You may have been thinking you hadn’t heard a lot about the plans for the Wirral Transport Museum and Heritage Tramway for a while, in fact very little has been reported ever since the “Merseyside Three” trams departed for their new lives at Crich. The reason for the apparent silence has now been revealed in the local press with reports that Big Heritage have tried to start legal action against Wirral Council’s decision to remove funding worth £4.5 million from the museum.
Big Heritage CIC were awarded a 25 year contract to operate the museum and tramway in 2023. At the time they revealed grand plans to make it a major attraction in the region, with daily opening and the hopes that they would be able to reopen the tramway, which closed in 2023 along with the museum.
It was said that as part of the contract they would be given £4.5 million in funding from Wirral Council which would help with their developments. However, subsequently the Council decided (in March 2025) to remove the majority of this cash, and that’s where the problems have started.
Big Heritage have claimed that council officers had access to a report which was reviewing the funding before it was published and that the then Regeneration Director, Marcus Shaw, was specifically looking for reasons why the funding could be removed. Obviously, both of these claims were denied by the Council.
And now Big Heritage are trying to appeal the decision but they have been told that they submitted a case one day too late and as such it was rejected. A previous attempt to appeal in October 2025 had also been rejected. The Liverpool Echo is now suggesting that they may take the case to the High Court.
The result of all this is that the museum, which is still home to Liverpool 245, Hong Kong trams 69 and 70, as well as the Merseyside Tramway Preservation Society’s partly restored Warrington 28, remains closed and there seems little prospect of either it or the tramway opening any time soon. What all this means for the apparent 25 year lease Big Heritage hold remains to be seen but its probably fair to suggest the relationship between the CIC and the Council is a little on the strained side.