The area has been closed for three years despite efforts to reopen it.
The area has been closed for three years despite efforts to reopen it.
A community group has issued a warning to anyone thinking of trying to take over something Wirral Council owns as they fight three years on to reopen their much-loved golf course.
Brackenwood Golf Course was closed in March 2022 by Wirral Council as part of sweeping budget cuts that year. Since then, its future as a golf course has remained uncertain with a long process to get a successful bid to take it over.
An original bid was knocked back after the firm supporting the course’s golf club pulled out. However an identical bid was put forward by the golf club supported by Link Golf with councillors giving the go ahead in July 2024.
The club has also been set back on multiple occasions after council officers proposed the course be turned into sports pitches and a nature reserve with no golf course. However councillors have repeatedly rejected this with a compromise later reached to provide both.
Keith Marsh from Brackenwood Golf Club said Link Golf had submitted their business plan by the council’s deadline but things had been quiet since October 31. He said they had been trying to meet with the council for weeks with little luck.
Now the golf course is overgrown and dishevelled with fallen trees across the course, uncut grass, and bunkers filled with vegetation. Part of the course is being used as a motorbike track and over the last three years, it has been targeted by vandals and flytippers.
Officers at a meeting on March 19 provided an update on the golf course. They said further clarifications were needed and they were waiting for a response from Link Golf claiming they were in contact on a regular basis.
A Wirral Council spokesperson said: “The business case submitted in October did not meet the terms set by the committee when it met last July. The applicant has been informed of this and been given further time to submit a proposal in line with terms of the committee’s decision. We are still awaiting their response.”
However Mr Marsh wondered whether the council has the ability or resources to deliver what it promised arguing “confidence in the council is just pretty low amongst the public.” He told the ECHO: “We have got no faith and we have very little positive to say about the process from our own experience of it.”
He said the council still hadn’t delivered given the decisions made by councillors over the years to back the golf club, pointing to recent comments by Wirral Council leader Cllr Paul Stuart that “our officers do not run the council, it is elected members that run the council.”
Mr Marsh questioned why this was the case, adding: “The leader says the council makes the decisions about the direction that the council goes in. Then you have given the direction.”
Now the golf course’s status in limbo has raised questions about the process the council uses to put property it owns into community hands. For example only three libraries out of nine have reopened following cuts in 2022 and community groups who took two over have raised issues with the process and the time it took.
Wirral Council has introduced a new community asset transfer policy hoping to address some of these issues. The council previously set itself a 36 week deadline but it will look to streamline the process going forward as it considers closing a number of libraries later this year.
However Mr Marsh was sceptical the authority was “going to stick to this, or is it going to be another policy they have broken again,” adding: “At the moment it’s not working. It’s not working for communities.
“They have got assets going into disrepair. They seem to be happy that they are letting a piece of land go into such disrepair that its value diminishes so much that no one wants to take it over.
“They aren’t treating the community with the respect they deserve. Our members are furious. We have lost a lot of our members because of it. They have just got tired of waiting.
“They have just given up. The local residents are fed up of seeing what is going on. Before they could walk across the golf course, now it’s much more difficult. Now it’s not being used as a green space because of it. The public are finding it seriously frustrating.
“We are still fighting but three years along, it does become quite tiring.”
“From our point of view, it’s absolutely disgraceful the way they are treating communities. Any community group that is thinking about doing community asset transfer, I would tell them to be prepared for a very long, difficult, and awkward road.
“They do not make it easy. They make it extremely difficult. You feel they do not want it to be transferred.”
At the March meeting, councillors raised concerns about the length of time it took for the council to move assets into community hands. Cllr Ian Lewis, who was involved in the reopening of Wallasey Village library, said it was “painful to say the least, very often two and a half years, sometimes three years.”
He said people had to go to different parts of the council for help with bids but their requests weren’t seen as a priority and departments didn’t communicate with each other causing frustration.
Cllr Jean Robinson praised the policy’s detail but said the main concern had been the length of time it took while Cllr Jo Bird said the policy was a good start but not finished. Cllr Bird wanted to see new engagement with the community groups.
Council leader Cllr Paul Stuart was also approached for comment.
