How Liverpool is bringing down drug deaths

Dear readers — Welcome to your Monday edition. Before we dive into today’s most crucial news items, tell us: what did you make of the weekend read? 

How green is Liverpool, really?

Why we have plenty of parks but not enough trees

The PostOwen Fay

Post débutant Owen Faye’s sober yet startling analysis of Liverpool’s green spaces has received great comments so far. We’re hoping it’ll continue to be a conversation starter, so if you haven’t already, let us know your take and please share the piece everywhere you can.

And now: for your regularly scheduled Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

Care workers abused in Stockbridge Village: Caring Connections, which provides palliative care and employs a number of foreign staff, told the BBC that they had been being racially abused, spat at, thrown at them during visits to the area. 

One care worker reported having a firework thrown at them by a group of men dressed in black. 

Caring connections chief executive Paul Growney said it is not simply “a case of putting on a few extra patrol cars" and said he hopes to work with anti-racism charity the Anthony Walker Foundation on an education programme for young people in the area. 

Merseyside Police said previous reports had been “comprehensively investigated”  and called on people to report hate crimes whether they are a victim or witness. 

Birkenhead cinema to become apartments… maybe: Wirralites of a certain generation will remember that Birkenhead was once replete with picture houses. One of the most prominent, the art deco Gaumont, was built in 1938 within a stone’s throw of Birkenhead Park’s classical Grand Entrance but ceased to function as a cinema in the 1960s.

New proposals by APG Capital — a property investment and development business — would, if accepted by Wirral council, convert the space into 25 one- and two-bed apartments.

If this idea sounds familiar, the previous scheme along these lines by 79th Homes never progressed; the 79th Group is currently subject to a police investigation. If the Gaumont really can’t be refitted for its original use, let’s just hope any plan to re-purpose it retains its architectural integrity. 

And if you've ever felt ripped off at Liverpool's Christmas markets, spare a thought for the traders. During a BBC Radio Merseyside phone-in session with council leader Liam Robinson, several business owners aired their grievances ahead of the attraction returning to St George's Plateau next month. One told Robinson he'd been quoted a whopping £12,000 to take a stall, while another said it would cost her "in the region of £14,000 to £15,000." Robinson invited her meet him to discuss the council could help.

The big story: How Liverpool is bringing down drug deaths

A ‘concerted effort’ to bring down drug deaths in Liverpool is ‘on the right track’, according to a leading academic studying substance abuse.

Figures released last week show deaths related to drug misuse in Merseyside have fallen for the third year in a row, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data. Coroners recorded 133 deaths as related to drug misuse in Merseyside in 2025, down from 137 the previous year, and from a peak of 158 in 2022.

Despite the downward trend, 2025 was the fifth worst year for drug misuse deaths on Merseyside since the ONS began reporting figures in 1993, and the number of people dying after misusing drugs in Knowsley, Sefton and on the Wirral is on the rise.