WIRRAL Council said it is “absolutely committed” to installing memorial plaques on its nearly £20m sea wall despite delays.

Ahead of construction of the flood defence scheme on South Parade in West Kirby starting in May 2022, memorial benches along the West Kirby promenade were removed to make way for work in the area. The benches were taken away to be repurposed or repositioned with new memorial plaques to be added once building work on the new wall was finished.

This finished in 2023 but the memorial plaques have not yet been installed on the sea wall prompting recent questions on social media about when they will be installed. In November 2023, Wirral Council had said work on the first set of new plaques was due to begin shortly.

In response to a constituent’s concern in January, Wirral Council officers told Birkenhead MP Mick Whitley: “I can confirm that it is still the intention to place replica plaques on the new flood defence, as close to the locations of the original benches as the design will allow.

“Unfortunately there has been some delay with this, due in part to the delays experienced during the construction phase of the scheme. Manufacturing of the plaques is now however, well under way and their installation will commence before the end of this month.”

On April 23, Wirral Council provided a further update. A spokesperson said: “It had been hoped that the plaques would have been installed by now, but due to the sheer volume of safety-critical reactive work the small in-house team assigned this task has had to undertake in recent months, this scheduled work has had to be put on hold temporarily.

“The plaques have been manufactured, however, and we remain absolutely committed to installing them as close as possible on South Parade to where the original memorials were situated, at the earliest opportunity.”

The sea wall which was built to protect homes along the town’s waterfront has come under heavy criticism in recent weeks after water pooled behind the defence for several hours after what has been described as the largest storm in over a decade. A review is currently underway to see if there are any lessons to be learnt.