Liverpool to offload former fruit market for £30m school
A nine-acre site off Prescot Road close to Newsham Park is to be transferred to the Department for Education and redeveloped into a secondary school.
Liverpool City Council’s cabinet will meet next Friday to discuss offloading the site, which is deemed surplus to requirements.
The plot, which was last used as a fruit and vegetable market, is allocated for housing under Liverpool’s recently adopted local plan.
However, the city council proposes disposing of the asset, valued between £250,000 and £1m, to meet an “urgent” need for more secondary school places in the borough, according to a cabinet report.
Subject to cabinet approval, the DfE would sign a 125-year lease on the site, paying a peppercorn rent.
The DfE would then invest between £25m and £30m delivering a new secondary school, the report states.
As well as trying to address a shortfall in secondary school places, Liverpool City Council is also in the process of identifying a replacement facility for the existing St Anne’s Primary School, which is outdated.
The Diocese of Liverpool, which runs the Lister Drive school, identified part of the Prescot Road site as being suitable for a replacement facility.
Liverpool City Council is to carry out additional investigative work to see if it would be possible to accommodate both the new schools on the same site.
Could be a good move this, as a well run and modern school can make an area popular for families who wish to get into a catchment area, and therefore create more demand for houses to be built on some empty brownfield sites nearby
By Anonymous
‘Offload’……Is this PNW Mcr terminology at work again?
By Jed
Imagine the traffic caos on an already overly congested road
By Anonymous
This plan has been put forward before.
It is a very busy, dangerous road and I feel childrens lives would be at risk.
On the oppisite side of Prescoy road you hsve council vehocles entering and leaving at a fast pace. Plus other businesses including meat market.
By Interestedparty