This week it could all be over. The year-long row between Liverpool city council and Unesco, the United Nations cultural organisation, about the future of the city’s World Heritage site waterfront, has left everyone bruised.
On Monday 14 November, a Unesco delegation arrived in Liverpool for the latest round of negotiations about Peel Holdings’ £5.5bn plans for Liverpool Waters. The organisation had threatened to strip the city of its coveted World Heritage status if Peel’s development plans went ahead, putting Liverpool’s waterfront on the same danger list as war-torn sites in Iraq.
A compromise that will allow the development to go ahead – and also permit Liverpool to retain its status – seems likely to be agreed, thanks to months of hard talking between Peel and English Heritage.
In fact, Liverpool is following in Edinburgh’s footsteps. In 2008, Unesco raised concerns about a series of developments around Edinburgh’s World Heritage site, including the St James shopping centre and the Caltongate scheme. After an inspectors’ visit, Unesco’s worries faded.
For Liverpool city council leaders such as Malcolm Kennedy, Labour cabinet member for regeneration, the choice between Peel and Unesco was easy. He chooses Peel, saying of the compromise talks: “Peel has moved considerably.”
Kennedy adds: “There comes a point when we would be concerned if World Heritage status became a brake on development. If it came down to a straight choice between World Heritage status and Liverpool Waters, I’d have Liverpool Waters. But, ultimately, that is a false position we have been put in by the zealotry of English Heritage.”
Plans have come under fire from both English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). A report commissioned by English Heritage said the development would have “a significant damaging negative impact on the Liverpool World Heritage site and its outstanding universal value”.
Loose talk about abandoning World Heritage status sends shivers down the spine of the city’s tourist cheerleaders.
“Our concern is that the quality of the debate about this has been quite limited,” one said privately.
Pam Wilsher, head of visitor economy development for The Mersey Partnership, concedes there is no way of measuring the impact of World Heritage status on the city’s £2.8bn annual tourist economy. But she insists no sensible person would want to risk allowing the World Heritage status to be removed.
“World Heritage status is an amazing accolade to have, and for tourism it’s a real positive asset,” she says.
Tourist bosses see World Heritage status as providing a new narrative for Liverpool, easing dependence on The Beatles and football as the city’s defining brand images.
Golden goose
Wilsher adds: “The last thing we want is to endanger our World Heritage status. It is a very precious asset and we need to think carefully about anything we do that detracts from it. We certainly don’t want to kill the golden goose, which is tourism. If having World Heritage status makes Liverpool a little more careful about what it does, then that’s a good thing.”
For Wilsher, World Heritage status – granted in 2004, but largely overshadowed by the publicity surrounding Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 – is a “sleeping giant” that could mean much more to the city’s tourist economy.
Historic building specialists agree. The city council estimates it would take £250m to put the city centre’s historic buildings back into good order. Liverpool currently has 18 buildings listed as “at risk” on the English Heritage register – an embarrassingly large number.
Andrew Tegg, principal in the Heritage team, DPP, advised British Waterways on Liverpool’s Albert Dock. He says: “Heritage isn’t a hindrance to developments – it is absolutely the opposite. If you work the heritage into your development, you can bring real commercial gain and fit in with the townscape far more quickly. Grosvenor’s Liverpool One development proves this.”
By late October, it was apparent that the bones of a compromise had been agreed, with Peel development director Lindsey Ashworth saying: “I don’t believe anybody is particularly nervous about the World Heritage status who have made themselves familiar with how the city has protected its status over the years and, indeed, how Liverpool Waters, which is only a small part of this, will affect it.”
In the coming months, city councillors will make a planning decision about Liverpool Waters, bringing to an end four years of intensive preparation and lobbying by Peel. Soon after 1 February 2012, Unesco will make a final decision on the plan, too.
If this week’s Unesco delegation visit has gone as well as all Liverpudlians hope, the city will not be forced to choose between World Heritage status and a £5.5bn development. Hopefully, they can have both.
Unesco objections
Liverpool Waters includes 4m sq ft of commercial space and 9,000 new homes. It spans a mile of waterfront, including five historic docks. But Unesco specialists say the mass of tall buildings up to 640ft makes it unacceptable, and that the World Heritage site “will be severely compromised through mid-rise buildings on the sea wall; the legibility of the central docks and the central commercial core of the city will be damaged by the secondary cluster of tall buildings; the cumulative effect will be to overwhelm the defining traditional characteristics of the area”.
