Liverpool refuses plans for 290 Vauxhall flats

The city council has given no less than eight reasons for refusing Brack Construction’s plans for six apartment blocks on the site of a former school.

Brack wants to redevelop five acres previously occupied by Our Lady of Reconciliation Primary School – later renamed Trinity RC Primary School – into 290 homes.

However, it has met with comprehensive refusal from Liverpool City Council’s planning department, which described the scheme as “overly dominant and poorly integrated”.

Many of the concerns raised by the city council were around the impact the project would have on the surrounding area, while a lack of affordable housing, family homes, and adaptable and accessible dwellings was also highlighted.

The project in its submitted form would also “fail to provide an adequate quantity and quality of accessible public open space and private amenity space to meet the needs of future residents”, according to the city council.

Brack’s six planned blocks would range from four to five storeys, comfortably below the seven-storey threshold for a high-risk building, which would mean the development would be exempt from the building safety regulator’s gateway process.

The site has been vacant since 2012 and is fenced off. It is located on the opposite side of Vauxhall Road from Eldonion Village and is within the scope of the Pumpfields and Limekilns strategic regeneration zone.

The supplementary planning document for the area designates part of Brack’s site for housing while a portion of it appears to be earmarked for a park.

To learn more, search for reference number 26F/0871 on Liverpool City Council’s planning portal. Pegasus is advising on planning matters and Studio 256 is leading on design.