Homes England is giving a £9.9m grant to Liverpool City Council to help provide up to 1,500 homes at the Festival Gardens in Liverpool.
Liverpool City Council has had plans to develop Festival Gardens, an iconic location in South Liverpool. However, a lack of funding has caused crucial remediation works to be unable to take place. With the nearly £10m grant, work on the site is expected to start in the spring, and the first homes are expected to be available by 2022. The site will include owner-occupied homes and privately rented apartments.
Liverpool seeing growth and regeneration
Between this project, plans for a new Everton stadium, a new cruise liner terminal, and additions to the city’s waterside, Liverpool has numerous exciting development projects and is seeing a theme of regeneration. The development at the Festival Gardens might not only bring needed family homes but also a leisure element might be incorporated into the site, turning the area into a first–class visitor and cultural destination.
Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, commented: “We welcome this essential financial injection from Homes England. Festival Gardens is a much-loved waterfront location and people have very fond memories of spending time there. We are fully aware of the potential the Festival Gardens has and its transformation will be a game-changer for this city’s economy in terms of new homes, construction jobs and growth.”
Homes England making homes happen
The funding injection for the Festival Gardens comes from the government’s £450m Local Authority Accelerated Construction programme. The boost to Liverpool’s housing market is a prime example of what Homes England, a government organisation assigned to speeding up house building, can do to help combat the nation’s chronic housing shortage. Additionally, this brings the government another step closer to reaching its goal of 300,000 new homes being built per year by the mid-2020s.
Sir Edward Lister, chairman of Homes England, stated: “We are determined to use all the resources available to us to make homes happen across England – so I’m thrilled our funding means work can move forward rapidly at this historic site, providing homes for hundreds of families.”
