The residents of the Beetham Plaza are revolting against their landlord… Elliot Lawless

Once the city's best-known developer, Lawless is now warring with residents over unpaid service charges

Dear readers — the residents of the Beetham Plaza, a set of apartments which self-describe as “an oasis in Liverpool's City Centre”, are having landlord troubles.

The landlord in question? Mr Elliot Lawless, a pretty well known name the city over. Lawless was one of Liverpool’s most successful developers during the Joe Anderson years, once said to sit atop a £1 billion pile of potential developments. But after moving to London following a series of high profile controversies, he’s a name you hear much less of in Liverpool these days.

That is unless you live in the Beetham Plaza. The building — where Lawless has his own large penthouse apartment — has played host to ongoing tensions between Lawless and his residents in recent years. In the most recent development, they are now refusing to pay their service charge in protest against what they see as a failure to maintain the upkeep of the building.

To read about Lawless’ stewardship of the Beetham Plaza, you’ll need to be a Post member. Doing so costs £7 a month and means you’ll be joining our (nearly 1,500!) paying members in helping to provide a new model for local journalism, which doesn’t rely on clickbait or stories copied from social media. Get us to the 1,500 mark by signing up today.

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The residents of the Beetham Plaza are revolting against their landlord… Elliot Lawless

By Jack Walton

Just before Christmas, a blacked-out Range Rover pulled up outside Beetham Plaza. Out stepped Elliot Lawless. The property developer had come to talk about cladding. 

The residents of the Plaza might’ve been pleased to hear this. Lawless is their landlord and cladding is one of several ongoing frustrations on the site. Scaffolding has now been up for a year, and while ultimately the government’s responsibility, residents at the Plaza had hoped their landlord might be able to seek some answers. But Lawless’s concern wasn’t the speed at which the contractors were carrying out the job. Rather, it was that in the course of their work, a small damp patch had appeared on the ceiling of his own flat.

Rewind the clock to 2018 and Lawless was the big fish of the local development pond. Sitting atop a £1 billion pile of would-be developments like the Paramount scheme, Pall Mall and Heaps Rice Mill, life was looking rosy. But after a series of high-profile controversies, Lawless no longer lives in Liverpool, having relocated down to London.

After purchasing the Plaza in 2018, Lawless quickly set about making modifications. He knocked through the three penthouse apartments, giving himself one massive flat. It was, at that time, his main residence in the city where he was fast making his name. According to other residents, he hasn’t been in Liverpool as much, but news of a damp patch on his ceiling had prompted a trip to the Plaza. Upon arrival, Lawless allegedly informed the contractors they had “ruined” his Christmas. 

‘It makes our blood boil when we see these people heading into the building to dust his settee while the rest of the building falls apart’. Illustration by Jake Greenhalgh.

For many of the long-term tenants of Beetham Plaza, their time can be split in two: pre-Lawless and post-Lawless. Before he purchased the building, residents say, it was a great place to live — one of the most desirable spots in the city. But since then, their lives have become a seemingly unending series of disputes. In the latest development, residents are now refusing to pay any service charge until their demands are met.

There are two sides to every story, of course, and people close to Lawless pushed back on many of the claims made about him by the Plaza residents. They noted that his own service charge is paid up, while his residents remain in arrears of over £100,000 due to their protest. Either way, the Beetham Plaza, which describes itself as “an oasis in Liverpool's City Centre”, is in open revolt.