A planning application to Sefton Council has been submitted on behalf of R&A Championships Limited. The plan is to build a “hitting tee” on Birkdale Common, a public park in Southport, Merseyside with the aim of extending the practice range of Hillside Golf Club for use at The Open Championship in 2026 and other tournaments in the future.

Birkdale Common is owned by Sefton Council and is a well-used public park. The plan as submitted proposes that a six foot high fence be constructed around the new hitting tee. This fence was not mentioned on R&A’s public consultation website during the consultation period. There is a vague, non-committal suggestion in the planning application that gates in the fence “…would potentially allow the area to be accessible to the public”. There is no guarantee in R&A’s proposal that the site will remain accessible to the public for the vast majority of the time when it is not in use during a golf tournament. This is not acceptable. The fence will also ruin the visual amenity of a much loved public park.

The area in question is particularly favoured by those with limited mobility who are able to park their cars and let their dogs off-lead.

We, the signatories of this petition, call on R&A Championships Limited to abandon its plan to take over part of our public park or alter it so there is no loss of public access with the exception of the duration of major golfing tournaments.

We call on Sefton Council not to grant permission for this application unless public access is permanently guaranteed and a condition of the application being granted.

There is no denying the importance of The Open Championship to Southport and the wider Liverpool City Region. However, as laid out in the planning application, the R&A’s reasons for permanently taking over part of our public park are vague, unsubstantiated, and frequently inconsistent. They do not adequately justify the permanent loss of public amenity.