Left Bank Birkenhead, Wirral – Wirral Borough Council and Igloo with PLACED

In spring 2021, Wirral Borough Council published its Birkenhead 2040 Framework, a 20-year plan to revitalise the Leftbank of the River Mersey. Successful engagement was identified as key to building trust with local communities and changing external perceptions, with resources allocated across multiple projects, including co-creation workshops, pop-up shops, drop-in workshops and a central hub for the town - BirkenEd’s Place.

 

 

Who is on the project team? 

 

Consultants and partners include: 

 

PLACED

 

David Roberts

 

Open

 

Maccreanor Lavington

 

Mott Macdonald

 

BDP

 

Civic Engineers

 

Useful Projects

 

Aspinal Verdi

 

Cushman and Wakefield 

 

CBRE

 

Deloitte

 

WSP

 

Di Mainstone

 

AHR

 

Ardent

 

Landscape Projects

 

Walker Sime 

 

Rob Burns

 

Miles Falkingham

 

Left Bank Collective 

 

Mark Elliott Films

 

Describe the context of the community engagement. Why did the engagement take place?

 

In spring 2021, Wirral Borough Council published its Birkenhead 2040 Framework, a 20-year plan - one of the most aspirational programmes in the country - to revitalise the Leftbank of the River Mersey, creating equity for people and place, opportunities for all and the best possible future for residents, communities and businesses.

 

This Framework openly acknowledges the challenges to delivery: Birkenhead has seen increasing socio-economic pressures and chronic lack of investment, making building trust with local communities and changing external perceptions very challenging, with significant apathy and skepticism about the potential for change.

 

Successful engagement was identified as a key factor in overcoming these challenges with a high proportion of resources allocated at the start of the process across multiple projects. Working on partnership with the Combined Authority, Igloo Regeneration was commissioned to deliver co-creation workshops, defining the vision and action plans for the area, which were included in briefs for appointed masterplan teams. 

 

Projects subsequently developed and delivered their own engagement plans with independent engagement specialists PLACED, encompassing design workshops with over 100 young people from local secondary schools including a SEN provider, pop-up shops in the shopping centre, events from their campervan, and drop-in workshops and engagement in community venues.

 

The complexity, scale, and multiplicity of projects and design teams requires a cohesive approach to deliver inclusive engagement, not defined by red-line boundaries nor delivered in isolation. The Council commissioned PLACED to open and run a central hub for the town - BirkenEd’s Place.

 

 

Tell us what you did, and how you did it. What was your approach in talking to the community?

 

PLACED is working with all design teams and council team leaders across multiple projects to determine the parameters of engagement, what the teams need to know, and the aspects that people could meaningfully shape, determining how to communicate complex projects and identifying questions people may have.

 

Seven projects, from neighbourhood masterplans to infrastructure, have been brought into the space to date, some with multiple iterations, with an estimated combined value of over £100M. BirkenEd’s Place has enabled a consistently high quality of approach, delivering enhanced, independently facilitated engagement, significantly more accessible than would have been possible through fragmented in-person engagement or online.

 

Information and activities are interactive and creative. Post-it notes cover walls, chalkboards display information, ping-pong balls and tokens are used for voting, large maps enable people to identify what they love, modelling allows people to explore ideas in 3D…

 

Council staff, PLACED Ambassador volunteers and design teams talk visitors through and support people engaging in the activities: walking tours, a people’s photography exhibition, workshops for local schools, drop in craft for families, community exhibitions and evening presentations. There has been 75 days of support (excluding PLACED staff) within the shop to date, much of this delivered by stakeholders volunteering wanting to support.

 

Forthcoming events will bring local authorities across Liverpool City Region, local young design professionals, interdisciplinary groups such as Women in Property and Universities, colleges and schools across the region, with the purpose of sharing knowledge and advocating for best practice in engagement on a wider platform.

 

How were the results of the community engagement incorporated into decision making? Have you continued the conversation? Will the community stay involved?

 

From the outset, Action Plans from igloo’s 2021 co-creation workshops informed the 2022 briefs for masterplan teams. Subsequently, PLACED worked with Wirral Borough Council, acting as independent curators of BirkenEd’s Place. Importantly, they also work with project teams to plan, create and deliver project-level engagement, providing continuous dialogue, building relationships, rapport and trust with the community and local organizations.

 

Following engagement, each project receives a full and detailed evaluation of the findings. This enables the design teams and Wirral Borough Council to make decisions fully informed by what has been shared in the space. Importantly, these reports can also be shared across design teams, allowing much greater breadth and duration – and therefore reach - of engagement than would traditionally be possible. After engagements, project information is kept within the space and can be brought out at any point.

 

The nature of engagement in the transformation of the whole town means discussions are rarely focused on a restricted redline boundary. BirkenEd’s Place enables holistic, cohesive conversations to be held about living and working across the whole town, often highlighting issues that are outside the traditional scope of built environment engagement. 

 

Importantly, projects are brought into the space at multiple stages, progressing from concept to worked-up designs, allowing people to see how their ideas are shaping decisions. On each occasion, we set out how previous inputs have helped to inform the designs and proposals on display, highlight anything that could not be delivered, and describe the next steps.

 

Describe your environmental or social impacts and your sustainability approach. 

 

“Evidence points to the clear social, environmental and financial benefits of delivering regeneration that focuses on people’s health and wellbeing. The Council’s Programme-leads are tasked to work with the communities of people, businesses and organisations that are already here. From these foundations the team are building an integrated, collaborative, supportive town through the lenses of liveability and resilience, health and wellbeing.”

 

Left Bank Birkenhead Delivery Plan 2023.

 

The overarching Vision set out in the Wirral Design Guide (attached) is integrated with the Delivery Plan, supported by the Council’s partners Homes England and Liverpool City Region CA. From this top-level leadership, the masterplan teams are producing project-level sustainability approaches (attached). 

 

To deliver transformational change, and for the town to embrace the dramatic changes and moves as set out in the Design Guide, the community need to be involved in this Vision. Conversations in BirkenEd’s Place, at events and online, allow us to understand people’s reservations, delivery challenges and potential conflicts. Consequently, we stand a better chance of addressing issues through both design and communication, to ensure workable solutions that work for people and are empathetic, responsive to and understanding of individual challenges and needs.

 

For example, work with the artistic community is producing initiatives such as BioArt – “Birkenhead’s Biodiverse Revolution” – which aims to nurture, support and empower a community of citizen gardeners / activists and share scientific knowledge with wider audiences, where local, national and international artist work in collaboration with scientists and researchers from University of Liverpool.