Council leader says there has been strong interest in TV and film studio plans for city landmark
Plans for the continuing development of one of Liverpool’s most iconic locations are to go before the government in the New Year. For decades, the remains of what was the Littlewoods building has cast a long shadow over Edge Lane towards the city centre.
In December 2023, work started to convert the site into the TV and film studio complex in a £70m project – two new 20,000 square foot studio stages are planned to be the first structures to be constructed on the land. The plan is that the existing building will be brought back to life and will be used alongside the new studios, as well as existing facilities at The Depot, which opened in 2021.
Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool Council, has now revealed talks are to go on at the highest levels of government to get ministers on board. Last year, new wings on the building were scheduled for a 2026 open date with the full scheme earmarked for a 2027 completion.
Built in 1938, the art-deco building was first developed by John Moores as the headquarters for the Littlewoods football pools, a business which at its peak had 16 million weekly players. The Littlewoods Pools Company continued to operate in the building until its closure in November 1994 after the National Lottery reduced its customer base.
The building is divided into three sections including the east and west wings, separated by a 1960s addition, the Hangar. Remediation work has taken place and planning permission for the construction process was granted in October 2024.
Cllr Robinson gave the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) an update on progress at the site. He said: “We’re working on some of the detailed plans around it and we’ve been invited to Downing Street in February to present to the government.
“We’re finalising all of the arrangements of going down that and the ministerial team we will be seeing but it’s fair to say there’s a lot of national government interest in it. We’ve also got some great stakeholders that are really keen to make sure we make it a success, but people like Jimmy Mulville, and it’s been absolutely wonderful when I think about things we’ve done around Imagine Liverpool, but how lots of people from that wider Scouse diaspora, people largely from the city and left in their youth actually are now part of that wider network and team focus because they genuinely want to maximise the great things that this city can always do.
“It’ll be all around the different levels of funding that we’re looking at, the different kind of tenants that we’re looking at targeting and bringing in the different uses because obviously we want to make sure we have a screen academy school. From our perspective, it’s something that we are really kind of focussing on and looking forward to getting that opportunity with the government and how we then take forward the next stage, cause all the remediation is done.
“It’s then how we then move forward and I always think it’s such a prominent location on the main road from the M62. The opportunity to do something transformational that has such a big impact for well beyond the city, the whole region, and I would argue for the whole north of England is huge.”
It was revealed in August how developer Capital&Centric (C&C) had entered into discussions about funding for the project with the government. The firm said in the summer how the cost of delivering the project “in the current climate exceeds the value of the completed development.”
Tim Heatley, co-founder of C&C, said talks had been ongoing with ministers to “explore potential options for gap funding.” At the time, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram admitted he was surprised by the timing of comments and said it was always known there would be a “viability gap” but remained confident funds could be found.
It is a key part of Mr Rotheram’s plan to turn Liverpool, which is the country’s second-most filmed city, into the ‘Hollywood of the North’. A package of funding was signed off by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority in July 2020 to get that off the ground, with a follow up assessment conducted in June 2021.
The future of the scheme was plunged into doubt when Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) confirmed that it would no longer act as one of the anchor tenants of the project, but the developer remained undeterred. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) said it will work with the government, city council and the developer to secure the required funding.
