Placefirst completes first stage of Welsh Streets
All homes available to rent in the first phase of specialist developer Placefirst’s refurbishment of Liverpool’s Welsh Streets have been taken by tenants days after completion.
Last week saw Placefirst finish work on 25 remodelled Victorian terraced properties at High Park Street and Voelas Street in Princes Park.
The project was a pilot scheme to demonstrate how the vacant homes that make up the wider Welsh Streets area could be brought back into use.
Of the 21 available to rent on the first weekend of launching, all have been signed for by occupiers. These are a mix of two-, three- and four-bedroom homes.
The first residents should be moving in by the end of September, and Placefirst is aiming to complete the next phase by spring 2018, moving outwards from Voelas Street on a street by street basis.
In June, Liverpool City Council approved Placefirst’s masterplan for the Welsh Streets, creating 250 new homes in total, including both refurbished houses and new-build. There will also be improvements to the streets, drainage and the creation of communal gardens to the rear.
To address a shortage of larger homes in the area, 124 of the houses will have four bedrooms, while 109 will have three. The remaining 61 will be two-bedroom.
The plan is for 30 of the houses to be affordable rent, 35 will be shared ownership/rent to buy, 194 will be let at market rent and 35 will be available to buy.
Welsh Streets has been a problem area in Liverpool. The network of terraces was built in the 1870s for Welsh workers moving to Liverpool. As part of Labour’s housing market renewal programme, the homes, which had become dilapidated, were due to be demolished and rebuilt. The programme was then scrapped, and while a later plan for redevelopment was brought forward in 2014, a campaign to save the buildings meant that then Secretary of State Eric Pickles overturned planning approval for the scheme in 2015. Placefirst then came on board as a developer in 2016, due to the company’s refurbishment experience.
David Smith-Milne, managing director of Placefirst, said: “Most of our applications are from people living in the L8 area or those who used to live here and want to move back. There has been a real mix of families, couples, people sharing and single people who have all signed up immediately for these reinvented rental homes.
“It has always been our plan to provide great quality homes for local people, so to see exactly that happening is hugely rewarding for everyone.”
CGI of the completed regeneration of Welsh Streets
My family have a long long history in this area including Dingle and Toxteth. It fills me with pride to see how good they are looking. Here’s to the future!
By L Rietdyk
These houses look a decent makeover but appear smaller than the original properties, with a lack of privacy to the rear of them and do not believe it to be past residents who have applied to rent one.Those of us former residents who lived in the Welsh Street houses, in my case 68 years until 2007,can confirm the problems of living in houses with no foundations,penetrating damp,subsidence & collapsing Victorian drains. The reason the Community voted for demolition & new build over 15 years ago, only for a small group, using devious means to object to the original plans, soliciting outside organisations to support their anti-demolition campaign..
Asked whether said problems had been rectified, the Place First reps seemed unwilling to confirm satisfactorily. Phase 3 residents, still living in bad housing in the four streets still occupied, were promised that they would be able to move to new houses on the site. However due to the exorbitant rents of the refurbished properties,they are angry that most will be unable to afford the rent. £645 pcm 2 bedroomed, £745pcm bedroomed & £845 pcm 4 bedroomed. meanwhile living in the middle of a building site. I also take exception to the statement that the Welsh Streets has been a problem area. It has always been a decent vibrant area, with an exceptional Community. spirit.
By Mary Huxham MBE
I have family living in Voelas Street. It’s a great place to live. a wonderful family home and most of the houses are actually very well-proportioned, in streets human scale, rather than the tiny ticky-tacky boxes that Plus Dane wanted to build! So, please pipe down Mary Huxham MBE and just admit you were wrong when you declared “they cannot be rennovated” with that nonesense about the lack of foundations and collapsing drains. In the end the campaign to save Ringo Starr’s birthplace , No 9 Madryn Street, caused enough delay for the heartless Heartlands Scheme to be undermined, and common sense won the day, allowing Placefirst to do what you said was impossible. Time to bury the sour grapes Mary and to give due credit, for his role in campaigning to save the Welsh Streets, the Beatles expert Phil Coppell. He was man of great warmth and integrity, who was the innocent target of a disgracefully angry and abusive invective from your lips, which I witnessed and videod, outside No 9 in 2014. RIP Phil. The Welsh Streets today is part of your legacy.
By Chris Johnson
Can anyone explain the allocation policy to me please as I was told applications are considered on a case by case basis. Also in one of the most deprived wards in England how are the rents charged affordable. The rent charged which is a minimum of 745 pcm for a two bedroom house is double the cost for a mortgage on a 4 bedroom house in Liverpool 8.
By Cheryl Pritchard