Widnes Waterfront set for approval after housing cut

Mulbury and Magenta Living are in line to secure consent for the 19-acre site after more than halving housing numbers to 243.

With remediation work already under way on the former industrial site, planning approval from Halton Council next week will allow the first homes to be built at Widnes Waterfront, the majority of which will be for affordable tenures.

The site had outline consent, secured in 2016, for up to 624 homes; however, according to the developers’ planner Satplan, the number of homes has been reduced following “a full understanding of the ground conditions and remediation requirements” of the site, which was formerly in industrial and office use until the 1990s.

The majority of houses put forward by Mulbury are two-storey, although there will also be 30 apartments in several three-storey blocks. The houses are split between two, three, and four-bedroom semi-detached and detached homes, while there will also be 39 bungalows ranging between one and four bedrooms.

Of these, 188 of the houses will be for affordable tenures, either as shared ownership properties or for affordable rent, while 18 of the apartments proposed will be for the over 55s.

There will be a large area of green space set aside facing the railway line to the south of the site with apartment blocks to the north, and access both at the east and west.

Halton Council has been recommended to approve the proposals when its planning committee meets on 4 November, with a final decision on the project to be made by the council’s planning director.

Benefits of the scheme, according to planning officers, include successfully linking the brownfield site to the already-developed Hive on Widnes Waterfront; regeneration of an existing brownfield plot; and a “valuable contribution towards Widnes’s housing needs”.

However, “fundamental” issues around noise had been raised in the course of the application, particularly around the amount of noise that residents of the new homes would be subject to. Halton Council is proposing dealing with this via planning condition.

Along with Satplan as planning consultant, the professional team also includes Croft as transport planner, Trevor Bridge Associates as landscape consultant, and MPSL Planning & Design.