Torus’ 195-home canalside development has won an Insider Liverpool City Region Property Award.

Hartley Locks is a £65 million rent to buy scheme in Lightbody Street that is helping drive a renaissance around Liverpool’s Northern Docks.

It scooped the Residential Development of the Year category after judges ruled it ‘sets a benchmark for housing-led regeneration and makes an important contribution to the wider transformation of North Liverpool’.

Made up of 185 apartments and ten townhouses, Hartley Locks transformed the grade II listed Stanley Flight Canal Locks and has been a catalyst for regeneration of the post-industrial dockland area.

Since Torus announced Hartley Locks, Everton FC’s new stadium in Bramley Moore Dock was built and a former tobacco warehouse is being converted into 538 apartments.

Other residential developments are planned and a host of creative businesses, cafes and bars have also made the area their home with numbers continuing to grow.

Anna James and Matt Rushton of Torus Developments, said:

“Hartley Locks is making a huge impact in North Liverpool and it is really pleasing the judges of such a prestigious award have recognised this.

“It is a landmark development that is helping meet overwhelming demand for high-quality housing in the area.

“It has paved the way for wider regeneration nearby, giving others confidence to invest and this will only increase when bigger plans in that part of the city come to fruition.

“We’d like to express my thanks to all our colleagues and partners who worked on the development – it was a complex project but has made a big difference to the area.”

Funding saw Torus invest £55.2 million with Homes England providing a £6.8 million grant and £2.9 million coming from Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s Brownfield Land fund.

Torus took an innovative approach to sustainability making Hartley Locks the first residential scheme to connect to Mersey Heat’s district heating network which is powered by the UK’s largest water source heat pump in the adjacent Leeds-Liverpool Canal.

It provides heating and hot water for all the properties resulting in a 78% carbon saving compared to a conventional gas supply.

Each apartment will save 291kg of CO2 every year, giving tenants chance to lower their fuel bills.

Other environmental measures include blue-roof rainwater attenuation, electric vehicle chargers, mechanical ventilation heat recovery, 210 cycle spaces, sedum landscaping and bird and bat boxes.

Properties are of an exceptional standard with balconies giving tenants breathtaking views of the River Mersey, cityscape, cathedrals, football stadiums and sunsets.

The constrained derelict brownfield site was incredibly complicated to develop.

The listed canal basin underneath Hartley Locks dates back to 1848 and saw Torus’s appointed contractor, Eric Wright Construction, create a temporary dam by piledriving a 21-metre steel sheet into the bed of the grade II listed basin so it could be drained allowing foundations to be laid.

Using a floating pontoon, the original masonry and brickwork of the canal basin was repaired and repointed and the original sandstone boundary wall reinstated.