A decision has been deferred on granting the football club permission to permanently close a stretch of the highway following its stadium expansion.
The item was considered at Liverpool City Councils planning committee this week, a session that saw approvals granted for the Claire House hospice’s makeover and a Lidl store in Croxteth – with a chunk of housing on the remainder of this former fire station site teased at the meeting.
The application and pre-meeting opposition
LFC’s application was one of two parts. Firstly, the club wants to alter a condition attached to use of the stadium form summer events, giving it more flexibility. The existing consent insists on a “respite” period for the local community throughout July, a condition the club wants to alter to a movable 31-day period. This in itself came under some fire at the meeting.
The more controversial part of the bid, however, is the closure of Anfield Road behind the expanded stand of that name within the stadium.
Added to the application after the initial submission, this required further consultation ahead of the meeting, and was opposed by three councillors, including both Anfield ward councillors.
In all, the item was discussed for around an hour and 40 minutes at the session, with the outcome being a deferment pending a site visit and further investigations.
The condition relates to the requirement that the realigned section of the Anfield Road route, now in the private control of LFC, must be fully reopened after the works, as a condition of the Anfield Road End stand’s expansion.
Designed as more of a plaza-style area as part of the redevelopment, it has never reopened to vehicles, although it is open to pedestrians and cyclists.
Those opposed say that closing the road to cars inconveniences residents and clogs other roads, with Cllr Billy Marrat stating that the continued closure “backtracks” on the earlier agreement.
LFC has in its corner Merseyside Police, which supports the bid on the bases that the current national security threat level is “substantial”.
Officers agreed, recommending approval on the basis that “the rerouting of traffic was found not to have substantial impacts on journey times or volumes of traffic in the surrounding streets” along with the enhanced security aspect.
How the committee session played out
The case was made at the meeting that the road has now been closed for five years. There were strong feelings though that the community has been taken for granted and the planning conditions taken lightly, at best.
Cllr Marrat was a prominent voice in the meeting, calling the application “a complete betrayal of local residents”.
Although voicing broad support for how the infrastructure should support Martyn’s Law, a piece of legislation dating from the aftermath of the Manchester Arena attack around protecting venues from terror attacks, Cllr Portia Fahey, representing neighbouring Everton North, referenced the tight angles of the reconfigured highway, and the lack of road markings, “which leads me to conclude there was no intention of reopening to vehicles”.
The security aspect of the application was a point of contention, with members questioning how risk assessments had been carried out, and how threat levels had come to play such a central role in the recommendation to approve.
Summing up, committee chair Cllr Tom Cardwell said: “What we’ve been presented with feels like a fait accompli. There looks to have been a complete breakdown of trust between community, councillors and the club itself, and that pains me to say.
The councillor said that LFC has “some serious work to do – these people are your neighbours, and you need to develop an understanding of a shared vision that clearly doesn’t exist. I’ve never seen such a complicated situation where a community has been so completely walled out of the process.”
Despite that, the chair proposed approval, a motion that was quickly dealt with when a proposal was made and instantly seconded for deferment, with a majority voting in favour.
Documents relating to the LFC application can be seen on the LCC planning portal with the reference 24F/2963.