With Homes England ready to invest £55m, Peel Group submits new Liverpool Waters masterplan to the city council which will include ‘affordable homes’. Tony McDonough reports
Peel Group has submitted a new masterplan for its Liverpool Waters development to the city council.
It comes just a day after it was announced Homes England is prepared to invest £55m into new infrastructure on the Central Docks element of the scheme.
Modifications to the original plan, first approved 11 years ago, have been made in the intervening years but this the first time since then Peel has submitted a whole new masterplan.
That original plan did not include a new football stadium. Now Everton FC’s £750m arena has emerged on Bramley-Moore Dock a fresh plan was needed. The new plan will also include a broader mix of housing types including those classed as affordable.
A affordable home is one where the sale prices or rent is now more than 80% of the local market rate. A new 500-home development in Peel’s Wirral Waters scheme includes 100 affordable homes for rent.
Peel says the new plan, which has yet to appear on the city council’s planning portal, will create a “more open, sustainable and community-centred place to live, work and visit, without compromising on scale and ambition”.
Central Docks will see the construction of 2,350 new homes as well as more than 550,000 sq ft of commercial floorspace. The £55m from Homes England will fund the proposed 2.1-acre Central Park green space.
It will also pay for the remediation of brownfield land relating to infrastructure corridors and the park, other public realm, a new road network and bridge, power supply, drainage and other utilities.
Earlier this year it was reported that Peel would cut the space dedicated to offices, retail, leisure, and residential. Office space would be cut from 3.3m sq ft to 1.2m sq ft, retail from 880,000 sq ft to 280,000 sq ft, and leisure 290,000 sq ft from 355,000 sq ft.
Office space is a particular challenge in Liverpool. Low headline rents, currently around £25 per sq ft, are seen as too low to attract investors. Other regional cities in the UK have seen their headline rents rise significantly higher.
Peel also says it will put “sustainability, community, and accessibility” at its heart, bringing people together, reducing the impact of climate change, and minimising the need for car travel.
A community engagement exercise, carried out by Peel Waters in 2023 revealed the people of Liverpool are “overwhelmingly positive and excited” about the regeneration that is underway at Liverpool Waters.
Chris Capes, development director for Liverpool Waters, said: “Our new vision for Liverpool Waters is both exciting and inspiring, driven by the people of Liverpool and the urgent need to create a sustainable place for future generations to live, work and visit.
“We have reflected on what is most important for the future of this historic site, both as an international tourist destination and for the communities who want to live and work here every day.”
Support for the new plan came from renowned regeneration expert Professor Michael Parkinson of the Heseltine Institute at the University of Liverpool. He added: “Liverpool has had a fantastic – if not yet complete – renaissance in the past 20 years.
“That renaissance will continue in the next 20 years because the city now has stable, high quality political and administrative leadership, good working relationships between the city council and city region, an engaged private sector and a new national government committed to investing in housing to continue the process of urban renaissance.”
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He went on: “When delivered the Masterplan will not only create a high-quality place on the waterfront but should bring benefits to the surrounding community.
“Capitalising on the building of Everton’s new stadium, the changes in peoples’ working lives after COVID, and the involvement of the local community in the new plan, means the masterplan is now more attuned to what the city and north Liverpool will really need.”