A 19-storey block of student accommodation and a 16-storey hotel is being planned for a patch of land next to Liverpool’s Lime Street station.

The plans by Butler Company Ltd and NALM Ltd will see two blocks built on the land bounded by Skelhorne Street, Bolton Street and Hilbre Street alongside the city’s main train station. If successful, it would see student accommodation fill the larger block and an aparthotel in the smaller block.

However, the developer says if an operator for the aparthotel cannot be found, that too would become student accommodation. Both blocks will have space for shops on the ground floor, according to the plans.

In plans submitted to Liverpool City Council, the developer says the scheme would ‘conceal the existing poor quality modern development (Grand Central) which currently detracts from the setting of the station’.

The student apartments would be designed to take advantage of the rise in students attending universities in the city. The area already boasts student accommodation at Grand Central and in the listed North Western Hall next to Lime Street station.

In 2008, the council granted planning permission for a 15 or 16-storey hotel building on the site but the scheme was never built. The original plan was for a 151 bed hotel and 88 apartments and was developed to take advantage of a Mersey Tram stop on the failed tram scheme.

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