Developer Prospect has requested a screening opinion for 103 homes off Northway in Maghull, Sefton. As Place North West reported, the request covers planning permission for the scheme.
What a screening opinion is
Worth explaining, because it is the earliest visible signal that a site is being brought forward, and most people have never heard of it.
A screening opinion is a formal request asking the council to determine whether a proposed development requires an Environmental Impact Assessment. EIA is a detailed and expensive process examining effects on ecology, water, air quality, landscape, heritage and transport, required for larger or more sensitive schemes.
Developers ask for a screening opinion before committing to a full application because the answer materially changes the cost and timescale of what follows. A negative screening opinion, meaning no EIA required, can save many months and a substantial sum.
For anyone watching land in a particular area, screening requests are a useful early warning. They appear on the planning register well before an application does, and they tell you a developer is serious enough to be spending money on advice.
Maghull’s position
Maghull is a town in Sefton, north of Liverpool, on the Merseyrail Northern line with direct services into Liverpool Central. It has grown substantially as a commuter settlement and has the characteristics that come with that: good rail links, largely residential character, and consistent pressure on its edges from housing proposals.
Sefton as a whole has a constrained land supply. It is a long thin borough hemmed in by the coast on one side and the Green Belt separating it from Knowsley and West Lancashire on the other, which means most of its growth options involve either brownfield sites in Bootle and Southport or Green Belt release around towns like Maghull.
The Liverpool City Region context
This week the Liverpool City Region was allocated £380m under the first phase of the government’s £39bn social and affordable homes programme.
That money will flow to housing associations and councils rather than to private developers bringing forward schemes like this one, but it changes the environment around them. Where a registered provider has grant funding available to acquire affordable units, the affordable element of a private scheme becomes considerably easier to deliver, because there is a buyer with money for it.
What happens next
Nothing quickly. A screening opinion is the first step of several, and plenty of sites that reach this stage never come forward. If it does progress, the questions will be the familiar ones: the affordable proportion, the tenure split, whether local schools and health provision can absorb 103 households, and whether the site is genuinely well related to the existing settlement.
Worth keeping an eye on rather than getting excited about.
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