Everton has announced the huge scale of the second stage of public consultation as a proposed new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock edges closer.
Over 43,000 people responded to the next stage of the process towards a new waterfront ground and a community-led legacy project at Goodison Park after designs were released – which is double that of the consultation’s first stage.
This step included a 19-day roadshow which visited nine locations across all six Liverpool City Region boroughs, which were attended by more than 15,000 people between July and August.
With 63,207 responses received in total, that makes The People’s Project the largest commercial public consultation the city of Liverpool has ever seen – and one of the biggest ever held in the UK.
Colin Chong, Everton’s Stadium Development Director said: “The interest and enthusiasm for The People’s Project have resulted in an unprecedented response to the consultation. We’re grateful to the thousands of Evertonians, fans of other clubs and people that don’t have an interest in football who took part and shared their views with us. We have been busy working our way through the tens of thousands of comments and ideas and analysing the results which will inform our proposals as we progress to submitting our planning applications before the end of the year. We’ve been really pleased with the scale of response and how our approach to engagement and public consultation on this project has been recognised as exemplary by industry experts.”
The full results of the second stage of consultation will be released in November, with Everton remaining clear they are still on track to submit both a detailed planning application for Bramley-Moore and an outline application for Goodison Park before the end of 2019.
The first stage public consultation saw 20,168 people respond, with 94% of people agreeing that Bramley-Moore Dock was an appropriate site for the new stadium and 95% backing Everton’s plans for a community-led led legacy at Goodison Park.
The responses behind both steps will be crucial as Everton look to move to the next phase of planning for Bramley-Moore.
If all goes well, planning application could be accepted in the early stages of 2020 – with there being an approximate build time of three years from the first construction beginning at the waterfront.
The Blues have hit every single deadline set for themselves so far across the long-spanning timeline of this project, and hope to deliver promptly again in the future.
This news is further confirmation from the Blues that they are still well on track in their plans for a new stadium despite some bizarre rumours around social media in recent days.
Screenshots circulating around Twitter, in particular, were first rubbished by architect Dan Meis before the People’s Project themselves provided a brilliant retort of their own.
They tweeted a screenshot of their own explaining the situation along with the caption: “If you can’t beat them, join them. At ease folks…”
The statement read: “I know someone who knows someone who knows me and actually is me and I’m telling you we’re still on track to submit planning applications for a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock and a community-led legacy at Goodison Park before the end of the year. The club and all its consultants including architects and engineers are working really well together as a team and have so far delivered everything they said they would…”
Article originally appeared on Liverpool Echo
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