'Forgotten' Liverpool community asking: where is the money you owe us?

Dawn Millea is a woman on a mission. She has spent the majority of her 63 years on earth living in the south Liverpool suburb of Speke. She has raised four daughters here and is now a proud nan to no less than 16 grandchildren, many of whom live locally. But she says the place she and they call home is unrecognisable from what went before it and in danger of being forgotten about altogether.

Lying around seven miles south-east of Liverpool city centre, Speke today resembles a large housing estate, but it wasn't always this way. Originating as a village of mainly farmland and cottages, the area was incorporated into the Liverpool Corporation and merged with the city in 1932.

From this point on, this area of the city saw rapid development. The small population of 400 people exploded to 25,000 by the end of the 1950s. Speke Airport (now John Lennon Airport) began operating in 1930 and its continued development and expansion plus the arrival of myriad factories and industrial sites would go on to define this area for generations to come.

But for those living in this part of the city, that definition and what they see as the subsequent and continued neglect of local residents, has come at some cost.

"If you don't live or work here, theres rarely a reason to visit, so people dont always realize that Speke is like a little self-contained place all on its own," explains Dawn, who joins the ECHO for a drive around her local community.

"Geographically, our housing estate is completely hemmed in on all sides. We have the John Lennon Airport runways on one side, the Oglet shoreline on the other. We are blocked in by the massive Jaguar Land Rover and Ford industrial plants and are cut off from the rest of Liverpool by the busy A561 Speke boulevard.

"Because we are boxed in by the airport, factories, and dual carriageways, our children cannot safely travel out of the neighbourhood on foot to find a playground or a sports pitch. We are entirely dependent on what is inside our own boundaries."

It is this last point, the lack of facilities for children, that has turned Dawn into a community campaigner in recent times. She and others are incensed by the lack of a proper park with playing facilities to serve the 4,000 children in Speke, an area that has historically found itself with some of the worst poverty levels of council wards in the whole country.

As well as no substantial parks, there are also no secondary schools serving this community. The last to close was Parklands High School, which shut in 2014, although the 100m Private Finance Deal deal it had been built under meant the council would continue to pay millions for years afterwards. (The school was later partially reopened as a Pupil Referral Unit.)

Dawn explains that the approximately 1,400 secondary school-age youngsters in Speke currently have to be split up and travel to high schools in Halewood, Widnes or Garston to continue their education.

And there are similarly arduous journeys required for families wanting to take their kids to a park, she explains.

"Recently, my grandkids wanted to go to the park, it took us three car loads to get to Hale Park and three car loads back. That's what we have to do every time. There is nowhere to play."

In the 1980s, Speke had a central park with play equipment and green space. During the 1990s, the space was altered, eventually sold off, and replaced by a Morrisons supermarket and car park.

As we drive around the area, Dawn points to an admittedly large number of green spaces on the estate. The problem is many of them are fenced off and locked up and many appear to be overgrown and unloved.

On West Mains, there is a sizeable piece of land. "It's all hills with no flat spaces," explains Dawn. "Kids can't do much there, it is not a park, there is nowhere for them to play."

A short drive away on Central Way, there is a spot known to locals as Little Heath playing fields. The fields are clearly fenced off and locked up, but youngsters, desperate for a place to play, have managed to remove a section of fencing and enter.

"That's council-owned," says Dawn. "We had a football team in Speke but they haven't got anywhere to play now. The field is locked up and no one is using it. As you can see the kids have found a way to get into there because they haven't got anywhere else to go." Liverpool Council says it is exploring further support for grassroots football at Little Heath, with plans for a new changing room.

As we continue our journey we pull onto South Parade. On one side, work is ongoing for the creation of a large housing development from South Liverpool Homes, the social housing provider responsible for much of the ongoing building in this area, including recent developments in Greenway Road and Western Avenue.

When completed, there will be 92 new homes created here on Central Way. Dawn glances at the construction work and adds: "When will the focus shift from pouring concrete foundations to investing in the actual community infrastructure like a park? We just get more houses, more people and not enough facilities."

And she has a point. Directly over the road from the new housing estate on South Parade is what appears to be another unkempt and uninviting space, complete with prison-style fencing.

"These fields have just been left to rot. They are not fit for anything and they have been like this for years," explains an exasperated Dawn.

"A lot of the kids are saying that if they do get a park, they don't want this prison fencing around it. They say everywhere they look in Speke, it looks like a prison."

There is one place the kids of Speke can still go to, says Dawn. The beloved 'Venny', short for adventure playground, based in Conleach Road, has been a lifeline for generations of families in this area over its 50-year existence. It is now the only full-time provider of children's services in Speke.

"It's all we have got left," says Dawn, who campaigned to keep The Venny open in the 1980s. "My kids used to go there when they were little, it was like their second home. It is only open at certain times now but it is an absolute lifeline for people in Speke. Without that we would have literally nothing."

For its part, Liverpool City Council says it is investing in Speke and will spend cash on improving The Venny itself. The local authority also pointed to the recent replacement of a play area in Blackrod Avenue.

We get back into the car and head for the final stop on our whistle-stop tour of Speke. It is another patch of land on Stapleton Avenue.

"This is where one of our former secondary schools stood," explains Dawn. There are admittedly some facilities here, namely a concrete 5-a-side football court, surrounded by some green space, which looks more of a shade of yellow after recent hot weather.

This was the former site of Stapleton Avenue School, one of a number of school sites to have been knocked down in this area.

Both the former Pope John Paul School on Alderwood Road and the former Speke Comprehensive School in Central Avenue were demolished to make way for hundreds of new homes. Dawn says promises were made about a new park at the time that never materialised.

"So this space," she says, gesturing at the very basic park area on Stapleton Avenue, "is the very, very last piece of land that is big enough for a communal park for the kids of this area."

"As you can see a lot of Speke just looks like wasteland. But the kids are coming up with great ideas for how to make this area better. They just want things that normal kids want, a place to play and have fun. It isn't a lot to ask for. These are the dreams of young children around here."

"We get told that there are lots of green spaces in Speke, and there are, but they are not places where kids can play."

"Years ago you could walk down there and go down Dungeon Lane to Oglet Shore," she adds, referencing the nearby beauty spot famously loved by a young Paul McCartney.

"Obviously we can't do that now because they put a big fence up," she adds. In 2019 locals here were furious after Dungeon Lane - the inspiration for Sir Paul's latest album - was partly closed as part of works to extend the perimeter fence of the airport, cutting off local access for Speke residents to the picturesque shore.

"Why are they allowing our remaining green spaces to be bought up by private companies while ignoring local residents? Over 10,000 people signed the petition to save Oglet Shore and it was completely bypassed," adds Dawn.

Dawn and fellow campaigners believe there is existing money owed to Speke. Findings from a recent Freedom of Information request suggest that over a ten-year period the council received more than half a million pounds in developer contributions for Speke - with less than 10% actually spent on the area.

This cash comes from what are called Section 106 payments, which are financial contributions made by developers to local councils to help mitigate the impacts of what they are building. The money is intended to be spent on local amenities like affordable housing, road infrastructure and - you guessed it - parks.

Dawn and others living here are keen to know why, if Liverpool Council has this cash in its coffers, which was intended for this community, has it not been spent here when investment in local infrastructure is so badly needed.

"Why is that being hoarded in a bank account when our kids are playing on concrete street corners?," asks the grandmother of 16.

But other funding is heading Speke's way. Speke East is one of four areas of the city to be named as one of the government's Pride in Place communities. The scheme aims to improve disadvantaged neighbourhoods with around 2m per year across a decade, with decisions on how the cash is spent made by resident-led neighbourhood boards,

Earlier this year the Rector of Speke, Reverand Philip Saltmarsh was named as chair of the Speke East Pride in Place board, promising to make sure that "every voice is heard to deliver meaningful impact" for the area. He can bet that one voice he will certainly hear is Dawn's, no one is more passionate about this place than her.

"We just feel forgotten about," she explains. "It has been slow and they have taken a little bit from us here and there and people don't notice it when they are busy. But people are really noticing it now. They remember what we used to have and can see we have nothing now. These kids are our future and there is nothing for them."

"This place is crumbling around us. It has been systematically pulled apart and now it is just a forgotten area. I feel like I have to do something for the kids, because they are our future."

"I think the lack of a park is actually part of a much bigger picture here. It feels like Speke is systematically being stripped of almost every community resource that makes a neighbourhood liveable."

We asked Liverpool City Council for a response to the complaints from Dawn and the Speke Community.

In a response, deputy council leader, Cllr Ruth Bennett insisted that Speke had benefited from investment in recent years.

She said: The council has begun a programme of replacing play parks across the city and Speke has benefitted from this, a brand-new play area plus exercise equipment has been installed in Blackrod Avenue, and similar improvements will be brought to Speke Venny from September.

We are exploring further support for grassroots football at Little Heath Playing Field with plans for a new changing room and during August we will be looking into how we can improve the infrastructure across Speke green space, including where new benches and bins are needed across the whole area.

In the 2025/26 budget the Council significantly increased its provision, investing an additional 7.5m to improve street cleaning and the maintenance, management and operation of its green spaces across the city. This investment is in recognition that good quality usable greenspace benefits the health and wellbeing of the residents of Liverpool.

The funding has seen the introduction of two new barrow walkers in Speke and a new parks maintenance teams to deliver a more consistent maintenance schedule, improving safety, usability and the overall presentation of our parks. In addition, the new funding will be used for the refurbishment of park infrastructure such as benches, bins, signs, and railings.

Speke East is one of four areas of the city that will receive a share of 20 million through the Government's Pride in Place Programme. How this funding will be spent will be decided by the local community and residents and through dedicated neighbourhood board.

Similarly, Speke is one of 34 areas that has been identified as part of the Council's Community Renewal Fund. The fund is targeted at areas in the city with high levels of deprivation, Speke will receive a share of 1.8 million investment each year, which has been designed to be community-led, allowing it to be spend on the priorities that matter most to local residents.

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