our neighborhoods.

Look at What They Did to Blowick Moss

We don’t have to look far to see how this story ends. Look at Blowick Moss. They tore into that beautiful, ancient marshy habitat, paved it over for multi-million-pound housing developments, and left the local area completely wrecked.

Above: Blowick Moss - ancient countryside removed to make way for corporate profits.  

The corporate planners made their money and walked away, leaving the surrounding estates to potentially suffer from chronic, severe flooding because the natural mossland sponge was systematically destroyed. They ruined Blowick Moss, and now they are using the exact same profit-driven blueprint on the edges of Birkdale and Halsall.

The Real Impact on New Cut Lane & Fine Jane's Brook

If you played in the area around the Guildford Road fields as a kid, you know exactly what is at stake. This is a practical disaster for everyone living nearby:

• Severe Traffic and Road Hazards: New Cut Lane and the surrounding rural borders cannot safely absorb heavy construction vehicles or the permanent influx of hundreds of daily car trips. Sefton Council has rightly raised major red flags over traffic bottlenecks and gridlock on Southport's side of the boundary.
• The Flooding and Eco-Risk: Fine Jane’s Brook is a designated main river. Heavy machinery and construction runoff threaten to completely fragment this fragile ecosystem and damage crucial drainage networks, violating the critical 5-metre buffer zones.
• Destruction of Native Wildlife: Regular surveys confirm that these open spaces are active feeding corridors for local bat species and protected water voles. Paving this over permanently erases the area's natural identity.

Above: a shy, legally - protected, water vole.  

One Fight, Two Fronts

Whether it is corporate retail laziness refusing to design a car park around a healthy, bat - supporting Woodvale Lime tree on Sandbrook Way, or housing developers eager to pave over a protected wildlife brook - the root problem is exactly the same: local voices and community infrastructure are being completely ignored for outside profit.

Ainsdale and Birkdale are not checkboxes for developers to maximize their profit margins at the expense of our roads, our safety, and our history. 

The silence from the top is deafening, but the community is still watching. We are not going away.

More: 

https://pat-regan.blogspot.com/2026/06/aldi-woodvale-corporate-silence-still.html 

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/fight-back-build-72-new-34209871 

https://www.otsnews.co.uk/kews-housing-estate-swamp-fiasco/ 

ADDENDUM: The Pavement Blueprint: From Kew's Toxic Swamp to the New Cut Road Collapse

We don't need theoretical computer models from highly paid development consultants to tell us what happens when you pave over a natural flood sponge and force urban traffic onto rural infrastructure - we just have to look at our own doorstep.

• The Kew Toxic Swamp Reality: The massive housing expansions in Kew were built right alongside the old Town Lane Landfill site. This area isn't just a basic swamp; it sits over a legacy of buried waste that required intensive Sefton Council monitoring for hazardous subterranean landfill gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Local planning records clearly flag potential gas contamination issues within 250m of these old tip grounds. By destroying the natural mossland sponge to build houses, they didn't just cause waterlogging - they disturbed complex, toxic subterranean layers.
• The New Cut Lane Road Breakdown: You only have to look further down New Cut Lane past the RSPCA shelter to see the physical reality of what we are dealing with. The sides of the road are already heavily rutted, crumbling, and physically sliding into the agricultural fields and drainage ditches that flank it. This lane is breaking down under the weight of current local traffic. Imagine forcing the heavy machinery of a major construction site, followed by hundreds of daily commuter car trips, onto THAT fragile layout!
• The Fine Jane's Brook Bottleneck: Fine Jane’s Brook is a designated main river and the critical artery draining the fields between Southport and Halsall. Pushing a 72-dwelling estate right onto the rural fringe of New Cut Lane introduces massive volumes of concrete runoff into a watercourse that is already heavily loaded. When heavy rains hit, an overwhelmed brook means water backs up exactly where it shouldn't - forcing surface water into older, existing roads and gardens.

When developers claim that "modern infrastructure means it won't flood or cause chaos," remind them of Kew's toxic legacy and look at the rutted tarmac outside the RSPCA. Paving over mosslands doesn't make water or traffic hazards disappear; it just forces the displacement onto the surrounding community.

UPDATE: Sefton Council Launches Formal Cross-Border Pushback

The corporate developers thought they could use a convenient border loophole to sneak their 72-home estate through West Lancashire Council, but Sefton Council is officially pushing back. 

Because the proposed site sits right against the Southport/Halsall boundary line, Sefton's planning and highways departments have raised major red flags.Sefton Council is formally objecting based on the severe cross-border impacts this development will bring:Infrastructure 

Dumping: Virtually 100% of the daily traffic and heavy construction vehicles will flood straight onto Southport’s narrow roads, creating severe bottlenecks on our side of the boundary.

Overwhelming Public Services: Future residents on this Halsall plot will rely entirely on oversubscribed Southport schools, doctors, and dental surgeries, leaving local infrastructure to absorb the strain without matching developer funding.

While West Lancashire has the final vote, they are legally required under the "Duty to Co-operate" to factor in Sefton's formal objections. 

This cross-border friction gives our campaign huge leverage.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW: HOW TO LODGE YOUR OBJECTION

To make sure your voice legally counts, you must submit your objection to the planning authorities handling this cross-border case.

You can copy and paste the letter template and send it to the following addresses:

1. West Lancashire Borough Council (The Deciding Authority)Online Portal: 

Search and comment on reference 2026/0163/OUT via the West Lancs Planning Application Search.

By Email: Send your objection directly to plan.apps@westlancs.gov.uk 

By Post: Development Management, West Lancashire Borough Council, 52 Derby Street, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L39 2DF.

2. Sefton Council (The Cross-Border Consultee)Online Portal: Log the impact on Southport infrastructure by searching reference DC/2026/00776 on the Sefton Planning Portal.

By Email: Send your thoughts directly to planning.department@sefton.gov.uk

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IN PICTURES - SPOONBILLS AT MARSHSIDE

Spoonbills created some interest for local nature-lovers recently at Marshside in Southport. 

They bred regularly in England up until the 17th century. However, they became absent as breeders for over 350 years. Nevertheless, the increasing regularity of sightings at Marshside echoes the growing UK population of this beautiful species.

EVERYONE'S CHUM, NO ONE'S ALLY: THE PLASTIC POLITICS OF THE TERMINAL PEOPLE-PLEASERS

There is a specific psychological trait plaguing modern British politics, and it explains exactly why so many voters feel completely politically alienated today. Look closely at Andy Burnham’s recent positioning, and you see a textbook example of the "People-Pleaser" complex in action.

Burnham famously built his brand as the "King of the North", the compassionate local champion standing up for ordinary working-class struggles. Yet, the moment the national political landscape shifts, the camouflage suit comes off.

In a disturbingly familiar move, Burnham has proven he is built from the exact same political cloth as Keir Starmer. Starmer decisively showed he was no friend to the old, the needy, or the disabled when he stripped away the Winter Fuel Payments and tried to ram through devastating cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP).  Now, Burnham is stepping into the spotlight and following the exact same blueprint.

Burnham openly declared in the media that he would aggressively reduce the welfare bill specifically to redirect that cash into boosting UK defence and military spending.  To make matters worse, he has hired James Purnell as his Chief of Staff, the very man who notoriously labelled vital welfare payments as "little freebies”, a callous and patronising quip that denigrates millions of pensioners. The Express reported that - Burnham’s expected top adviser was branded "cruel" after it emerged that he called for the abolition of “little freebies” for pensioners such as winter fuel payments and bus passes. James Purnell, a former Labour Cabinet minister who is poised to become Mr Burnham's chief of staff, said in 2011 that most OAP benefits should simply be included in the state pension.

Burnham is packaging these impending slashes under the vague guise of "supporting people into work," a line we all know entirely ignores the brutal realities that disabled and vulnerable people face every day. 

Fit to Run a Country?

This brings us to the fundamental question that the mainstream click – bait – hunting media completely disregards: 

Are leaders who rely on this psychological blueprint truly fit to run a country?

When a politician's core strategy is to dodge conflict, strip wealth from the vulnerable, and continuously U-turn to avoid right-wing media backlash, they lack the foundational backbone required for true leadership. Their main agenda is flawed due to their desire to gain political points, via making all the right sounds at the right time. 

Running a nation demanding difficult, principle-focused choices cannot be achieved by a perpetual fence-sitter. It requires absolute conviction.

By prioritising personal self-seeking ambition and establishment validation over the long-term well-being of the public, both Burnham and Starmer prove they are 100% fundamentally unfit for the job. 

They are boiler room mechanics of the political machine, not genuine statesmen.

The Fabian Connection: History Repeating Itself

One is an elite Fabian, Keir Starmer, so it is no surprise to see the other soft-left politician eagerly following suit. 

As I exposed previously in ‘How the PM Failed to Properly Read His Fabian Guide Book’, Starmer's entire political strategy relies on a duplicitous, top-down Fabian method that favours gradual institutional compromise and elite decree over ordinary democracy. 

Now, Burnham is stepping up to run the UK by exactly the same playbook. 

He masquerades as a gritty, regional radical to keep the good old working-class voter base sweet, yet he quietly uses the Fabian Society platform to test his national leadership ambitions. 

True to form, the second power comes within their grasp, these soft-left sentimentalities evaporate. Just as Starmer dropped his baseline pledges to prove his loyalty to the establishment, Burnham’s eager pivot to cutting the welfare budget to fund defence proves he is cut from the exact same institutional cloth.

This desperate tightrope act is driven by a deep psychological weakness: an absolute obsession with external validation and being loved by the establishment. When leaders are driven entirely by a desperate need for pats on the head / good boy approval rather than deep-rooted conviction, they create a predictable, destructive pattern:

• High empathy in public, zero follow-through in policy.

• Strategic fence-sitting to avoid initial conflict.

• Throwing the vulnerable under the bus the second a hard choice must be made.

• One U-turn after another as the public catch onto their diversive game plan. 

Ultimately, trying to be everything to everyone means you stand for absolutely nothing.

 These politicians want to be everyone's chum in the moment to score quick points, but when the pressure rises and people actually need a protector, they prove they are no one's real ally. 

I've always seen through this desperate need to be loved and it will always be their fatal flaw.

More: 

https://pat-regan.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-pm-failed-to-properly-read-his.html 

ALDI WOODVALE - CORPORATE SILENCE ‘STILL’ REIGNS SUPREME

 

Above: Pictured today (23/6/2026) is the wonderful Sandbrook Way Lime tree.

CORPORATE SILENCE ‘STILL’ REIGNS SUPREME

We've presented video proof of protected bats. We've shown evidence of endangered Red Squirrels. Sefton's own Tree Officer says felling this healthy Lime tree is "neither justified nor necessary". Yet, all we get is a wall of silence. But Ainsdale is not alone, and Aldi has form for this. 

In Silsden, the local community successfully fought a battle to stop Aldi from chopping down a magnificent, historic Lime tree on a supermarket development site. They forced them to respect the environment there, and we can do it here.

The report stated - 'No-one from Aldi was available to comment.

Clearly some British communities still 'care' about nature on their doorstep…

 https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/11389136.eco-workers-battle-to-save-historic-tree-on-supermarket-development-site/

The main thing is that Aldi's £7 million Woodvale development can easily adjust a few car park spaces. Why won't anyone answer the community? The silence speaks volumes. We are still watching, and we are not going away.

We 'CAN' have both the welcomed new store and our precious natural resources. All Aldi bosses have to do is THE RIGHT THING! 

Our natural green Ainsdale heritage must never be sacrificed due to corporate laziness or political indifference. 

More... 

 https://pat-regan.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-aldi-lime-tree-silence-reigns.html

THE ALDI LIME TREE: Silence Reigns Supreme, But The Truth Will Out

 

Following several news articles on the ALDI Woodvale situation, the local community has been greeted with a wall of conspicuous silence from ‘all’ official quarters.

But let’s be absolutely clear: silence does not change the facts.

Is Sefton Council set to listen to its own Tree Officer, who rightly stated that felling this majestic tree is “neither justified nor necessary”? Even though the council’s own experts agree that Aldi is flagrantly breaking Local Plan Policy EQ9, will the council stand silent while corporate idleness wins, the chainsaws move in, and Ainsdale loses a piece of its precious green heritage forever?

Floating It Upstairs: The Accountability Test

Since local channels seem to have gone completely mute, this issue must now be floated higher up the political ladder. The public deserves answers from those at the top:

• To Bill Esterson MP: As our local Labour Member of Parliament, you represent a party that heavily champions green spaces, environmental protections, and biodiversity on a national stage. If those words mean anything, why the radio silence here? Local resident monitoring has proved that native Red Squirrels - a nationally protected conservation species - and local bats actively use this canopy as a vital urban wildlife corridor. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. Will you stand up for our local wildlife, or let a multi-billion-pound retailer roll right over it?

• To the Sefton Liberal Democrat Leadership: The Lib Dems have a long, proud track record of championing green credentials and local environmental protection. The community looks to this leadership to work constructively with corporate designers, ensuring that Sefton's environmental policies are upheld while still delivering the fantastic investment Ainsdale deserves.

• To Sefton Council Executive & Planning: Your own professional tree expert has joined this fight. Will you allow a lazy corporate blueprint to override the council's own formal environmental guidelines?

A Colossal "Biodiversity Deficit"

Felling this tree leaves Ainsdale with a colossal, irreversible “biodiversity deficit” that harms local wildlife.

WE ARE NOT ANTI-DEVELOPMENT. WE DESERVE THE NEW STORE, AND WE DESERVE TO KEEP OUR MATURE TREES. IF OUR POLITICAL REPS, THE COUNCIL, AND ALDI BOSSES ACT IN AN HONOURABLE FASHION, THE RIGHT THING MAY STILL COME THROUGH. ALDI HAS A £7 MILLION BUDGET. THEY CAN DO THE RIGHT THING AND TWEAK THEIR DESIGN RATHER THAN CHOPPING DOWN OUR HERITAGE.

The community is watching, the facts are out, and corporate silence will 'not' make this go away.

More: 

https://www.otsnews.co.uk/the-sandbrook-way-lime-tree-and-aldi-separating-fact-from-fiction/ 

The Bats of Woodvale

 

Bats hunting over Sandbrook Road/Way

For anyone asking about the local wildlife, I’ve just published the evidence of our local bats hunting over Sandbrook Road/Way. The law protects them, and Aldi cannot ignore this!

https://www.otsnews.co.uk/the-sandbrook-way-lime-tree-and-aldi-separating-fact-from-fiction/