Mental health facility primed for Sefton

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust expects to win consent to build a low secure mental health unit on a 6.4-acre plot of undeveloped land at Villas Road near Maghull.

Chorley-based Gilling Dod Architects has designed the scheme, with Turley advising on planning. The application is for reserved matters at the 45,000 sq ft in-patient mental health facility, which received outline consent in July this year.

The former HMP Kennet site lies to the north, with the Rowan View medium secure unit and Ashworth Hospital to the north-west.

Beechway, a residential estate, is located to the west of site while a small wooded area separates it from Maghull Lane to the south and open fields separate it from the M58.

Sefton Council’s planning committee will this week be recommended to green-light the project.

Also recommended for approval at committee is an application for a four-storey building with two commercial units at ground floor, on the former Central Buildings site on Church Road, Crosby, noted by officers as a problematic site.

Plus Dane Housing and its regular partner Penny Lane Builders, along with Urban Generation (Crosby) – the latter of whom secured consent for a four-storey residential, office and retail scheme at the site in 2006 – are responsible for the scheme. Halsall Lloyd Partnership is the architect.

The project includes 39 apartments split between the three upper floors, to be classed as affordable homes, going some way to meeting Crosby’s identified need for 73 affordable homes to be delivered each year.

The scheme includes 20 car parking spaces, while its design has been amended form an earlier iteration to fit better with the local area, with stepped-back upper levels now making it less overbearing.

Sign up to Place North West’s Healthcare + Senior Living event on 21 January 2021