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.
First businesses move in to Start-Yard, Birkenhead’s answer to Baltic Triangle business community
A stone’s throw from the River Mersey, Start-Yard is based in a former industrial garage building next door to the historic Birkenhead Priory and Cammell Laird shipyard.
Redeveloped for twenty-first century needs, inside phase one of Start-Yard are affordable self-contained work units along with open plan workspace desks. In addition to the offices, it also houses a bar area where drinks and light snacks can be ordered.
The first business to move in was Scenegraph Studios which provides Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, 3D scanning and tours, and games development services.
Magic of Christmas coming to Woodside
A six-week long Christmas market is coming to Wirral this festive season. Woodside Food & Market will be stepping into Christmas every weekend until 19 December.
From 10am – 5pm every weekend you will be able to shop, eat and enjoy mulled wine at Woodside, we will have 24 Wirral based independents offering some of the finest gifts that you can buy for your friends and family.
Thanks to Morgan Sindall each Saturday and Sunday 2pm – 4pm, Santa and his Elves will be visiting Woodside to give out selection boxes and have photos taken with children that want to come down and see him.
Pilgrim’s UK announces plans for further investment in its Bromborough site
Pilgrim’s UK, the leading food and farming business and the world’s largest producer of higher welfare pork, has announced it will be investing in its Bromborough site to enhance its capabilities and create more local jobs.
The site has already benefitted from significant investment since becoming operational last year, with state-of-the-art food manufacturing technology and equipment, making it a centre of excellence for the UK’s fresh pork manufacturing.
Pilgrim’s UK has now committed to further investment in the site over the coming months to improve production efficiency, overall capacity and create a single production site for all fresh and higher welfare pork solutions. It is also injecting funds to support further growth and expansion in the future capabilities of the site, including new machinery and innovative technologies in 2022.
Seafarers centre reopens and launches Christmas appeal
Ecumenical charity Liverpool Seafarers Centre (LSC) is launching its Christmas 2021 appeal as it opens the doors of its centres in Crosby and Eastham for the first time since the Covid pandemic struck in March 2020.
LSC chief executive John Wilson says the charity is aiming to give gifts to more than 1,000 seafarers visiting Merseyside ports during the festive period.
The gifts will be distributed to ships calling at Merseyside ports during Christmas as well as ships docking earlier in December which will be at sea during the festive holiday.
New diagnostics service in Wirral to boost access to care
Patients across Wirral are benefiting from earlier diagnostic testing thanks to national investment in a new service called Clatterbridge Diagnostics.
This is one of the first Community Diagnostic Centres in England that are being established as part of a national programme aimed at increasing diagnostic capacity.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC) and Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) are working in partnership to deliver the service after being awarded a share of £350m national funding to create one of the 40 new Community Diagnostic Centres planned across England.
Wirral Council budget – hundreds get involved as consultation reaches halfway
Hundreds of people have had their say on Wirral Council’s budget priorities for the coming year as the consultation reaches its midway point.
The council has been asking residents to take part in the consultation to help councillors and council staff understand their key priorities for the coming year within the reduced budget it has.
More than 300 surveys have been completed and dozens more have added their ideas and suggestions as the authority looks at setting a budget for 2022-23.
Tranmere Rovers are supporting Shelter’s #NoHomeKit campaign this Boxing Day
Tranmere Rovers will be supporting Shelter’s #NoHomeKit campaign by wearing their away kit for the Boxing Day fixture against Barrow AFC.
Shelter is asking clubs and fans to ‘ditch their home shirt’ for their games on Boxing Day to raise awareness of the fight to end homelessness and the housing emergency.
Homelessness, and the housing crisis in general, is reaching a critical point with 180,000 households having been made homeless since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Tap or click to follow birkenhead.news on Twitter Community events to involve residents in plans for future of Birkenhead
Wirral Council has commissioned a team of architects and urban designers to create the Birkenhead Design Guide to support the Birkenhead 2040 Framework.
Together these documents will guide future development as part of an ambitious programme for Birkenhead to design the sustainable neighbourhoods of the future.
Over the last year Wirral Council has developed a framework for the transformational regeneration of Birkenhead, the Birkenhead 2040 Framework. This is a twenty-year plan which sets out the most radical proposals for the town since the 1947 Town Plan.
Metro Mayor’s behind the scenes visit to Wirral’s newest visitor attraction
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram took a behind the scenes visit to the Seacombe Ferry Terminal last week to check in on the development of the new Eureka! Science + Discovery visitor attraction, due to open in Autumn 2022.
The visit was the first time that Mayor Rotheram had been to see the site since Spaceport’s closure.
Speaking of his visit, he said, “It was great to be invited to take a look at how Eureka! Science + Discovery is progressing so far. We’ve invested £6.4m to help deliver what I think is another outstanding attraction. What was tired and underused will be replaced by a fresh, interesting and interactive new offering. This is just a part of our wider plans revitalise Birkenhead and, in particular, the Left Bank area.”
Oxton by-election – meet the candidates
This week, many Oxton residents will be heading to the polls to place their X in the box next to the name of their chosen candidate in the council ward by-election.
The by-election is taking place due to the death of Cllr Andy Corkhill, who passed away on 4 October. Andy was just 36, but had been fighting recurring outbreaks of cancer since he was at university.
The election for the Oxton ward will take place on Thursday, 25 November, with polling stations open between 7:00am and 10:00pm.
Two more Wirral libraries reopened this week
Offering access to books and IT facilities, Higher Bebington and Upton libraries will be the next sites to reopen.
Upton Library will reopen from Friday 19 November and Higher Bebington will follow on Saturday 20 November.
Opening hours of the sites will look slightly different. These will be:
- Higher Bebington – Tuesdays 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm and alternating Saturdays 9am to 1pm
- Upton – Tuesdays and Fridays 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm and alternating Saturdays 9am to 1pm
Tiny Forests taking shape thanks to Wirral children
Green-fingered school children from Wirral have been creating new Tiny Forests this week as part of a partnership commitment to tackling climate change.
More than 1,200 new trees have been planted at Citrine Road in Seacombe and The Delph, Wallasey, by pupils from a number of local primary and secondary schools supported by families and community groups.
The Tiny Forest initiative is led by Earthwatch Europe, an environmental charity with science at its heart. They are densely-planted native woodlands the size of a tennis court that can help mitigate the impacts of climate change, support urban wildlife and reconnect people with nature, offering multiple co-benefits for a community.
Immersive art experience launches in Birkenhead
On the evening of Friday 19 November at the Bloom Building in Birkenhead, the launch event for Convenience Gallery’s latest ‘In Cahoots’ showcase, ‘Floor Plan’, an art installation by Ellie Towers and Reece Griffiths took place.
Floor Plan is an attempt to show the way childhood memories and activities manifest themselves in retrospect. Rooted in the idea of ‘weekends’ spent as a child, it has grown into something which attempts to reclaim lost places and pivotal events by pushing them into a shape that subverts the absurd.
birkenhead.news spoke to Ellie and Reece about their inspiration and hopes for their installation.
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