Liverpool adopts housing design guide, Pumpfields masterplan
A framework for residential development across the city and a vision of more than 7,000 homes and a linear park on 100 acres of brownfield land were finalised at yesterday’s 12-minute city council cabinet meeting.
Both the Liverpool Housing Design Guide and Pumpfields & Limekilns masterplan are supplementary planning documents and will factor into evaluations of planning applications going forward. The two SPDs were adopted following a series of public consultation exercises.
Levitt Bernstein was instrumental in creating both documents with Liverpool City Council.
Director Jo McCafferty said her team had felt “privileged” to be involved in crafting the SPDs alongside LCC.
Regarding the frameworks, she said: “they illustrate the ambition of LCC to support the delivery of the highest quality housing and new development in the city.
“From the small to large scale, there is such opportunity now for Liverpool to lead the way in providing new neighbourhoods which are ground-breaking in their design, their inventiveness and quality, with buildings and landscapes that genuinely foster neighbourliness and support lives of all ages,” McCafferty continued.
“It is an incredibly exciting time for the city and we are so glad to be part of it.’
Housing Design Guide
Viewed as critical in Liverpool’s status as a Marmot City – an area focussed on improving health outcomes through placemaking and other avenues – the Housing Design Guide is geared towards ensuring that residences in Liverpool are not just fit-for-purpose, but are designed to be future-proofed, landscape-led, flexible and adaptable, and rooted in place.
Based on feedback during the consultation, the guide was adjusted to remove aspects that would impact viability – namely requirements for outdoor amenity space, parking standards, and cycle standards. However, there still is design guidance for these elements.
It was also adjusted to clarify that the design guide is not meant to deter innovation, but to provide a framework to work from.
Ahead of the cabinet meeting, the city council’s member for housing Cllr Hetty Wood described the design guide as demonstrating “our commitment to creating better places and better housing for current and future generations”.
Wood said: “Good-quality housing is fundamental to people’s health, wellbeing and life chances. The Housing Design Guide is about setting clear expectations for the homes we build in Liverpool – homes that are well designed, sustainable and genuinely work for the people who live in them.”
Member for growth and economy, Cllr Nick Small, said: “The Housing Design Guide is about raising the bar for housing across Liverpool and providing clarity and confidence for everyone involved in delivering new homes in the city.
“By setting clear, practical design expectations, the guide helps ensure that new development supports economic growth while also delivering high-quality places that people are proud to live in. Good design is not a barrier to delivery – it is essential to creating successful, sustainable neighbourhoods.”
Read the Housing Design Guide.
Pumpfields and Limekilns SPD
Setting out its stall for the next 20 years, the city council adopted the SPD for Pumpfields and Limekilns. The 100-acre stretch of brownfield land is bound by Leeds Street to the south, Great Howard Street to the west, and Scotland Road to the east.
The city council, working with Levitt Bernstein, Montagu Evans, Arup, and Turner.Works, have put forward a vision of more than 7,000 homes in the area, as well as a linear park and 584,000 sq ft of employment space.
“This is one of the biggest opportunities we have to reshape the north of the city and make sure it plays a full role in Liverpool’s future,” Small said.
“For too long, large parts of Pumpfields and Limekilns have been underused, but this plan sets out how we can transform it into a thriving, well-connected neighbourhood with thousands of new homes, new jobs and high-quality public spaces.”
He added: “Crucially, this isn’t about one-off developments — it’s about making sure everything is planned properly, with better streets, more green space and stronger links into the city centre, waterfront and surrounding communities.
“It’s a long-term vision that provides certainty for investors and will help us deliver the homes the city needs, while creating a place people actually want to live, work and spend time in.”
Changes from the consultation exercise include a clarification on the height parameters (with a reminder that plans must comply with the Tall Buildings SPD passed in 2023). Language has also been adjusted, with many uses of “must” being switched to “should” to provide more flexibility.
Leaning into that, the SPD has also taken on a “comply or justify” approach for future development.
There is absolutely no need for housing design guides to be so prescriptive. We have to move away from these “one size fits all” approaches to housing. Each site has it’s own merits and does generally not fall into a particular “character” yet the Council’s officers will continually and blindly follow these to find reasons to refuse. LCC has one of the poorest records in terms of approving applications and this simply adds another layer of bureaucracy to facilitate refusals or control. The priority has to be building quality housing and enabling the professional teams to justify their approach in relation to character and scale. That is, after all, our job and not theirs.
By Anonymous
What’s the point, nothing’s being built
By Anonymous
Why is it mainly London based firms that work to produce the SPDs. Feels like firms with a better understanding of the material and economic conditions within Liverpool would be better suited to craft SPDs that will allow for deliverable schemes, rather than creating SPDs that are not worth the paper they are written on because they are overly restrictive, and then completely ignored.
By Dr Ian Buildings
More frameworks, plans, consultations for God sake, why does it take an age for spades to be in the ground in Liverpool.
By Steven Owen
In a market that’s going nowhere, let’s layer more cost and delay.
By More Anonymous than the Others
Will we , yet again, see LCC pushing for height restrictions in this area. How many times do they have to be told that people are sick and tired of Liverpool’s Tall Buildings Policy? It’s time it waa scraped once and for all. Why is there no push backs from local councillors? Are there outside authorities trying to influence decision making in Liverpool regarding developments/progression?
I’m not saying this area has to have 50 storey buildings but for goodness sake let’s at least see a mix of heights. I’d say a good range of between say, 5 storeys to around 20 storey (tallest) in this area. Majority of buildings around 10/12 storeys. Ground level should have mixture of shops, restaurants, cafés, bakeries, gyms, chemist etc. Show a little bit of ambition for once.
By Anonymous
LCC damned if they do and damned if they don’t really.
There’s a middle ground between having unreasonably high demands and letting developers throw up stuff of dubious quality wherever they like (providing it isn’t too tall) in entirely piecemeal fashion, the position up to now.
Although if it’s couched too much as guidance and ambition, it may not make much difference at all…
By Anonymous
Would be nice if Liverpool actually built stuff instead of talking I haven’t seen much change from a few years ago
By Tim
I seriously hope that LCC is spending as much effort and resourcing on supporting their planning officers on training and continual professional development. The fear amongst the industry is that these documents will be used as a prescriptive ‘tick box’ exercise when assessing planning applications and if you don’t get a full list of ticks, it’s refusal. It is essential that officers are given the confidence to use their own professional judgement to reach a balanced decision. That means they need to be given the time to properly assess applications (yes that includes speaking with the applicant team!). The same goes for consultees – it’s no use having an attentive and proactive planning officer if the Urban Design or Highways comments take 4+ months to produce.
By Anonymous
As regards housing design I want to see more terraces, built to a modern and interesting style, the type being offered in London from innovative architects, the suburban semis in inner city Liverpool need to be outlawed. As an aside if the city council can influence design and appearance can the Head of Planning intervene with these ground floor shop to residential conversions which blight our arterial roads, they look awful with basic flat fronts and bland windows, they should insist on an attractive window style with maybe a bay window, and small undercroft area for bikes and bins.
As regards Pumpfields this is a great opportunity to extend the city centre, and we can already see high-rise residential on site, plus leisure destinations springing up, such as the new comedy club. Why therefore does the height issue have to be raised when there is no logical reason to restrict height in this waseland of an area, the Infinity Towers site was meant for 39 floors, and hopefully there is still a chance this might be re-started.
There must be some individual, or small cabal, inside the Council who remain anti tall buildings, and if so they are still holding the city back.
By Anonymous
Just started to read the Pumpfields SPD – if it wasn’t so sad I could have laughed at section 3.4.2 “Existing bus services on Great Howard Street and Vauxhall
Road” .
The service on Vauxhall Road is poor but the service on Great Howard Street is virtually non-existent. The council either don’t know what they are talking or they are taking the piss.
By Anonymous
RE comments by Ian Buildings (1:23pm) and Anonymous (2:12 pm) the LCC spends significant time and effort on their SPDs and choses to ignore them when it suits them.
For instance an FOI revealed the cost to develop the Tall Buildings SPD was £28,575.
By Anonymous
Moan, moan, moan again. Guaranteed the same people would be moaning if traditional hpusebuilders began developing the area and building 2 storey suburban semis because there was no development framework OR calling the planning depertment for knocking back or dragging out proposals for unsuitable developments for the area. I guess some people just like to moan. Anyway, providing the framework is good, and the visuals that were released at least give the impression they are based on some sort of more urban ideals, this is good.
By Anonymous
This is just jargon upon jargon upon jargon . What utter nonsense and meaningless drivel . Yet again the self-important buerocratic leeches and freeloaders triumph in Liverpool .
By Anonymous
The saying used to be “talk is cheap”. Not when it comes with a large salary and benefits and a massive pension, and ties the city up in knots. All at the expense of the public. What is the point of arguing for devolution when all you want to do is more of the same. Frankly, councils need to be stripped of powers not given new ones to busy themselves with.
By John
Liverpool risks being left behind if the council doesn’t make bold decisions. What on earth are they afraid of. The biggest risk of all is not doing anything.
By John
This is a momentous day for Liverpool and, if the guide is properly implemented and enforced, will raise housing standards here for decades.
The guide also seems to be upsetting the people who would prefer a race to the bottom on standards, which is only a good thing.
Time and time again on here I have urged Liverpool developers to use better architects and be more ambitious for the city’s future rather than only their company. Hopefully this will do it.
By Anonymous
The fact that nothing of substance is getting built-in the city seems to be of no consequence.
By Anonymous
I bet the Linear Park gets built first
By George
@ Anon 11.33pm, you feel that developers in Liverpool should use better architects, but which developers. At present we have only 3 active cranes in the city centre and 2 of them are with Legacie who have their critics but without them we’d be dead.
This city council has no regards for respected architects as has been shown in
the past when Simpson’s Brunswick Tower was refused, and the I.M. Pei residential building on the Strand/Chavasse Park was reduced by 10 floors and now is just a stump.
By Anonymous