Kim Cattrall slams Mayor of Liverpool in park sell-off row

Sex and the City star lived in the city as a girl

Liverpool-born actress, Kim Cattrall, and Mayor Joe Anderson exchanged insults over the city council’s plan to sell off Sefton Park Meadows (Getty/Colin McPherson)

She is best-known for playing a high-flying Manhattan socialite. But Kim Cattrall remains a proud Scouser at heart, and now the Sex and the City actress has become embroiled in a furious row with the Mayor of Liverpool over his decision to sell off the city’s green spaces.

Mayor Joe Anderson and the Liverpool-born actress exchanged insults over the city council’s plan to sell off Sefton Park Meadows, 11 acres of land, to developers.

Cattrall, who now lives in New York but was born and went to school in Mossley Hill, warned that the sell-off proposal would “encroach on the people’s land”.

She returned to the park while visiting Liverpool to pick up an Arts Icon award and recalled: “I love Sefton Park. I was lucky enough to grow up playing there. Sefton Park was a refuge for my mother during her childhood years. So I’m very disappointed that the Mayor has made the decisions that he has.”

However Mayor Anderson bristled at the Golden Globe-winner’s intervention.

“It’s all very well for a Hollywood superstar to shout from the sidelines, but what does she really know of the issues that Liverpool faces?” he asked. “She may have played in Sefton Park when she briefly lived in the city as a girl, but she left.”

“I am still here and having to deal with massive and savage Tory Government cuts to our budget while devising ways to grow and sustain the city and protect its most vulnerable citizens.

“I’d be interested to hear what Kim Cattrall has to say on care packages for the elderly and disabled adults, mental health provision, crumbling schools or repairing our roads, for example? Her comments are totally out of context and ill-informed.”

Cattrall, who moved to Canada when she was a baby but returned to Liverpool aged 11, objected to being described as a “Hollywood superstar”.

She hit back: “I don’t live or work in ‘Hollywood’. I’m a NY actor, Liverpool born and bred I’ve a right to my opinion.”

Liverpool's Sefton Park covers 300 acres (Getty)

Cattrall, 58, retweeted a number of messages from the Save Walton Park account which insulted the Mayor. “Joe Anderson can’t stop himself from getting personal. Awful man,” read one.

When Cattrall visited the park, she explained: “It’s so pastoral, it's so beautiful and it gives people a place to contemplate and play and walk and we need that barrier between the houses and the park.”

“I am aware how much the beautiful parks mean to the children in this city. This is why I have spoken out against the plans to develop on our wonderful green spaces here in Liverpool.

“To do so is to encroach on the people’s land and I sincerely hope it’s not too late to turn back on that decision.”

A lifelong Liverpool FC fan, Cattrall told the Liverpool Echo: “I don’t know what depresses me more, for the city to bring traffic to a place of such contemplation and play or that that devastating development will turn the park into a stadium for Everton!”

Mayor Anderson defended his record. “The fact is that since I became Mayor we have created more green space and there is more of it now than at any time in Liverpool's history,” he said.

“We're selling off 11 acres on Park Avenue. It's adjacent to, but not in, the 300 acres of Sefton Park in which people, as she suggests, can walk, play and contemplate. We're putting in about 15 villas around it and the money we get from that will be invested in our city and our parks.”