Liam:
Birkenhead Park (the world's first publicly-funded municipal park doncherknow?)
A few years ago I was working in the UK heritage sector, and our parks specialist came back from a meeting with the team at Birkenhead, and (knowing of my WHS obsession) was excited to tell me about this propossal.
I must admit it seemed like a long shot back then, and I'm not fully convinced it would come to much, but nearly a decade later they are still plugging away, so it looks like there is some dedicated work going on.
It does look like a very lovely park though, and if royal hunting estates can get their way on to the list I can't see why this form of landscape design, which has influence and public interaction, shouldn't at least be considered of equal merit.
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The UK list tends to get updated after about 15 years, so I imagine we may start to see some early activity on a new set of sites now. Unlike some other countries we don't tend to put forward 2 or 3 sites every year, so current pace seems to be in keeping.
The Flow Country looks promising, none of the others particularly excite me to be honest (though I will admit there is a partial reluctance on my part to get fully behind Chatham as that would stop a bid from Portsmouth, which I think has an opportunity to make a better WHS, and it is also my home town :)).
Cresswell Crags still feels like it is on the t-list by mistake.
I can't even pin it to some minister in the revolving door at DCMS trying to get a local site propossed for their newsletter, as the local MP was Dennis Skinner. With the best will in the world I doubt he would have had much sway with the Conservative led department at the time of the update.