New report outlines £1.5bn boost to Liverpool’s World Heritage Site

21st June 2021

A new report has been published outlining the progress made to conserve, protect and celebrate Liverpool’s UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The document – Liverpool, World Heritage City – describes how more than £700m has been invested in upgrading historic 119 assets within the six character areas of the World Heritage Site in the past few years.

This investment includes the refurbishment of 59 listed buildings, and the document highlights that a further £800m is to be invested in a further 40 plus heritage assets, over the next five years – including Bramley Moore Dock, in Liverpool Waters, on the city’s North Shore.

Defined as ‘the supreme example of a commercial port at the time of Britain’s greatest global influence’, Liverpool’s World Heritage Site status, granted in 2004, ranks it alongside other internationally known historic cities such as Edinburgh, Bath, Bordeaux, and Venice.

But this accolade may now be under threat of being lost due to planned development within Liverpool Waters.

In July 2021 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will meet to consider the potential deletion of Liverpool from the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Joanne Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool, is calling on World Heritage committee members to defer any decision and to visit Liverpool to see what progress has been made.

Mayor Joanne said: “This document is a timely reminder of why Liverpool is a World Heritage City.

“We will be sending the report to the committee members and I hope it will make them think twice about removing Liverpool from its list of World Heritage Sites.  The city council is under new political leadership, with a new emphasis on social value when it comes to development.

“We want to engage with the committee members and invite them to fully appraise all that has been achieved since the committee last met in 2019, and to review all that the council is seeking to achieve in the next 12 months.

“Key to this progress is Liverpool’s new Local Plan which is set to be adopted this Autumn.

“This is a 15 year masterplan, which has been delayed due to Covid-19, and will include many issues that are central to the future of our World Heritage site.  In this plan there is a new Tall buildings policy and new planning frameworks for the Commercial District, Baltic Triangle, Williamson Square and Upper Central area of the city centre – all of which fall within the World Heritage site and its buffer zone.

“We think deletion would be hugely unfair given all this body of work has not yet been assessed by the committee members and we need them to see Bramley Moore Dock with their own eyes – physically or virtually.

“We hope they see, like us, that Liverpool’s World Heritage Site should be shown up as an exemplar of best practice in heritage-led regeneration.

“Deletion would not just be a loss to Liverpool, the UK, and to a greater degree UNESCO, it would be an even bigger missed opportunity in demonstrating to the world that heritage and regeneration are not mutually exclusive.”

For more on Liverpool’s World Heritage site click HERE.

21st June 2021