THE Southport Conservatives are calling on Sefton Council to publish all information on all applications submitted by the Council for funding since the Pier was closed in December 2022. It was recently disclosed by the Labour leadership of Sefton Council that there will no money coming from the National Lottery Heritage Fund any time soon. Now the Conservative Leader on Sefton Council, Mike Prendergast, says the public have a right to know details of all of the applications for funding that Sefton Council have submitted.
Councillor Prendergast said:- "The news that no lottery funding is forthcoming is a massive blow to those of us who want to see Southport Pier open again. We now urgently need to know what, if any, application, preliminary or full, submitted by Sefton Council actually said. I believe the time has now come for details of all applications made by Sefton Council to be put in the public domain whether that be to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, English Heritage, charitable organisations, central government or anyone else. Southport has a right to know what is actually being done to save our Pier. If we are not getting the money from any of these organisations then we need a plan to get it open ourselves. So far, Sefton Labour have rejected every proposal from opposition parties to try and start this without putting forward anything themselves other than empty messages that they hope to get the money from somewhere else. That isn’t good enough, the people of Southport deserve full transparency on this issue and a proper plan to get the our Pier open. Multi million pound refurbishment programmes aren’t delivered on just hope, we need action."
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