When Protection Becomes Exclusion - The Loss of Victoria Road for Disabled Visitors

The National Trust’s major conservation project at Victoria Road in Formby is approaching completion, and environmentally, there is no denying its scale or ambition. Tens of thousands of tonnes of dangerous rubble have been removed from the beach, natural sand movement has been restored, and important dune habitats have been reconnected for rare wildlife.

From a conservation perspective, this is a success.

But for a growing number of Formby residents and long-standing visitors, particularly disabled people and those with limited mobility, the project has come at a deeply personal cost, one that cannot be softened by good intentions or scenic walks.

The replacement car park at Victoria Road will provide 237 spaces, including 10 accessible bays. On paper, this matches the combined capacity of the former beach and woodland car parks. In practice, however, the reality on the ground is very different.

The former beach car park

The former beach car park which offered closer access has been permanently removed and returned to dunes. The old access road has gone. All roadside parking along the main road has disappeared. What remains is a single inland car park and a walk of roughly half a mile through hilly woodland, dunes and then Sandhills to reach the beach.

It is a beautiful walk.

It is also, for many people, completely inaccessible.

For disabled visitors, people who use walking aids, those with chronic pain, heart or lung conditions, or parents pushing pushchairs, that distance over uneven terrain is not a “nature-rich experience”, it is a barrier. The presence of disabled bays in the new car park feels, to some, meaningless when the journey that follows is simply not possible.

Residents have also pointed out that the National Trust operates other coastal sites where long boardwalks have been installed specifically to ensure disabled access across sensitive dune systems. No such provision exists here. The result is that people who have visited Victoria Road all their lives are now being quietly redirected elsewhere and told, in effect, that this part of Formby’s coastline is no longer for them.

The Trust has highlighted Lifeboat Road as a more accessible alternative via a boardwalk. While that may work for some, it does not address the loss of access at Victoria Road itself, nor does it reflect how people actually use Formby’s coastline.

For many, Victoria Road was their place, familiar, manageable, and reachable, the experience was never just about reaching the beach. The slow drive through the pinewoods along the central road, spotting red squirrels and simply sitting quietly among the trees, was the visit itself. It was not unusual to see people set up with deckchairs, eating sandwiches beneath the towering pines, soaking up the peace and familiarity of a place they had known for decades. That road has now gone. What remains is a single destination, the tarmac of the new car park and for some, that marks the end of a Formby experience they will never be able to return to.

There is also growing frustration among residents living at the Victoria Road end of Formby. During the planning process, many believed, rightly or wrongly, that the project would ease long-standing traffic congestion by improving parking provision. That expectation has not been met.

Parking numbers have not increased. Congestion has not been solved. On busy days, traffic will still queue through residential streets, bringing noise, gridlock, blocked driveways, and emergency access concerns, just as it has for years. For residents who already endure the pressures of peak-season traffic, the sense that nothing has changed is deeply disappointing.

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable, but necessary.

Conservation should not mean exclusion. Protecting a legally sensitive landscape should not mean quietly accepting that disabled people will simply stop coming. And a project described as benefiting “both wildlife and people” must be judged not only by ecological outcomes, but by who is no longer able to access the place at all.

No one is questioning the importance of restoring Formby’s dunes or removing dangerous rubble from the beach. That work needed to be done. But many in the community are now asking whether more could and should have been done to ensure that access was protected alongside conservation.

For some Formby residents and visitors, Victoria Road is no longer a place they can return to. Not because they don’t love it, but because they physically cannot reach it.

As the new car park opens and summer approaches, these concerns are unlikely to fade. Instead, they raise a wider question about how future conservation projects are shaped and whether access, inclusion, and lived experience are given equal weight to environmental outcomes.

Victoria Road may now be wilder, safer for wildlife, and closer to its natural state. But for a section of the community, it has also become unreachable.

And that is something worth saying out loud.

Tell us what you think….

Email: info@formbybubble.com