Office to resi conversion for Liverpool’s Regian House  

Investor Autumn Properties has lodged plans to convert the 80,800 sq ft former HMRC office on James Street into apartments. 

An application for a change of use of Regian House under permitted development rights has been submitted to Liverpool City Council.

However, the future of the building has not yet been decided, according to Global Invest, the asset manager for the building.

Under the recently submitted plans, Autumn Properties is proposing two potential configurations for the conversion of the 10-storey building. The first is made up of 142 apartments with a split of 33 studios and 109 one-bedroom apartments. 

The second would comprise 135 apartments with more of an emphasis on two-bedroom properties. 

NS Architects is leading on design and Greyside Planning is the planning consultant. 

Autumn Properties bought the building from Delta Properties for just under £8m in 2015. At that time, HMRC held a lease on the building that ran until 2026. 

However, the 1970s building has been largely empty for the last couple of years after HMRC vacated Regian House as it prepares to consolidate its Liverpool operations into the 270,000 sq ft India Buildings. 

As well as Regian House, HMRC will be vacating Graeme House, Imperial Court and The Triad in Bootle. 

The refurbishment of the India Buildings into an HMRC hub is nearing completion and the first of a planned 3,500 staff have started to move in. 

The refurb, which followed Legal & General’s £125m acquisition of the building from Shelborn in 2018, has involved three different contractors. 

Styles and Wood was appointed in February 2018 but that contract was terminated following delays. Caddick Construction then took over the job briefly before Overbury was drafted in to complete the project. 

This story was updated on 3 August to clarify that the future of the building has not yet been decided and that residential conversion is one of the potential options.

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Always good to see trusted investment in the city and though this might not be the best looking building around a good developer can improve it, in addition this will boost the downtown population and benefit the shopping and leisure sectors.
Further evidence though that some grade A , high quality offices are needed to attract some big-hitter tenants, so can we hear asap from the council please about the Pall Mall development.

By Anonymous

Why has Liverpool city council not implemented a planning policy requiring new developments to comprise at least 70% minimum 2 bed apartments, as Blackpool have done?
The council is so complicit in these developments it’s disgraceful. Especially the way the politicians claim they’re doing what they can to improve things. They’re doing nothing.
There is no natural demand for one bed apartments or studios in this area, and it’s incredibly damaging to the city’s fabric for such demand to be artificially stimulated.
These are not homes.

By Jeff

Regian House is in desperate need of demolition.

By anon

@Jeff, the conversion of office to resi is under permitted development rights, in other words a mechanism imposed on local authorities by central government that permits developers to bypass local planning authorities and grant themselves automatic planning consent.

By Westminster dysfunction

@Jeff, unfortunately Liverpool City Council have little control over the number of bedrooms. Thankfully permitted development rights for office to resi conversions changed on the 1st of August, capping the amount of space possible to convert to 1500sq.m. This will be one of the last awful conversions to take place under the old system.

By Anonymous

Glad to hear that permitted free for all’s like this have finally come to an end. It’s rather too late for Liverpool, though. There is hardly anything left to convert.

Now the government need to explain what they’re going to do to repair the structural damage they’ve caused to the Liverpool economy.

By Jeff

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