Dock Branch Park 

The Birkenhead 2040 Framework outlines Wirral Council's vision and the broader prospects for the transformative regeneration of Birkenhead. Notably, Dock Branch Park is a pivotal 'catalyst' project, with a surrounding neighbourhood capable of accommodating approximately 1200 new homes within the next 5-15 years. This regeneration programme will turn a disused railway track into a green space through the heart of Birkenhead. It aligns with the framework's vision of creating a 'garden city' and will serve as a valuable asset for active travel. Dock Branch Park will revitalize the historic railway line between Rock Ferry and Bidston Dock, closed since the 1990s, to benefit local communities. The park will offer designated routes for walking and cycling, connecting the town from Wirral Waters to Hind Street via Central station roundabout initially, with potential expansions in the future.  

^{Current site photographs}

 

 Dock Branch Community Panel 

The Dock Branch Community Panel are the lead community-collaborator for the comprehensive redevelopment of the Dock Branch Neighbourhood, with residents, businesses and partners working together to revitalise the neighbourhood, increase economic opportunities, and leverage the creativity and diversity of the community. The purpose of the Panel is to provide an open channel for the two-way exchange of knowledge, by bringing together the community’ s local expertise in their neighbourhood with the masterplan team’s technical expertise in regenerating places, and the regeneration delivery team (comprising designers, economists, planners, and advisors commissioned by Wirral Borough Council) and the developers and construction teams taking sites forward. Its role is to empower the local community in planning for, creating and controlling a vibrant, diverse, and high-quality neighbourhood in collaboration with partners. In so doing the Panel will enable more locally rooted development proposals that better respond to specific opportunities, wants and needs, for the collective benefit of those who live, work, and spend their time in Birkenhead town. 

Partnership working 

Community Panel meetings 

The Panel formed in Spring 2023 and comprised six members of the community; people who live and work in the proposed Dock Branch Neighbourhood area. They meet on a monthly basis with project managers from the Regeneration and Place Directorate within Wirral Council to discuss developing plans for the regeneration programmes happening in the area. GroundsWell have been supporting the work of the Community Panel over the last 12 months by facilitating monthly meetings, and funding a project led by the panel to further engage members of the wider community in the Dock Branch regeneration. Cole joined the panel in April 2023, as a younger representative of the community, he regularly joins meetings and has been involved in some community engagement activities over the last 6 months, as part of Wirral’s Borough of Culture year. 

 Cole: "I sometimes get a bit of imposter syndrome at panel meetings when I feel that others are more knowledgeable on a subject, and I feel like what I have to say doesn’t carry as much weight – but depends on the topic of the meeting. Having different people on the panel with various expertise helps, because we’re all an expert in something! I’ve been leading on working with a photographer and Wirral Met college to create images of the rail cutting where Dock Branch Park will be. Some of these photos were recently exhibited at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and were displayed at the GroundsWell annual retreat in November. Leading on this and feeling a sense of ownership for some of the panel’s work has helped improve my confidence as I can report on how the photography is going and feel like I have something worthwhile to contribute. I’m looking forward to leading on other side-projects like this in the future."

 

^{A tour of the current Dock Branch Park site}

 

Evaluability Assessment 

Working in partnership with the key stakeholders of the Dock Branch Park, including the Wirral Borough Council and the Dock Branch Community Panel, researchers from the Groundswell consortium conducted an evaluability assessment of the Dock Branch Park regeneration programme to assess programme activities to date and to recommend options for evaluation. Stakeholders were keenly interested in evaluating if the Dock Branch Park regeneration would impact the health and wellbeing of people living and working in the neighbourhood. They were also interested in understanding the role of the Community Panel, and the role of the wider community in ‘stewardship’ of the park, and ‘meanwhile use’ of green spaces while the processes for park design and build are underway. GroundsWell are currently finalising plans for the evaluation and are aiming to begin collecting data in Spring 2025. 

 Cole: "I liked the way the evaluability assessment involved the community in the research process. Having that conversation around the evaluation felt like we have a say in the research objectives, rather than researchers swooping into a community that they don’t know and making their own conclusions without speaking to people who actually live and work there."

 Systems thinking workshop 

In February 2024, GroundsWell facilitated a ‘systems thinking’ workshop with partners working in Wirral Council, and the community panel. The aim of the workshop was to use a positive enquiry approach to consider the role and structure of the panel through a positive lens, reflecting on what members were proud of, dreaming for the future, and agreeing on feasible tasks and activities that could be delivered over the following months and years. At the end of the workshop, the panel members and Wirral Council project managers for Dock Branch agreed on next steps for their partnership, which included a representative of the panel joining the Dock Branch Park steering group, and more collaborative efforts to engage the wider community in the regeneration. 

^{One of the pictorial systems maps created on the workshop day}

 

Cole: "The panel is, to the best of our ability, maintaining and upholding our ambitions from the systems thinking workshop. The support from GroundsWell has been invaluable, with them helping us keep momentum with facilitating the monthly meetings and funding some work that we are planning to expand the panel and do more engagement with the wider community. One challenge is that it can sometimes be frustrating waiting for decisions to be made in the Council around the Dock Branch Park, and we can lose momentum. I wish some of those processes could be more streamlined, sometimes we have to wait for weeks (sometimes months) for a response to what feels like a relatively straightforward request – but I appreciate that there are bureaucratic constraints on how quickly some queries can be responded too – frustrating, nonetheless.  

Being on the panel has expanded my understanding of how things work in local authority. I feel like I have a better understanding of how the Council runs, and as a resident of Birkenhead, it’s really helpful to hear things explained and have council officers joining the panel meetings to update us on progress and break down the barriers between the community and the local government."

 

For earlier blog posts about the Dock Branch Park, visit ‘A New Green Space in Birkenhead’ and ‘A Tour of Dock Branch Park’. 

Rebecca Crook, University of Liverpool + Cole Small, Dock Branch Community Panel