Focus of work
The Save Rimrose Valley campaign is fighting Highways England’s Port of Liverpool Access Scheme, which would see the destruction of Rimrose Valley Country Park: a vital community and environmental asset in a heavily urbanised part of north Liverpool.
What began as a simple campaign to ‘stop the road’ has turned into something much bigger. Save Rimrose Valley has learned how destructive roads and the traffic they support are to the environment, health and the planet.
In addition to calling for the road development to be scrapped, Save Rimrose Valley is demanding:
- Sustainable, non-road solutions to the movement of freight containers to and from the Port of Liverpool, taking HGVs off existing roads
- Bold new transport policies focusing on cleaner, cheaper and more frequent public transport
- Promoting walking, running and cycling as viable, safe alternatives to the car
- All transport investment in the area to tackle the climate emergency by reducing carbon emissions
- Health and wellbeing is paramount in all local and regional transport decisions affecting our communities
Impact
Save Rimrose’s campaign activites include:
- Holding demos and protests against National Highways’ Port of Liverpool Access Road. These have included a march to the Port of Liverpool’s gates, and a 6-mile walk to the city centre Headquarters of the Metro Mayor
- Corresponding with the Transport Secretary, Department for Transport Ministers, the Liverpool City Region’s Metro Mayor, both constituency MPs, the local authority and other key stakeholders to further the campaign’s aims
- Attending key conferences, including the Labour Party Conference, Transport for the North & Northern Transport Leaders Conferences to network, ask questions and highlight the campaign’s demands
- Encouraging public participation in all relevant consultations, including better bus services, active travel provision and the City Region’s new Local Transport Plan
- Staging stunts and events to highlight the campaign in innovative ways. These
include releasing their own version of Blur’s ‘Parklife’, light-projecting messages onto landmarks in the city centre and hosting ‘Liverpool’s Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever’ welcoming over 200 Kate Bush-es to the park under threat - Running separate campaigns to encourage greater use of active travel, public transport and car-sharing, with a particular focus on engaging with local schools, like ‘Let’s slam the brakes on pollution’
The campaign has achieved fantastic success, with the road scheme scrapped in October 2024. Following the announcement, Stuart Bennet, the campaign coordinator, said:
Today’s outcome is the culmination of 7 years’ hard work, community action and vindication that what we’ve been saying all along, is correct. The road proposal was the wrong ‘solution’, which would have destroyed the last green space of its kind in what is already a heavily urbanised and polluted part of Liverpool.