1️⃣ The Town Council has gone silent
On 5 November, I sent Northwich Town Council a formal letter setting out the legal restrictions on Verdin Park, the covenants, the statutory trust, and the fact that the Council has no lawful authority to negotiate away public parkland without following the required legal procedures. The Council has not replied at all.
No acknowledgement… No confirmation… Nothing.
For a matter of this seriousness, the silence speaks volumes.
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2️⃣ They are refusing to release key information
FOI requests have been met with a pattern of refusals, excuses, delays and technical obstacles.
NTC insists it would take 552 hours to find minutes relating to the park, even though the key legal documents are already held together by their own solicitors, and they claim to have taken legal advice. They have repeatedly issued blanket statements of “no information held”, even as their own councillors publicly discuss the issue.
The NHS Trust has delayed providing documents relating to its early parking plans, despite NTC’s FOI disclosures proving that discussions began as early as 2023.
Public bodies have a duty to help residents access information, not block, delay, and bury it.
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3️⃣ Councillors are blocking & deleting residents’ posts on local Facebook groups
Multiple residents have reported:
- posts about the Verdin Park car park being rejected without explanation
- comments being deleted
- councillors acting as administrators and gatekeepers
- councillors pressuring other groups to reject posts
- official updates being posted only in private groups where residents can be muted
- the Monitoring Officer refusing to take any action at all
This is a clear breach of the Nolan Principles of Openness and Accountability. When our elected representatives control the narrative by deleting public criticism, democracy is damaged.
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4️⃣ And now…
statements made by Councillor Sam Naylor on Radio Northwich. During Friday’s phone-in, Cllr Naylor made two extraordinary claims:
• “If Verdin were alive, he would support the car park.”
This is pure fiction used to justify taking public land. Joseph Verdin’s covenant requires the park to be kept exclusively for public recreation, not institutional parking. We don’t need to imagine his views; he wrote his wishes into legally binding documents.
• He then boasted about how lovely his garden is, and how he has recently purchased woodlands.
This was said in response to a caller pointing out that most residents in Castle don’t have gardens at all and rely on Verdin Park as their only green space. It was an astonishingly tone-deaf moment. Residents are fighting to keep their public park, while a councillor casually brags about private woodland.
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5️⃣ Councillor Naylor failed to declare his role as an NHS Trust Governor
At the Northwich Town Council meeting on 3 November, several councillors declared interests relating to Cheshire West and Chester, but Councillor Sam Naylor did NOT declare that he is an appointed Governor of the Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the very organisation seeking to take part of Verdin Park for staff parking.
He then participated in the debate without declaring this conflict of interest.
This is a breach of:
- the Nolan Principles of Integrity, Openness, and Accountability
- the Council’s own Code of Conduct
- and the basic expectation that residents should know when a councillor is sitting on both sides of a controversial proposal
Residents deserve transparency. Instead, a councillor with a formal role in the organisation pushing for the car park took part in the debate without declaring it.
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What all this shows
- Information is being withheld.
- Residents’ voices are being censored.
- The Council is acting without confirming it has legal authority.
- Public consultation was delayed until long after key decisions were already being discussed.
- And elected officials are dismissing legitimate concerns while expanding their own access to green space.
This campaign is not just about saving Verdin Park. It’s about fairness, transparency, and the basic right of residents not to be shut out of their own community’s future.
The public has a right to know the truth and to be heard.
We will not be silenced. We will not stop. We will keep fighting to ensure Verdin Park remains exactly what Joseph Verdin gifted it to be; a public place of recreation for the people of Northwich, not a private car park for an institution that refused to level with us in 2023.