Anfield CPO powers approved
LIVERPOOL City Council has approved the use of compulsory purchase orders to enable its £260m regeneration plans for the Anfield area to go ahead.
The powers were approved at a cabinet meeting on Friday but the council said CPOs would be used as a “last resort” where negotiation had failed or where owners could not be found.
The council, with support from Your Housing Group, Liverpool Football Club and other partners including Keepmoat, unveiled its vision for the area in June.
This includes more than 500 houses, shops, offices, a 10,000 sq ft “food hub” in Stanley Park, a 100-bed “training hotel”, and promises of a new stadium from Liverpool FC.
Its understood around 30 houses could be the subject of CPOs with some in Rockfield Road next to the existing football stadium.
The regeneration area of Anfield Village/Rockfield covers 861 houses and was part of the previous government’s doomed Pathfinder housing market renewal initiative. That ground to a halt in 2011 after being axed by the coalition, leaving hundreds of boarded up homes in Liverpool and elsewhere.
The council and Your Housing have a £40m plan to retain and renovate 562 properties and demolish 299 – 186 of which are already vacant. The expansion of Liverpool FC’s Anfield Stadium would require the demolition of a further 72 houses.
