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Welcome to “Sunday Snippets” a weekly feature from birkenhead.news. It is a round-up of our most popular good news stories from the last seven days. Click on each story to read the full article.
Local suicide prevention charity, The Martin Gallier Project have received a welcome funding boost from Cheshire based charitable support organisation, The Steve Morgan Foundation.
The huge £96,000 grant which has been awarded to coincide with World Mental Health Day, will help the charity to support even more individuals and families who have either contemplated or been affected by suicide.
The ground-breaking charity was founded by Jessica Gallier in the wake of her father’s tragic suicide in 2017. To date, The Martin Gallier Project has helped save over 8,000 lives and are the only suicide prevention, intervention and postvention service in the North West.
Read more …
On Sunday 5 December, Wirral Hospice St John’s will switch on 10,000 beautiful lights to shine out brightly from the trees and buildings in and around the hospice gardens, each evening in the run-up to and throughout Christmas time.
This year is the 25th anniversary of Light up a Life in which the people of Wirral traditionally come together in a moving, meaningful and uplifting way to commemorate and celebrate the lives of their loved ones who are no longer with us.
Each year the hospice invites our whole Wirral community, individuals and businesses, to sponsor a light to remember family and friends with all the donations helping to fund the hospice’s cherished medical and nursing services.
An exhibition of photographs of New Brighton dating from 1890 to 2021 is on display in the Rockpoint Pop Up Gallery in Victoria Road New Brighton until 31 October.
The gallery is open every day from 10am- 4pm and entry is free. Dogs are welcome and a ramp for wheelchairs is also available.
The photographs show the seaside resort from its early years at the end of the 19th Century right up to the present day. They include photos of the famous New Brighton bathing pool, the promenade and the tower.
Four Calday Grange Grammar students have received the prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarship.
The award is the most esteemed scholarship of its type in the UK and is aimed at those students wishing to pursue a career in engineering. Students are required to undertake a rigorous application process, an examination and an interview.
Successful scholars are sponsored by a commercial company, trade association, university, professional institution, armed service, government organisation, worshipful company, charitable trust or personal donor.
Bebington Civic Centre, including the central library, is now open to the public again after having to close while a structural assessment and some remedial works were undertaken.
Due to a structural incident at Bebington Civic Centre, the building was closed to the public while a full inspection took place.
It was not known at the time how long a full closure would be needed. All activities at the centre – including the library and any planned clubs, meetings or events – were cancelled until this week.
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Birkenhead Sixth Form College’s Friday Events Programme continued this week with an inspiring and thought-provoking talk from the Anthony Walker Foundation.
Starting a series of talks and tutorials based around October’s Black History Month 2021, Catherina Quinn from the Foundation has been speaking to Year 2 students about race and the impact of racism.
The Anthony Walker Foundation was set up in 2006 in memory of Anthony, who was murdered in Liverpool in a racially motivated attack, and they now work to tackle racism and discrimination through educational opportunities and promoting equity and inclusion for all.
Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and the Combined Authority have announced the appointment Gloria Hyatt MBE as the new Chair of the Race Equality Business Support Working Group with Ben Osu as Deputy Chair.
Gloria Hyatt, MBE, is a serial entrepreneur and Director of Teach Consultancy, since 2005, having previously founded and led an Academy to an outstanding HMI, in the heart of Liverpool’s multi-racial community, Toxteth. A race equality ambassador, she works with entrepreneurs, corporates, and SMEs, delivering transformational, business support, education, training, corporate and executive coaching, to influence systemic and cultural change.
As part of the Anthony Walker Foundation, Ben Osu leads on working to tackle racial injustice and promote racial equity to young people in schools across the region as well as working with employers to help them develop diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces which actively challenges racism and discrimination.
Get it Loud in Libraries is excited to host Claud’s debut on the Library scene at Birkenhead Central Library for an extra special matinee performance this November.
The first artist signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, Claud represents everything that is relevant about coming of age in the 2000s. With hooky melodies and pronounced choruses, this is an artist who emulates understated cool.
NME gave their debut album ‘Super Monster’ four stars, asserting that “Instrumentally and stylistically, ‘Super Monster’ is true to the all-embracing ethos of bedroom pop, with Claud pulling from a wide arsenal of sounds to flit between genre boundaries.”
Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, has convened a climate change and energy forum bringing together the public sector, environmental and business groups to share and collaborate on plans for decarbonising our economy and moving towards a net zero carbon future.
The “Together for Our Planet” climate change and energy event, held at St George’s Hall, Liverpool, attracted around 200 delegates from across the city region.
The event features sessions on Sustainable Energy, featuring updates on wind and tidal power in the city region, Greener Homes, looking at housing retrofit programmes and modern methods of construction, Greening our Communities, including a look at the Paddington Village local heat network, and an afternoon session on Digital, Diversity and Inclusion, featuring learning from the Voi e-scooter pilot scheme.
The Birkenhead Park School’s approach to improving young people’s academic ability in reading and literacy has been recognised with a shortlisting for a leading North West education award.
Educate Awards named the Birkenhead-based institution as finalists for their Innovative and Creative Literacy Award 2021 alongside two other schools, and the winners will be announced at a ceremony at Liverpool Cathedral on 19 November honouring the very best in educational practice.
‘The Big Read’ is an ambitious project at The Birkenhead Park School, aimed at improving the life chances and academic success rates for their students through focused reading time both in and out of school.
Wirral Grammar School for Boys in Bebington has been awarded the British Council’s prestigious International School Award in recognition of its work to bring the world into the classroom.
The International School Award celebrates the achievements of schools that do exceptional work in international education. Fostering an international dimension in the curriculum is at the heart of the British Council’s work with schools so that young people gain the cultural understanding and skills they need for life work in today’s world.
It’s October, which means it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. However, for charities like Prevent Breast Cancer, every month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
This very important charity is passionate about stopping the disease before it starts, by promoting healthy lifestyles and early diagnosis.
Prevent Breast Cancer is currently the only UK charity solely aimed at preventing breast cancer for future generations, and they are committed to encouraging both women and men to regularly check their breasts and know their body.
The last remaining Dock Gateman’s Hut on Tower Road at Wirral Waters has been awarded Listed Building Status. It was built around 1866 and is thought to have been designed by John Bernard Hartley, the son of the famous dock engineer Jesse Hartley.
The dock gateman’s hut at the Wallasey end of Tower Road falls within the bounds of the Wirral Waters regeneration project. As part of the plans for the East Float, it is proposed to retain the building and convert it for use as a cafe.
The editor of birkenhead.news applied to Historic England for the important building to be granted listed status earlier this year. It is one of a few remaining Victorian industrial buildings in the Birkenhead dock estate, and that it was likely designed by John Bernard Hartley, son of the famous Jesse Hartley, designer of much of the Liverpool Docks, including the Royal Albert Dock.
Port Sunlight Village Trust (PSVT) has appointed urban designers and landscape architects Planit-IE to develop a new public realm strategy for Port Sunlight. The brief was developed in partnership with Wirral Council who have a shared responsibility for the village’s public realm.
The public realm plays a fundamental role in how well places function and our perception and understanding of them. For PSVT, the commissioning of a public realm strategy represents a very significant step in the organisation’s journey towards realising its vision for Port Sunlight, to create ‘an inspiring place to live, work and visit’.
Since the launch of PSVT’s new 5-year strategic plan in 2019, a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to support the development of a new masterplan for the village. The staff and Board have worked with some brilliant organisations to develop their thinking, including Chris Blandford Associates, Creative Heritage Consultants, L&R Consulting, Outside Studios, Donald Insall Associates, the University of Manchester, EMBED and the Disability Collaborative Network, and The Environment Partnership.
The former House of Fraser site has been earmarked as a potential new location for Birkenhead Market under ambitious plans being proposed by Wirral Council.
Wirral Council has confirmed it will not press ahead with the option of a temporary market at St Werburghs Square following lengthy discussions with the Birkenhead Market community.
This means the current Birkenhead Market continues to be open for business as usual at its site in the town centre – near the bus station – and will stay there and remain trading as normal until a new Market building is developed over the next few years.
208 Green Flags have been awarded to parks and green spaces in the North West, with 30 of those awarded to Wirral alone – that’s 14% of the Green Flags in the region.
All 30 of last year’s winners have been awarded with a Green Flag to celebrate the dedication of parks and countryside staff, as well as Friends Groups and members of the public who volunteer their time and effort, to make improvements to these important areas.
The international awards recognise good quality parks and green spaces around the borough and each of the sites must have good environmental standards, be well maintained and provide clean and safe visitor facilities to be honoured with a Green Flag.
Wirral Met College students have been given an insight into a ‘live’ construction site thanks to GMI Construction and Peel L&P.
Plumbing and electrical students from Wirral Met visited the Hythe, a sustainable new business hub within the growing Four Bridges neighbourhood. Located next to the college’s Wirral Waters construction campus, Hythe will offer Grade A office space when it completes in December 2021.
With completion imminent, the site visit gave construction students a glimpse into the 2,330 sq. metre building, which has now reached its highest point of 15.3m. Plumbing students were shown the building’s boosted cold water system and discussed the process from installation planning to testing, maintenance and fault finding. Electrical students were shown various installation methods for commercial builds and how to inspect and test the electrical system.
A multi-million pound programme to replace more than 27,000 streetlights in Wirral with energy-saving LED lanterns is nearing completion.
A report to the Environment, Transport and Climate Emergency Committee this month will set out the progress on the scheme to date and provide updates about the reductions in costs and carbon emissions the replacement of the lights is achieving.
Nearly all the scheduled work will be completed by the end of 2021. As well as the upgrade to the lanterns themselves, more than 9,000 old streetlight columns have been replaced too as part of this work, which has been carried out under contract by SSE, the council’s contractors for the LED Replacement project.
Margaret Greenwood, MP for Wirral West, joined Wirral faith groups on a walk for climate justice, ahead of the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow from 31 October to 12 November.
People from across Merseyside took part in five relay walks to the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral to call for urgent action at COP26 to address the climate crisis.
The relays were organised with support from Christian Aid, Together Liverpool and Faiths4Change. Walkers were met at the cathedral by Rev Canon Dr Ellen Loudon and invited to attend the evensong service.
A new community support centre has been officially opened in Birkenhead to help those affected by poverty, isolation, addiction and homelessness. St Vincent’s Wirral, run and managed by the St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP), will provide a welcoming hub for the people of the Wirral.
The opening ceremony on Friday 15 October was attended by the Bishop of Shrewsbury the Right Reverend Mark Davies, Birkenhead MP Mick Whitley, Wallasey MP Angela Eagle, the Mayor of Wirral Councillor George Davies, SVP National President Helen O’Shea, and members of parish SVP groups, who have been instrumental in the creation of St Vincent’s Wirral.
Located on Grange Road West, the building, formerly the Merseyside Centre for Deaf People, hosts a foodbank and a daily afternoon drop-in café, which will reach out to people in need and offer signposting to local service providers who can provide specialised support.
The autumn weather was dry and crisp; perfect conditions for Birkenhead parkrun to celebrate its 250th event obn Saturday 16 October.
Birkenhead parkrun was launched in July 2015 and has gone from strength to strength ever since. The first event saw 220 finishers but there are regularly over 500 hundred people running, jogging and walking each week. Whilst the largest event saw 793 participants, over 11,000 different people have taken part over the years, with some participating each week and others as and when the urge to run takes them.
Stuart Rickers is Event Director at Birkenhead parkrun. He told birkenhead.news, “It’s a really, really fantastic event and we’re delighted to have got to the 250th run today.
Tranmere Rovers fortuitously recorded their first away league win of the season with a 1-0 win at Brunton Park through a Carlisle own-goal. Tranmere now sit at fourth in the league on equal points with third-placed Port Vale.
Carlisle is currently without a manager after Chris Beech was sacked following poor recent form. Carlisle have had just three wins from Beech’s last 19 games.
Tranmere had the ball in the net after just three minutes when a Kieron Morris free-kick was netted by Sam Foley, but the linesman immediately ruled it offside, to no great surprise from the players.