English Premier League club Everton’s public consultation for a proposed new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock has now attracted a record-breaking number of contributions following the second phase of the process.
More than 43,000 responses were collected during the consultation period that took place in July and August this year. Over the two months, more than 15,000 people attended a 19-day roadshow that visited nine locations across all six Liverpool City Region boroughs and featured a virtual reality experience that allowed fans to fly over the stadium and land in the centre circle and home stand on matchdays.
Following the initial phase in November and December 2018, the total number of responses so far is 63,207 – confirming ‘The People’s Project’ as the largest commercial public consultation the city of Liverpool has ever seen.
The project itself is split into two parts, with the consultation focusing on the designs for a new 52,000-capacity stadium and the plans for transport, heritage and the environment as part of the development, as well as proposals for a community-led legacy project on the site of Everton’s current Goodison Park home.
In the first phase, 94% of people agreed that Bramley-Moore Dock was an appropriate site for the new stadium and 95% backed Everton’s plans for the community-led legacy project at Goodison Park. The results of the second phase will be released in November, with the club stating that it remains “on track” to submit planning applications before the end of this year.
“The interest and enthusiasm for The People’s Project has resulted in an unprecedented response to the consultation,” Colin Chong, Everton’s stadium development director, said.
“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 exemplar by industry experts.”
Image: Everton FC
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