Extra £33m needed for Southport’s Marine Lake Events Centre
Sefton Council said the scheme will be ready by 2029 but will now cost £106m rather than £73m.
An extra £33m is required to deliver Marine Lake Events Centre, the council’s flagship regeneration scheme that features a 1,200-seat theatre, 2,400-capacity conference space.
The cost increase, set out in a Sefton Council cabinet report, is due to “inflationary pressures, driven by external factors and affecting the whole construction industry” since 2020.
Sefton anticipates the extra £33m to come from a cocktail of sources including borrowing and grant funding from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and central government.
Of the £106m total cost, Sefton will contribute £52.7m, according to the cabinet report. The council has already secured £33m for the project from the government’s Town Deal pot and £20m from LCRCA.
Earlier this year, VINCI was appointed to deliver the project. The firm is the third contractor to be attached to the scheme after both Kier and Graham walked away and is expected to start the 115-week construction programme in October.
Legends Global has been selected to operate the venue once it completes in early 2029.
Sefton Council has resisted the urge to significantly scale back the development in the face of cost pressures, citing MLEC’s potential benefits. These include £30m for the local economy each year and an anticipated 600,000 annual visitors. Both of these figures are up compared to 2022 forecasts when it was forecast the venue would contribute £19m annually and attract 500,000 visitors.
Some value engineering involving internal finishes, the facade, and M&E systems – as well as switching main contractors – has saved the project £12m, according to the cabinet report.
Cllr Marion Atkinson, Leader of Sefton Council, said the council was powerless to prevent the cost increase but that scaling back its ambitions for Southport was not an option.
“Of course, we are disappointed that the project won’t be delivered for the initial costs targeted at the time of the Town Deal bid submission in 2020, but this is due to wider economic factors outside our control,” she said.
“Both public and private sector projects across the UK have seen costs increasing in some key construction categories by up to 60% since 2020.
“We could not consider sacrificing our ambition for Southport, for Sefton and for the region, and must find the funding to deliver on this ambition.”
She added: “That does not mean however that we have rolled over and accepted these new costings without challenge.
“Extensive work has been carried out to manage this increase while improving longer term commercial outcomes and preserving the quality and impact of the scheme. We have always been focused on robust commercial management and securing best value for public money. This includes identifying £12m of savings.”
Two credible contractors pull out on foot of Sefton Council’s fantasy economics and a desire not to sully their names by having to go to arbitration to claim their costs and yet here we are…
This is no credit to Sefton Council whatsoever – but fair play to Graham and to Kier.
By Anonymous
Another scheme in the Liverpool City Region destined never to be built
By Anonymous
Not a chance Sefton can afford to do this and the Strand at the same time.
By Graham Deal
Is this going to be at the cost of pier not being repaired?.
By Keith Bowden
Surely as Central Government is involved they should be able to bridge the funding gap, in the same way the Tories did for the Manchester Aviva Studios to the tune of extra tens of millions of pounds on top of the original £78m George Osborne provided.
All you have to do is mirror the old Manc trick of claiming this project will benefit “t’North” and that should get the purse strings open in Westminster.
By Anonymous
When two credible contractors walk and cannot make it stack it tells you something, professional team hopefully have been advising the Client correctly and not continuing to back a failed estimate. Really hope this happens.
By Construction influencer
Can anybody explain to me why they didn’t repurpose what they already had?
By Mr O
Another one down the swanner
By Anonymous
If I were Kier or Graham, I would now be writing to Sefton Council in the style of “I told you so”. Seen this so many times on projects over the years, clients come to market looking for a professional outfit to work alongside them and their design team to manage the pre construction phases of the project, but when they tell them how much it’s going to cost them, they dump them like a ton of bricks and move on to another contractor – What a waste of the industry’s and governments money!
By Anonymous
Unbelievable. If only Sefton – or more importantly, their consultant team – had listened to contractors all those months (years?) ago, this project would have been on site at significantly lower cost. But here we are; another case of the stubborn leading the gullible when it comes to public sector construction procurement.
By Anonymous
This very expensive hole in the ground is bringing down the whole appeal of Southport.
As a regular visitor my observation is that for whatever the reason the resort is in a period of managed decline.
By Anonymous
Any project cost on a public sector scheme needs to be doubled or trebled at the outset for a dose of reality. HS2 , Aviva Studios, Manchester Town Hall, Houses of Parliament to name but a few
By The Blob
Perhaps Sefton Council could drain the Marine Lake and convert it into an even bigger money pit than Bootle Strand and the Events Centre?
Visitors could be encouraged to throw in their small change, and in about a century it might go someway towards offsetting the debts that Sefton will probably still be paying off if the thing ever gets built.
By Anonymous
£33m + £12m = £45m over-budget. It is not ‘wider economic factors outside of our control’. The scheme has not been located or designed/specified to an affordable budget. Have the professional team’s fees been VE’d ?
By Anonymous
I have been a Southport resident for 42 years.This is history repeating itself.In 1992 a company called ‘Sibec Developments’ who won the contract for a new shopping complex called ‘The Winter Gardens'( the Morrisons Supermarket Site in 2026)After spending 28 million on the project Sibec Developments went into liquidation so ‘The Winter Gardens site became a ‘White Elephant’.The sad thing here is we did have ‘The Floral Gardens’ which although a little dated was still functional bebore it was demolished in 2025.
By Paul
This has been going on in Southport since the early 1970’s when the frame of the de-centralised Somerset House was built but never completed.
By Anonymous
As, ever it’s the delays. Costed in 2020, and we’re now in 2026 with construction costs up at least 50% not least because of materials/energy costs. They probably hoped the original contractors could stick to their bids, but they couldn’t. My experience of public contracts is they try too hard to offload risk, and then complain when the contractors apply huge risk pots. If the council would take the risk, the project would be delivered for less money. Twas ever thus.
By Anonymous
Another white elephant
By Donald J Trump
So because two constructors pull out we should not build it? Vinci are incredibly credible too. That has to stand for something.
Just people wanting to knock councils and sefton as always
By Anonymous
Outdoor swimming pool gone
Floral Hall gone
Botanic Gardens museum gone
Outdoor roller rink gone
Surf southport at King’s Gardens – put forward by Damien More as a fund winning proposal. Proposal /funding achieved but never heard of again.
Garrick on Lord street hailed as being restored (when!)
I totally agree that Southport has been in a state of managed decline and destroys so much of its infrastructure which should have been restored. Future development does not have to come at the expense of heritage.
By Anonymous
I made this same point in an earlier comment on another scheme (which did get built): design teams aren’t being controlled, projects are progressing on fantasy economics, and here we are again.
It speaks volumes about the design team and the client’s depth of expertise when two reputable contractors walk away and the scope gap still comes in at £33m. If you’d been in the design progress meetings, you’d no doubt have heard the usual buzzwords — “vision”, “borrowing from the future”, and all the other ridiculous phrases rolled out when trying to make something fundamentally unviable appear viable.
Perhaps it’s time for design teams to return a portion of their fees when scope gaps exceed a certain percentage. That would put a quick end to any “borrowing from the future”.
By Steve5839
Time to either move back to Lancashire or even become part of Greater Manchester
By Anonymous
@ Anon 12.55pm, great well go then, and you can hand your Merseyrail pass back as you leave.
Surely it wouldn’t matter if you were in Lancashire or Greater Manchester you would still have your own council, unless of course you want to cut yourself away from Bootle, Crosby, etc as you look down your nose.
By Anonymous
Got to clean up the rest of Southport first
By Alanb
Thats the pier never to be open again
By Annon
As usual us Southport people suffer at the hands of Sefton, everything goes to Liverpool areas, been the same since we left Lancashire
By Anonymous
Merseyrail tried to extend into Lancashire ie Skelmersdale,to the benefit of those in that area, but that was scuppered by the Tory Government, suppose they’ll blame Sefton for that.
By Anonymous
North Sefton should merge with West Lancashire and become a new district in the Liverpool City Region
By Anon