Funding has been made available to progress housebuilding on the site of Liverpool FC ’s former training ground and the previous home of an interiors store synonymous with the city.
Around 4,500 homes are to be built across the Liverpool City Region through a £60m Brownfield Land Fund from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hundreds could now be built on Melwood, the former Taskers store on Wavertree Road and a former pub in St Helens.
Melwood was the home of the Reds for seven decades, dating back to before the Bill Shankly era, before the club relocated to its new £50m training centre in Kirkby in 2020. The site was then officially handed over to housing group, Torus, who submitted a planning application last August for a mixture of 170 homes, bungalows and care units.
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Earlier this month, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (CA) approved in principle funding for 15 sites, subject to due diligence. The CA also approved additional funding for two projects originally approved in March 2022, subject to due diligence and Full Business Case preparation.
A revised scheme for the former Taskers site, off Wavertree Road, being developed by Ion, was approved. The revised scheme now submitted for planning has 193 units and funding of £2.9m was approved, representing an increase of £1m and an additional 67 housing units from the initial ask.
Increased funding was also agreed for Knowsley Council’s North Huyton Revive Phase 5 project to deliver 300 new homes in North Huyton. Since the original Brownfield Land Fund was announced in July 2020, the CA agreed plans to invest £29m in 16 projects across the Liverpool City Region, which will deliver 2,445 homes.
In planning terms, any land that has been previously developed is classed as brownfield. In the Liverpool City Region, much of this land is derelict and formerly industrial so must be cleaned up before it can be redeveloped. Plans for Melwood have been met with opposition previously, with campaigners vowing to continue their fight against homes being built on the former training ground.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: “We are specifically targeting brownfield sites to help protect our precious green spaces from over development - turning once-forgotten areas back into thriving communities. “I want everyone in our area to have the chance to realise their home ownership ambitions – to get their foot on the property ladder and invest in their future.
“Yet, for too long, achieving that dream has been out of reach for many of our residents who have been forced to contend with a broken housing market, that simply doesn’t work for them. Thanks to devolution, we are working to put that right by investing £60m into to open up a pipeline of 4,000 homes across our six boroughs by ensuring that there are suitable sites for development.”
Cllr Graham Morgan, CA portfolio holder for housing and spatial framework, added: “We are determined to ensure there is a great choice of high-quality homes, right across the city region, as part of our ambitious plans to ensure that we tackle the housing shortage. Building on brownfield sites is at the heart of that process – after all there are around 700 of them with enough space to build 42,000 homes.
“The developments in this new pipeline are a great mix of schemes offering a wide range of different housing types. We need to ensure that, across our city region, we are building homes to suit everybody.”
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