Liverpool City Region refreshes £60m brownfield land support

Cancelled projects, cost increases, and viability challenges have forced the combined authority to rethink its plans to allocate grants and meet the government’s funding deadline. 

Liverpool City Region has received just under £60m of Brownfield Land Funds from the government, money it has to spend by March 2025. 

With this deadline in mind, the combined authority has been forced to respond to various issues impacting some of the projects earmarked to benefit from a £31m share of the award. 

Cost increases mean some schemes now require more grant support than originally thought. These include Barratt and David Wilson’s 770-home development off Cherryfield Drive in Knowsley. 

The project was originally awarded £4.65m but discoveries during ground investigations have resulted in increased remediation costs. The scheme now needs £11.5m of grant funding, an increase of almost £7m. 

While some projects require more funding than initially estimated, other schemes have been reworked and now require less. 

One of these is Ion Developments and Torus’ overhaul of the former Taskers site in Liverpool. 

Following planning consultation and further market engagement, the scheme has been scaled back from 193 units to 123 and the grant allocation from £2.9m to £1.85m. 

Another project that now needs less support is Riverside Group’s Palacefields scheme in Runcorn.  

A report to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority explained that “due to changes in delivery phasing, only the first element of this project will come forward within the BLF timescales”.  

As a result, only 108 units will be delivered within the funding window instead of 159, resulting in a reduction in the grant award from £2.4m to £1.6m. 

Several of the pipeline schemes originally earmarked to benefit have stalled or been axed. 

This means the combined authority needs to reallocate some of the funding to additional oven-ready projects in a bid to spend the money in time. 

One of the projects removed from the list is Torus’ proposed redevelopment of Liverpool FC’s former Melwood training ground. Torus sold the site back to the club earlier this year so it no longer needs the £2.43m grant.

Among the stalled projects that may now miss out on a share of the brownfield pot is the redevelopment of Birkenhead’s Land Registry office into 335 apartments. This project was due to receive more than £5m of grant support but has stalled. 

A list of schemes has been drawn up to replace those struggling to progress. 

These include Riverside’s 138-home Sandbrook Road project in Ainsdale and a pair of Torus developments totalling 157 homes in Liverpool.