Exclusive: The Isla Gladstone owes over £350,000 to Liverpool City Council

Dear readers — The Isla Gladstone Conservatory is a celebrated feature of Stanley Park and the north Liverpool landscape, not to mention a match day hospitality suite for Liverpool Football Club. According to a recent FOI shared with The Post, however, the business has owed a substantial amount of rent to Liverpool City Council for use of the building itself since 2018, raising questions about the council’s disinterest in or inability to recoup fees that could be used for essential services.

In today’s edition, Laurence asks why this debt has been allowed to stand for nearly seven years, in apparent contrast with St John’s Market traders, who the council locked out of their hall earlier this year for non-payment of rent. Is this a double standard? 

ICYMI — Don’t forget to read Laurence’s very different story from yesterday about the downfall of Liverpool’s arts scene and what to do about it, a piece described on X by Waterstones’ events coordinator Sarah Hughes as “one of the best pieces of journalism - specifically local journalism - that I’ve read in a long time”.

Editor’s note: Stories like this one — which involve poring over pages of council documents and conducting interviews to hold local powers to account — are only made possible thanks to the generous support of our members. If you’d like to help fund a renaissance of longform journalism in Merseyside for less than the cost of a Philharmonic pint, please join us today. 

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£120m plans to transform the former Littlewoods building on Edge Lane into a film and television campus can proceed following Liverpool City Council giving the final green light. Main restoration works can now get underway, including for offices, workshops, and two 20,000 sq. ft studios and sound stages. The hope is to bring more film work and jobs to the city. 

Turns out, the country’s first black woman football player grew up in Bootle, according to new historical research. Emma Clarke, born in 1876, spent her childhood in a terraced house with her parents and 13 other siblings. She went on to play in one of the earliest recorded women’s games in the 1890s, making her a pioneer of the sport. 

Exclusive: The Isla Gladstone owes over £350,000 to Liverpool City Council

To the residents of Everton and Anfield, the Isla Gladstone Conservatory has long been an iconic feature of the landscape. But despite being a well-loved and seemingly oft-visited local landmark, all might not be well behind its lucent glass windows.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by Kevin Robinson-Hale, a campaigner for the Liberal Democrats in Everton West, uncovered that the owners paid only £15,027.32 of the venue’s £25,000 annual lease bill in 2018. Since then, the council has not received any payments, meaning the Isla Gladstone is in rent arrears from 2019 to date. By the end of this year, the total bill owed will be in excess of £150,000, raising questions about the council’s disinterest in or inability to recoup fees that could be used for essential services. A council report from earlier this year, meanwhile, suggests Isla Gladstone’s debts are even higher: over £350,000.

Redolent of a miniature Crystal Palace, the structure was part of Stanley Park’s design by Edward Kemp, who also collaborated on Birkenhead Park with the Palace’s architect, Joseph Paxton. Kemp’s vision was to create a usable park space in North Liverpool, with the steel and glass structure serving as a greenhouse for tropical and exotic plants. The park opened in 1870, while the conservatory, built by ironworkers Mackenzie & Moncur of Edinburgh, followed in 1900. Back then, the park was surrounded by countryside, but it eventually became engulfed by the expanding city.

Famed for its floral displays until World War II, the conservatory sank into dilapidation in the 1950s. Attempts were made in the 1980s to convert the space, with little success. For the next three decades, the conservatory was little more than corroded iron and shattered glass, reclaimed by the plants it once housed.

According to the brochure provided by the Isla Gladstone Conservatory’s owners, since 2007, Stanley Park has undergone a £25m regeneration, which includes a full conversion of the building itself, the installation of a lower level, and the building of a café restaurant.

Reopened in 2009, the structure was renamed the Gladstone Conservatory to honour four-time Liberal prime minister William Gladstone, born on Rodney Street in 1809. Later, it was renamed after his granddaughter-in-law, who married into the family in the 1920s, studied in Liverpool, and became a designer of fabrics and wallpaper, to become the Isla Gladstone Conservatory it is today.

My introduction to the Isla Gladstone Conservatory was through my in-laws almost a decade ago. My wife’s aunt, a longtime resident of Priory Road, which runs directly through Stanley Park, was enamoured with the place. Sat in the café for afternoon tea, it’s hard not to be impressed by the views of the famous park and football stadia, as well as the quality of the service and food. Now a venue for weddings, funerals, and corporate events, the conservatory is also a matchday hospitality venue for Liverpool Football Club. 

“Someone messaged me in December, saying they’d been trying to get to the bottom of this for eighteen months,” Robinson-Hale says. “The council weren’t answering questions. This person had contacted members of other parties who were not helpful either. So I took it on myself to put in the FOI.”

Initially, Robinson-Hale’s FOI request was denied by the council for being “commercially sensitive” information, a response Robinson-Hale describes as “absolute bull”. He continues: “It should be publicly available. It’s a council-owned building.”

Carl Cashman, leader of the opposition on Liverpool City Council, told The Post: "When things like this come to light, I often feel it’s just the tip of the iceberg. How many other properties have Liverpool City Council got that they are renting out for free? I can’t understand how this has been allowed to happen.”