The fight for the heart of Rathbone Park

A football club wanted to transform derelict land into a community asset. It’s proved trickier than they imagined

Dear readers —  When Old Swan West councillor William Shorthall announced the news on social media that he’d successfully helped quash a proposal for a football community group to transform run-down Rathbone Park, some residents were relieved; others were crushed. The tale of Rathbone Park’s contested future is a story about how to balance various (and sometimes competing) interests to best serve a diverse community – as well as how distrust in local government’s ability to make the changes neighbourhoods desperately need has some people looking toward different solutions. 

Read all about the fight for the future of Rathbone Park in Shannon and Abi’s story below. And speaking of Abi….

We have some exciting news! Abi has been nominated for a British Journalism Award alongside Mill Media Co staff writers Kate Knowles, Joshi Herrmann and Mollie Simpson. The award is for our investigations into the world of exempt housing, including homelessness charity Big Help Project (which you can catch up on here). 

Editor’s note: Want to help us fund more explosive investigations and local accountability journalism? The only reason we’re able to do this kind of work is thanks to the generous support of our paying members. We quite literally cannot do any of this without you. Sign up today for less than the cost of an alcoholic slushie from the Baltic Market. 

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By Abi Whistance and Shannon Keating

Rathbone Park has seen better days. Scattered with shards of broken glass, chipped paint, and weeds shooting up through its concrete pitch, it’s small wonder that the park remains empty on a Tuesday afternoon, even during prime after-school hours. Sandwiched between the busy junction of Edge Lane and Rathbone Road, the sound of traffic offends your ears. It’s not exactly the kind of place you’d feel safe bringing your children for a kick-about. 

It’s been this way for years. Originally, the park was subject to legal options, meaning Derwent Holdings — the group responsible for the neighbouring Liverpool Shopping Park — could use the space to expand their commerce. However, when Derwent decided not to pursue this expansion, the land was returned to Liverpool City Council who, since then, have been unable to find a new use for it. 

That was until a bid for renewal was made in 2023, offering to convert the derelict site into a football pitch with green space, allotments and park amenities. The group behind that plan was City of Liverpool Football Club, a small Northern Premier League club and community group that, for the last decade, has been searching for a field to call their own. 

Founded in 2015 by a group of football enthusiasts, the club has been unable to find an adequate space in Liverpool for their matches, instead using Widnes Vikings’ rugby grounds as a temporary home. Rathbone Park, the club felt, was the perfect place to settle down. In the heart of the city and in desperate need of TLC, they wanted to inject some life back into the Old Swan site, using the space not just for their own football matches, but for the food bank collections and refugee fundraisers they also run on a regular basis. 

An illustration by Jake Greenhalgh

Paul Manning, the chairperson of City of Liverpool FC, was looking forward to hearing back from the council about the group’s grand plans. They’d applied for something called a Community Asset Transfer (CAT). A CAT does what it says on the tin: Community assets like parks and buildings owned by the local authority can be transferred across to community groups if they have a suitable plan to transform them. Austerity and budget cuts mean councils rarely have the funds to do these much-needed regenerative projects themselves, so CATs proposals are usually welcomed with open arms. 

But before the council alerted the group about the status of their application, Manning got the news that their dreams had been dashed – when Old Swan West councillor William Shorthall announced the news on social media. “It came as a massive shock,” Manning says. “We knew nothing about their decision until we saw [Shorthall] boasting about it on Facebook.” In a post on 10th October, Shorthall said he had “great news”, and was “pleased” to reveal the bid would not be going forward. 

“The [council] didn’t even let us know first,” Manning says, angry the football club had not been invited to the meeting where this decision was made, or alerted by the council before Shorthall took to social media. (They would receive a formal letter from the council about the decision a few days later.)

The reasons Shorthall cited for the council deciding to kill the proposal were “concerns that [he] raised along with many residents”, mainly from a community group named Friends of Rathbone Park. The group, which comprises a little over 200 members on Facebook, had previously said they were worried a football pitch would increase traffic in the area and eat into green space available to residents. 

In recent weeks, neighbours have been divided over the decision, with local councillors wading in on the row — calling residents “trolls” and engaging in social media spats. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the community is divided equally; a thorough scan of social media chatter about the project seems to show more in favour of the football club’s bid than against. Now, City of Liverpool FC has launched a petition to keep their campaign alive, with over 1,500 signatures of support gathered in just over a week. 

The dispute over Rathbone Park’s contested future raises questions about how best to revitalise underserved public areas: should the responsibility fall mostly to the council, local neighbours, or the wider Liverpool community – and whose vision should ultimately be prioritised? Is doing something to develop the area better than nothing at all?