Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram says huge project, which could connect Liverpool Central and Lime Street, would be as transformational as Liverpool One
How a rebuilt and revamped Liverpool Central Station could look(Image: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority)
The Mayor of the Liverpool City Region says a £5 billion plan to transform a huge section of Liverpool city centre – including potentially connecting two major train stations through an underground tunnel – would be as transformational for the city as the development of Liverpool One.
Central Liverpool, as the proposed vision is being referred to, would cover a distance of 86 acres around the existing Liverpool Central Station. It could include new housing, retail and a vastly improved public realm – as well as a totally reimagined city centre station with an underground link to Lime Street.
Speaking about the plans with the ECHO this week, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram said: “So it is not just Liverpool Central Station we are talking about here, although that is a big part of it. But its more than just a transport scheme.
“This is a scheme about innovation, transformation, jobs, skills, it is about social value. It is about the way that whole area will function.
“It is a bit like Kings Cross and St Pancras in London, where they redesigned the whole area, that is what we want to do with the centre of Liverpool, we want to redesign it.”
The city region is pushing for a £2.5bn fund from government for the “transformational” plan, with a further £2.5bn being found elsewhere.
Central to the vision would be a reconfiguration of how the city centre’s two busiest railway stations would work – and how people would get between them both.
These images show what a rebuilt and revamped Liverpool Central Station could look like(Image: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority)
City region leaders are keen to rework the current city centre hubs to both accommodate promised new high speed lines and to relieve network capacity issues both at Liverpool Lime Street and Liverpool Central Merseyrail station – one of the busiest rail hubs in the country.
Mayor Rotheram added: “We would connect Lime Street and Central better than it currently is. That would probably mean subterranean, like with those London stations, so people could move easily from one to another.
“You would take some of the stopping services from Lime Street, say to Manchester, and you would direct them to a revamped Liverpool Central Station, with more capacity. Then you could run the fast trains from Lime Street to Manchester, with hopefully a new parkway stop in the Liverpool City Region, we haven’t decided where that will be yet.”
But the mayor says this is not just about transport, it is about a huge new reworking of the city centre.
He added: “It is about retail, about more people living in the city centre, it is about an overview, a spatial development of the whole area. What can we do to zone it? This is about a genuine, holistic plan.
“This would be as transformational as Liverpool One. It would be a complete mixture of uses, all planned so we know what each bit of it does and how they interconnect.”
The reason the mayor and his team are feeling hopeful about the scheme comes after he was namechecked in a speech earlier this year by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she announced changes to how the Treasury assesses bids for funding from around the country.
The Green Book is a set of rules which the government uses to appraise projects that are seeking government cash and would traditionally use cost-benefit ratios that would tend to favour projects in London more than in the regions.
These images show what a rebuilt and revamped Liverpool Central Station could look like(Image: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority)
However, after campaigning from Mayor Rotheram and others, Ms Reeves has now announced a round of pilots for a new place-based funding assessment system, with Central Liverpool one of the projects to be trialled.
Speaking about the government changes, the Mayor added: “Previous to those adjustments, if we bid in for a pot of money and London bid as well, we could never ever compete with what the scheme was.
“They could be exactly the same but because of the way the methodology works, the London scheme would always come out on top. This is because it factors in things like land value uplift and wages and we could never compete.
“The changes means you can build in social value as a factor, which really helps us.”
He added: “The Central Liverpool scheme is our first opportunity to do a place-based scheme. It will cost about £5 billion. If we get it right, we could get about half of that money from the Treasury and we will then find the rest ourselves.”
It is hoped that plans for the scheme can be brought forward in 2026.