Nicholson Group Files Plans for 45 Flats in Pilkington's Listed Canteen

Nicholson Group has submitted plans to convert Pilkington's Grade-II listed former canteen in St Helens into 45 flats, a building that has stood empty since 1996 and once served lunches to 2,000 staff at a time.

The developer bought the modernist building at Alexandra Business Park out of receivership in 2023. Designed in-house, the new proposals would transform the 75,000 sq ft former dining hall into apartments, many of them overlooking a private lake within a registered historic park.

This is the second attempt to put homes in the building. Pilkington Properties secured permission in 2008 to convert the canteen into 31 flats, but that scheme never got off the ground. Nearly two decades of vacancy separate that consent from the current application.

Edwin Maxwell Fry of Fry, Drew and Partners designed the building between 1959 and 1963 as part of Pilkington's landmark headquarters complex. The glass-maker's canteen has now waited thirty years for a viable use.

What does the scheme change for the building?

The proposal shifts the site from a stalled heritage liability to a residential scheme with a delivery-backed developer behind it. Nicholson Group chief executive Paul Nicholson said: "We have an affinity for tackling challenging heritage projects, and we have an excellent track record in delivery."

He added: "Our ambition is to give the former Pilkington canteen a sustainable future as 45 homes, preserving the architecture and its relationship with the water and landscape. This is a place that deserves to be brought back to life, with its identity intact."

For practitioners, the application tests whether a 45-unit residential conversion can work within a Grade-II listed, 1960s industrial dining hall where a 31-unit scheme previously failed to proceed. The lakefront setting inside a registered historic park will shape how the apartments address the landscape, and how far the fabric of Fry, Drew and Partners' building survives the conversion.

The contrast with 2008 is the operative fact: a smaller consent stalled, while the current owner bought the asset out of receivership in 2023 and has moved to planning within two years. If approved, the scheme would end three decades of disuse for one of St Helens' most recognizable modernist structures.