Cheers to 2025

Dear readers – welcome to 2026! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas break, and last night's celebrations haven't left you with too sore a head. (Note to self: stop drinking fizz).

It's Abi here, and I wanted to use the first day of 2026 to look back at some of The Post's greatest pieces published in the last 12 months. By “greatest”, I’m not just talking about good writing, but something more — the sort of investigations that change Merseyside for the better. These are just a few of the stories we’ve run over the last year that have ushered in change or shone a light on under-investigated aspects of this city. I’d love to hear more about the sort of stories you think merit looking into — please email me at abi@livpost.co.uk.

Laurence Westgaph was a known abuser. Why did National Museums Liverpool look the other way?

In February, we published one of our biggest investigations to date. Over three months of reporting, we uncovered a series of shocking allegations of sexual abuse and coercive control made about one of Liverpool's most prominent historians: Laurence Westgaph.

It started as a small tip, received by us in November 2024. There were rumours of alleged inappropriate behaviour by Westgaph towards female colleagues at his former workplace, National Museums Liverpool (NML), and The Post should look into it. The story quickly grew into something bigger. By February, I'd spoken to over a dozen sources – many of whom had engaged in long-term relationships with Westgaph – who told me he had controlled, exploited and harassed them across two decades.

Some of those victims – and others in the community aware of the allegations – reported him to NML when he was first hired in 2020. Despite this, NML continued his employment for years. "His behaviour is so brazen because he thinks he can just get away with it. He knows the museums will stick up for him,” one staff member at NML told me at the time. It was a shocking report that highlighted how some of our biggest institutions fail to protect vulnerable women and girls.

Exclusive: How Wirral Council’s multi-million pound regeneration dream crashed

There are few things I enjoy writing about more than a council cock-up – and unfortunately for them, Wirral council had a pretty bad 2025.

Entering the year on the precipice of financial collapse and finishing it with Birkenhead's regeneration works almost £12 million over budget, there are plenty more stories I'm working on in 2026 about how the local authority found itself in such dire straits.

Last year's investigation covered one important aspect: the regeneration works that were meant to transform Wirral into a utopia brimming with new tourist attractions, business and residential developments. Instead, a succession of shoddy regeneration directors, poor oversight and questionable decision-making led to nearly none of the above happening — and an inquiry into those failures was launched in July. One councillor went as far as to tell The Post the council “put a bullet in the head” of regeneration. Ouch.

Outside Hoylake’s migrant hotel, tensions are rising

The best part about working here is that we get to spend a lot of time reporting on the ground. Over at The Echo and other Reach Plc-owned titles, journalists are required to publish up to five stories per day, meaning spending hours at a protest or rally trying to understand the heart of a conflict just isn't possible.

Luckily, at The Post we're only required to file around one story per week. That means pieces like Laurence's dispatch at the Hoylake migrant protest was thoroughly researched, thoughtful and nuanced. Over the course of a several hours, he spoke to concerned locals, far-right sympathisers, and antifascist demonstrators outside the Kings Gap Hotel to get a handle on the debate. "This has been an excellent, balanced article, outlining the fears and anxieties of both sides of the argument," one of you wrote in the comments. "The time of day given to both sides," wrote another.

Rob Gutmann says he isn’t ruining Liverpool’s pub culture. In fact, he thinks he’s saving it

It isn't always about uncovering dodgy dealings though. Here at The Post, we pride ourselves in asking important cultural questions this city wants answers to. Like: Is Rob Gutmann really the worst thing to happen to Liverpool's pubs? The short answer is no.

Despite most people acknowledging his pubs have a certain cookie-cutter, cabin-in-the-woods quality, those Laurence and I spoke to for this piece make one thing clear: if Gutmann didn't have the cash to take on some of our run down watering holes or shuttered buildings, there are few others that would be willing to do so. While you may not like his slightly gauche style – better an open door than a boarded up one...

Exclusive: How a food bank siphoned £195,000 into private hands

Of course, I couldn't possibly compile this list without mentioning Big Help Project. This year, we published three excellent stories about ex-charity boss Peter Mitchell, starting in May with our investigation into his most recent business venture: Big Help Overseas. Despite the collapse of his empire in late 2024 – leaving dozens of workers unemployed without redundancy pay – Mitchell didn't have time to reflect. He was too busy in Gibraltar, soaking up the rays and setting up a new charitable company to help Ukrainian refugees. Allegedly.

Six months later, we published our second piece. This time, we focused on Knowsley Foodbank — a charity connected to Big Help. After a key source in the empire leaked us some vital documents, we were able to reveal that the food bank siphoned nearly £200,000 of public money into organisations connected to Peter Mitchell and his partner, Labour councillor Colette Goulding. Shortly after we published this piece, Goulding was suspended from the Labour party pending an inquiry.

If only things stopped there. More leaked documents allowed us to end the year with a bang: the same week Mitchell and Goulding were declared bankrupt in the UK (in May 2025), the pair signed a 12-month tenancy agreement for a "luxury" flat in Gibraltar.

While I’m using this opportunity to big up our work over the last year, this is also a thank you email. We wouldn’t have taken on most of these stories if it hadn’t been for our readers. One great aspect about running The Post is that we have a healthy stream of tips from readers who are plugged into the city and care deeply about shining a light on wrongdoing. But of course, while it would be an uphill struggle to do this without reader input, it would be completely impossible to do this without reader funding. 

We’re entirely funded by paid subscriptions: this means that all of the overheads that investigations like Big Help entail — the time for researching, taking not one, but maybe five or six trips to interview people, transcribing interviews, fact-checking and paying for legal advice — are covered by your subscriptions. I’m ambitious for Liverpool and I hope you are, too. There’s so much to be proud of in this city. But there’s also — as this email suggests — plenty of tangled webs that need looking into.

What were your favourite stories of 2025? Let us know in the comments.