NWDA wants profit ploughed back into Garden Festival site

LIVERPOOL City Council and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) will recover less cash from Liverpool’s Garden Festival site under new proposals.

The former municipal tip, that was the location for the 1984 Garden Festival, has planning for 1,300 apartments and 60 homes which will be developed by the leaseholder Langtree. Two-thirds of the site will be restored as public gardens.

The council, which has the freehold, and the NWDA – which has chipped in £3.7m to help get the development started – are due a cut of the profits after Langtree has covered its costs and taken a “developer profit”, according to a report to the council’s executive which meets today.

But the council has been urged to let the first return, up to £947,000, go to the Land Restoration Trust (LRT), a public body which will manage the garden’s restoration.

The executive has been advised to recommend the proposal which came from the NWDA. In the report the council acknowledges that its return from the scheme will diminish if the proposal is approved, but it is keen to see the site developed.

The report states: “It should be remembered, however, that the justification for permitting development on part of the site was always that it should only be sufficient to fund the restoration and long term maintenance of the gardens and not to generate a capital receipt.”

It adds: “The deterioration of the Festival Gardens and the lack of public access have been major points of concern in the city for many years. The proposal to use the first tranche of the proceeds of the development to boost the maintenance dowry will give the LRT more money to improve the standard of maintenance and security and make their management plan more robust.”