Sign off for Torus’s 93 Liverpool flats
With city councillors praising the amount of wheelchair-accessible accommodation, as well as the scheme’s 100% affordable nature, the apartments sailed through the planning committee meeting on Tuesday.
Affordable housing provider Torus can now move forward with its plans to build the 93 flats in a part eight-, part 10-storey complex on the site of the former Liver Grease Oil & Chemicals Company on land between Norfolk Street and Brick Street in Liverpool.
Studio RBA designed the proposals, which include 45 one-bedroom apartments, 45 two-bedroom ones, and three three-bedroom residences. There will be 21 wheelchair-accessible apartments as part of the project.
The development will be fully affordable, with all the flats under an affordable rent-to-buy tenure. This means the properties are available as affordable rent, with occupiers offered the opportunity to purchase the properties over time as either shared ownership or outright.
There is no car parking as part of the project.
A viability statement by Savills puts the gross development value for the scheme at nearly £12m, with development costs listed as £22m.
In granting permission for the application, the city councillors sided with their planning officers, how had recommended the project for approval.
In addition to drawing up the viability report, Savills is the planner for the development. The project team also includes Shape Consulting Engineers, BB7 Consulting, Anstey Horne, ADC Acoustics, and Highways Advice.
To learn more about the project, search application reference number 23F/1952 on Liverpool City Council’s planning portal.
Great to see the planning committee realising that city centre development doesn’t need 5 parking spaces per unit. Less is more. Use the bus!
By DenseCity
With no car parking on site, I wonder how the occupiers of the 21 wheelchair accessible apartments will be able to leave their properties and go shopping or visiting medical appointments and socialising?
Will their mobility be compromised because of the doctrine of the planning committee.
Many wheelchair users are reliant on their cars to travel around the city.
By Liverpolitis
Value £12m, Costs £22m, and this is social housing. The HAs should be left to provide the affordable housing while the private sector encouraged to build the rest.
Once again a woeful agenda with only 3 items, this must have been a quick meeting. A number of decent residential schemes were announced last year including the Packaged Living scheme near Pall Mall, anyone heard anymore about that, also the Davos scheme at 126 Duke St, that’s bogged down as well .
What are you doing Liverpool Planning?
By Anonymous
No car parking? Oh, dear. Residents and visitors will have to walk to wherever the next bus stop it. When do the buses start and stop running? Building multiple-storey apartments without an undergroud garage is mad, unless there is always ample street parking available.
By Anonymous
Make a loss and include lots of social housing and you fly through planning. Try and make money and you’re castigated as evil money-grabbers, with all manner of obstacles put in your way. Any wonder private developers are abandoning Liverpool? Social engineering through the planning committee side door.
By Anonymous
The only way to provide parking for wheelchair-users here would be as underground parking as surface parking is not an option. The costs of underground parking might well have been possible if the developer was allowed to build higher so as to get more flats in, but the city council won’t have that.
By Anonymous
If I recall Mandale wanted to convert the Bonded Tea Warehouse into flats and were refused by the Council with one of the reasons they were not providing parking, so what is the difference as the Baltic is a similar district to the Ten Streets. Another example of the weird behaviour of the LCC Planning Committee.
By Anonymous
oh dear 🙁
By Balcony Warrior
Nice looking scheme fits in well with the area . I note this is adjacent to the almost coTorus development..these two along with the big torus development alongside the locks opposite the titanic means a lot of torus investing the city centre as well as the outer nieghbourhoods
By George
In the recent LCC presentation update on development Senior Planner Samantha Campbell used this scheme as an example of a developer providing 100% affordable homes. Surely she must have noticed that the social housing developer Torus are going ahead even though the cost of the scheme is far more than the value. Maybe now she might remind the Planning Committee that when private developers say providing 20% or even 5% of affordable housing is a struggle they will be taken more seriously. Of course the height restrictions imposed in Liverpool are a further hindrance in making a scheme viable.
By Anonymous