Everton given green light to build new stadium

Plans for Everton Football Club’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock have been given the go-ahead.At a Liverpool City Council planning committee meeting today, the plans were unanimously approved by councillors.Communities secretary Robert Jenrick will now look at the project and decide whether he wants to ‘call in’ the plans for investigation by the Planning Inspectorate.Planning officer Peter Jones said that the council believes the benefits of the stadium represent an ‘exceptional circumstance’ and so will outweigh the harm done in terms of heritage.Throughout the planning process, Historic England has objected to the infilling of the dock. However Jones said it is about weighing this against the wider public benefits.Jones acknowledged the issues regarding the site’s World Heritage Status, but said the docks have been in decline for some time. He also thanked the club for refining the design in response to feedback on the original planning application submitted in December 2019.Among other changes, the stadium’s height has been reduced so that it is defined as a “mid-rise” building, in an attempt to address heritage concerns.Despite the heritage concerns, the club says Bramley-Moore Dock’s location within Liverpool’s Unesco World Heritage Site and the Stanley Dock Conservation Area has been fundamental to how the project has been designed and planned. It says the stadium has been designed to respect and preserve the area’s heritage, while bringing a long-standing semi-derelict dockland site back into use.At the meeting today, project development director Colin Chong emphasised that the scheme is a “civic regeneration project”. He added that while the club’s current stadium Goodison Park is “much loved”, it is showing its age, particularly in terms of capacity, facilities and inclusive amenities.Last week a Liverpool City Council (LCC) report recommended that planning permission for the new 52,000-seater stadium be granted at today’s meeting.The LCC report includes a number of conditions to granting the application. These include the redevelopment of Goodison Park beginning within three years from the first use of Bramley-Moore Dock, the repair of the hydraulic engine house and provision of agreed ecological mitigation measures.It also encourages fans to embrace sustainable transport modes when travelling to the proposed stadium.Electric vehicle charging and bike park facilities will be among features of the project, and the report says that the development’s transport strategy “seeks to encourage visitors to consider sustainable transport modes”.The Premier League club hopes to host games at the Bramley-Moore Dock site as early as 2024.The stadium has been designed by MEIS architects and engineers BuroHappold, with Laing O’Rourke lined up to build the stadium if it gets the go-ahead.Last month Chong also revealed that the proposed stadium has been designed to withstand floods for the next 100 years.