Portsmouth has £20m of Levelling Up funding secured and 2,300 homes planned for City Centre North
Strategic sites, green infrastructure, growth industries, and community-led regeneration — drawn from the Portsmouth Local Plan 2024–2040, Levelling Up Fund projects, and the city's Economic Development Strategy.
Strategic Development Sites
Five key sites allocated or identified in the Portsmouth Local Plan (currently under independent examination). Together they account for the majority of the city's 17,700-home target to 2040.
Tipner West
AllocatedUp to 1,000 new homes plus 58,000 sqm marine employment hub on the north-western shore of Portsea Island. Includes new sea defences, a transport interchange, and waterfront public realm. Strategic gateway to the city from the M275.
Source: Portsmouth Local Plan 2024–2040, PCC Regeneration
City Centre North — former Tricorn/Sainsbury's sites
AllocatedUp to 2,300 new homes, 10,000 sqm non-residential space, and 22,400 sqm of green space on cleared sites immediately north of the Guildhall. One of the largest brownfield opportunities in South East England outside London. Could fundamentally reshape the city centre.
Source: Portsmouth Local Plan Pre-Submission Addendum, Nov 2025
Fratton Park & Pompey Centre (PLP7)
AllocatedStrategic mixed-use allocation around Fratton Park — stadium expansion to 20,000 seats already underway (£15m+ investment), Milton End stand capacity rising from 2,100 to 3,200. Broader site allocation envisages housing, commercial, and community uses around the stadium footprint. Network Rail and Portsmouth FC have signed Statement of Common Ground.
Source: PCC Local Plan PLP7; PFC/PCC Statement of Common Ground Oct 2024
Northern Quarter — Cosham & Lakeside North Harbour
IdentifiedCosham High Street is identified for regeneration and as a district retail/commercial centre. Lakeside North Harbour (former IBM campus) is a significant employment and innovation site with potential for further intensification and diversification into tech and digital sectors.
Source: Portsmouth Local Plan; Invest Portsmouth
St James' Hospital Campus & Langstone
IdentifiedLarge brownfield hospital campus in Milton, identified in the Local Plan for potential health-led mixed-use redevelopment. Proximity to Langstone Harbour SSSI requires sensitive masterplanning. High potential for health tech cluster colocation with QA Hospital.
Source: Portsmouth Local Plan 2024–2040
Island constraint reality check: Portsmouth cannot expand outward — it is physically bounded by the sea. All growth must be brownfield intensification on existing urban land. This means the Local Plan sites above are essentially the entire pipeline. Each one has to deliver — there is no fallback land.
Green Infrastructure Investment
Portsmouth has secured significant investment in green and leisure infrastructure from several separate funding streams — the £20m Levelling Up Fund, the North Portsea Coastal Scheme, the Bus Service Improvement Plan and the council's own capital programme. Those streams are frequently conflated in public discussion, so each project below names its actual funder.
Where the £20m Levelling Up Fund money actually went
Transforming the visitor economy · Levelling Up Fund Round 1 · announced 27 October 2021 (Autumn Budget) · £20,000,000.00 — a round £20m, per the government's own published bidders list
Read this before the breakdown
Neither government nor Portsmouth City Council has ever published a project-by-project split of this £20m.The figures below are reconstructed from the council's own capital-programme appendices, where scheme lines carry the funder code OG(LUHC). Three such schemes sum to exactly £20,000,000 and match the three projects named in the government's own case study — but that code is a generic departmental one used by other schemes too, so this is a strong inference, not a published table. Each row below is labelled with how confident that inference is.
Portsmouth International Port — cruise & ferry terminal
The only component with an independently published figure: Portsmouth International Port (council-owned) states on its own site that the terminal was "made possible through £11.25m of Levelling Up funding", matching the capital programme exactly. The terminal opened to its first passengers on 20 August 2023 after 18 months' construction. The council's 2024/25 accounts describe it as "now fully operational, managing an additional 250,000 passengers a year."
Linear Park (Hilsea) — including Hilsea Lido refurbishment
The grant-funded programme contains a single scheme called "Linear Park". There is no separate Hilsea Lido grant line — so the council has never published how much of this went to the Lido versus the wider park. The Lido reopened on 2 May 2026; the council's own release names no cost figure. Spend slipped repeatedly (£5.59m planned for 2023/24 became £0.90m). The scheme total has since risen by £536,000 to £8,286,000 — but £486,000 of that increase is council money, not grant.
Investment in football facilities, including changing facilities
This line carries the same LUHC funder code and is needed to make the three schemes sum to exactly £20m — but no public document connects it to the Levelling Up bid. A Full Council motion of 9 November 2021 listed the Lido, the linear park and the cruise terminal as the LUF projects, and mentioned a football bid separately. Treat its inclusion here as inference, not established fact.
Deliberately not stated as “£17.10mof the £20m spent”: the port line has since grown past £11.25m, so the LUHC-coded schemes now total more than the award itself — further evidence the funder code captures more than this one grant. Spend deadline: End of March 2028 (extended under MHCLG's 2025 funding reforms, which also removed the requirement to seek approval before moving funding between projects)
Commonly credited to this £20m — but funded from elsewhere
- Hilsea Lines moat restoration and dredgingActually funded by: North Portsea Coastal Scheme Phase 5 — a flood-defence scheme delivered by Coastal Partners with the Environment Agency and Portsmouth City CouncilThe scheme's own site attributes it to "new funding secured by our dedicated environment team for 2025/26" and does not identify it as Levelling Up money anywhere. Dredging began in September 2025 and the wider sea-defence work runs to the end of 2026 — not, as sometimes stated, completed by December 2025.
- Walking, cycling and bus improvements around HilseaActually funded by: Portsmouth's Bus Service Improvement Plan — a separate £53m programmeAttributed by the council itself to the BSIP, not to the Levelling Up Fund.
What was promised
The government's own January 2023 case study promised, among other things, children's water play, event space and spectator areas at Hilsea.
What has opened so far
The Lido reopened with a refurbished pool, changing facilities, a sauna, and pop-up food and beverage. The contractor's own account records that the spectator stand was demolished. The council describes the opening as coming "ahead of the full regeneration in the future".
Delay: Roughly a year. The contractor said in June 2024 that the Lido would be complete in spring 2025 and open for the summer season in time for its 90th anniversary; the council's 2024/25 annual report expected a 2025 opening. It opened on 2 May 2026.
No council or government document declares a descope, and no clawback appears anywhere in the record. This is a documented comparison between what was promised and what has so far opened — not an allegation of failure.
A note on how hard this was to trace
Tracing this £20m is now unexpectedly hard. Portsmouth City Council's live news archive contains only 2026 items — the award announcements, the start-of-works releases and the completion release that carried a Hilsea cost figure all return 404. The council's dedicated Levelling Up Fund page redirects to a generic landing page. The live Lido and Hilsea Lines pages say only "funded by the UK Government", naming neither the fund nor any figure. The award is now traceable mainly through gov.uk, the council-owned port's own website, and capital-programme appendices. The definitive per-project split exists in the council's unpublished Memorandum of Understanding with MHCLG, which would require a Freedom of Information request to obtain.
Sources (7)
- GOV.UK — Levelling Up Fund: first round successful bidders (data file) — 2021-10-27
- GOV.UK — £20 million Levelling Up transformation for North Portsmouth (case study) — 2023-01-17
- Portsmouth International Port — recent projects (£11.25m figure) — current
- Portsmouth City Council — Hilsea Lido opening date announced — 2026-02-24
- Portsmouth City Council — Cabinet 10 Feb 2026, Appendices A–H (capital programme actuals) — 2026-02-10
- Portsmouth City Council — Statement of Accounts 2024/25 — 2026-02
- North Portsea Coastal Scheme — update (moat dredging, Phase 5) — 2025-08-22
🌊 Southsea Coastal Scheme — flood defence that's also rebuilding the seafront
A 4.5km flood defence scheme running Old Portsmouth to Eastney, protecting an estimated 8,000+ homes and 700+ businesses (plus 74 listed structures and 3 scheduled monuments) against coastal flooding, designed to a 100-year horizon. It's easy to see only the years of promenade closures — but each phase has also delivered new public realm: widened beaches (around 1 million tonnes of shingle added between the Pyramids and Eastney from October 2025), a rebuilt promenade with new lighting, stepped/ramped beach access, and pedestrian/cycle diversions kept open throughout construction. Reported cost figures vary by source and date — cited here as a range rather than a single number, in the interest of not cherry-picking whichever figure looks best.
| Frontage | Location | Status | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Long Curtain Moat | Complete | Sept 2020 – Feb 2023 |
| 4 | Southsea Castle | Complete | 2022–2024 |
| 5 West | Pyramids to Speakers' Corner | Complete | 2023–2024 |
| 3 | Southsea Common | Underway | Closed Oct 2024, reopening summer 2026 |
| 5 East | Speakers' Corner to South Parade Pier | Starting | Closing 2 Mar 2026 – May 2027 |
| 2 | Clarence Pier | Planned | 2027–2028 |
| 6 | South Parade Pier to Eastney | Planned | 2027–2028 |
Sources: Coastal Partners, Southsea Coastal Scheme project page · Construction Enquirer, £100m funding approved (8 Jun 2020) · ITV Meridian, additional £38m (4 Mar 2022) · ITV Meridian, £180m stage update (22 Oct 2024) · PCC, beach expansion (1 Oct 2025)
Hilsea Lido — reopened May 2026
Complete ✓Portsmouth's Art Deco outdoor swimming pool, built in 1935, reopened on 2 May 2026 with a refurbished pool, new changing facilities, a sauna and pop-up food and beverage. Operated by Sea Lanes with South Downs Leisure; contractor Beard. The council describes the opening as coming "ahead of the full regeneration in the future" — the spectator stand was demolished rather than rebuilt. Roughly a year later than the contractor's 2024 estimate of a spring 2025 completion.
Source: Portsmouth City Council news (24 Feb 2026); PCC capital programme
Hilsea Lines — moat restoration & sea defences
UnderwayThe 80-hectare ancient earthwork site forming the northern boundary of Portsea Island. Moat dredging began September 2025, with salinity management, reedbed installation and wildflower planting. NOTE: this is flood-defence work under the North Portsea Coastal Scheme (Phase 5) — it is frequently but wrongly credited to the city's £20m Levelling Up Fund award, which it is not part of.
Source: North Portsea Coastal Scheme (22 Aug 2025); Historic England consent documentation
Bransbury Park — new leisure hub
PlannedSignificant regeneration of the Milton park site. Plans include a new 25m × 4 lane swimming pool, learner pool, gym, studios, a relocated and expanded play area, multi-use outdoor sports court, and a new GP surgery integrated into the leisure building. Part of £27m committed to sports and leisure improvement across the city.
Source: PCC Sports Facilities investment programme
Southsea Common — biodiversity & events resilience
UnderwayTwo-year programme to improve irrigation and biodiversity across Southsea Common — Portsmouth's main seafront green space, which hosts Victorious Festival (70,000+ attendees), air shows, and events year-round. The project ensures the grass sward can sustain heavy event use without degradation.
Source: PCC parks and open spaces capital programme
Hilsea Lines — Foxes Forest woodland restoration
OngoingAncient semi-natural woodland within the Hilsea Lines earthworks undergoing ongoing ecological restoration. Invasive species management, dead-wood habitat creation, and public access improvement. Connects with the wider Ports Creek corridor and Portsdown Hill.
Source: PCC Hilsea Lines parks page
What's still missing
- • A green corridor connecting Hilsea Lines to the Eastern Road wetlands and Farlington Marshes — would create a 8km+ urban green spine
- • Improved cycle infrastructure on the seafront connecting Hilsea Lido → Eastney → Southsea Castle (current routing is incomplete and dangerous) — though the Southsea Coastal Scheme's remaining phases (above) will add further pedestrian/cycle diversion routes as each frontage completes
- • Community food-growing sites (allotments) — Portsmouth has a multi-year waiting list for allotment plots; new rooftop/urban growing infrastructure on regeneration sites would address this
- • Water quality: the Environment Agency classifies Southsea East (Pyramids to South Parade Pier) as “Poor” for bathing water, while Eastney is rated “Good” — Southern Water's £170m Three Harbours Partnership (Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester Harbours) is the current response — see the sewage & water quality evidence page for the sourced detail
Local-Led Economy: Craft, Markets & Southsea Village
The grassroots economic layer — independent shops, breweries, markets, makers — is what gives Portsmouth its distinct character. Is that genuinely economically significant, or is it romanticised? Portsmouth City Council's own 2024 retail study and 2025 festival economic-impact figures let the evidence answer that rather than assumption.
Southsea Centre unit mix vs national average (2023 survey, 187 units)
Southsea has nearly double the national share of cafés/restaurants/bars (25.7% vs 14.9%) and lower vacancy (10.2% vs 14.0%) — a materially different, hospitality-led mix, not an assumption. Source: Portsmouth Retail and Leisure Study Update 2024 (JLL, for PCC), Fig. 5.1.
Southsea Food Festival 2025 — economic impact
Independent impact study by Evosa, commissioned by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth has 7,630 businesses (2023, ONS) — 80.3% micro (0–9 staff), 19% SME, 0.7% large — so a locally-dominated events economy is consistent with the wider business base, not an outlier. Source: portsmouth.gov.uk key statistics; StandOut Magazine, 18 Aug 2025 (corroborating PCC's since-retired press release).
Craft beer & local food economy
Southsea Brewing Company (est. 2014 at Southsea Castle) pioneered the local craft scene and has inspired a cluster of microbreweries and independent food producers across Portsea Island.
Southsea Brewing Co. (Southsea Castle tap); Portsmouth Beer Festival (annual); Southsea Food Festival; Foodie Fridays on Commercial Road (launched March 2026)
The evidence for this cluster mattering is real (see the Southsea retail mix and Food Festival figures below) — what a formal designation or dedicated support fund would actually deliver in jobs or cost is not something we can responsibly quantify without a costed council proposal, so no invented job or cost figures are given here. See the Suggested Action Plan for how UK Stat Pack frames a possible next step.
Southsea Village & Albert Road character economy
Albert Road and the surrounding Southsea village area represents Portsmouth's most distinctive independent retail and hospitality quarter — bookshops, record shops, vintage, cafés, tattoo studios, theatres.
Kings Theatre (£5m restoration underway); Active Pompey Neighbourhood programme; Living Streets parklets (£30k green scheme, 12+ businesses); Albert Road BID ballot (Feb–Mar 2026); Hotwalls Studios creative quarter (Old Portsmouth)
Southsea's own retail-mix data (below) shows a genuinely different composition from a typical centre — this is evidence the character economy is real, not assumed. Formal protections (e.g. an Article 4 Direction limiting chain-store conversion) are a live planning-policy option; specific unit/job counts from such a change would need a council impact assessment, not an estimate invented here.
Farmers markets & local food network
Portsmouth's market offer is growing — Hampshire Farmers Market (third Sunday, Palmerston Rd), Love Southsea Market (monthly), Foodie Fridays (Commercial Road). The council is actively investing in market infrastructure and programming (Love Your Local Market campaign, May 2026).
Hampshire Farmers Market at Palmerston Road (est.); Love Southsea monthly market; Showtime Sundays live programme (launched May 2026); Portsmouth Christmas Market; Southsea Food Festival
The 2025 Southsea Food Festival result (below) is the strongest single piece of evidence for this sector's real economic weight. A permanent covered market structure is a genuine option raised locally, but no verified cost or trader-capacity figure exists for it yet — treat any such number as speculative until a council feasibility study is published.
Priority Growth Sectors for Local Startups
Portsmouth's Economic Development Strategy 2019–2036 identifies four priority sectors where the city has genuine comparative advantage. These are not aspirational — they have anchor employers, academic infrastructure, and supply chain depth.
Marine & Blue Tech
Portsmouth is the UK's leading naval port and a major marine engineering cluster. BAE Systems, Babcock International, L3Harris ASV (autonomous vessels), and QinetiQ anchor the sector. The transition to autonomous maritime systems, green shipping, and offshore wind installation creates startup opportunities in vessel design, AI navigation, and subsea tech.
Digital & Games
Climax Studios (one of the UK's longest-running independent game studios) and the Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR) at UoP anchor a genuine games and XR cluster. This sector employs young, well-paid graduates and is the fastest-growing part of Portsmouth's creative economy (10%/yr per EDS 2019–2036).
Visitor Economy & Culture
Portsmouth receives 11.2–12.4 million visitors per year (2025), generating £450m+ in spending. The City of Culture 2029 bid (longlisted March 2026) could boost visitor spending to £600m by 2030. The naval heritage asset (HMS Victory, Warrior, Mary Rose Museum, Submarine Museum) is world-class but the visitor journey around the city is fragmented.
Health & Life Sciences
Cytiva, Pall Corporation, and academic research at UoP anchor a smaller but growing life sciences cluster. QA Hospital is one of the busiest DGHs in England — its patient data, combined with UoP research capacity, is a genuine asset for health AI development. Proximity to the Solent LEP health innovation network strengthens the case.
What Portsmouth lacks
A dedicated startup/scale-up incubator physically located in the city that is not inside a university. Portsmouth City Council's own Skills and Labour Market Strategy (March 2026) puts graduate retention at roughly 19% — consistent with a documented shortage of local scale-up commercial space, not an assumption. No verified cost figure exists for filling this gap; see the Suggested Portsmouth Action Plan for UK Stat Pack's own framing of it as an evidence-led option, not a costed proposal.
Community-Led Projects & Programmes
Smaller-scale initiatives that are already demonstrating impact or have strong momentum. These deserve formal support and replication across the city.
Hotwalls Studios — Old Portsmouth Creative Quarter
ActiveThe former sea-defence arches at Old Portsmouth converted into working studios for artists, designers, and makers. One of Portsmouth's most successful council-led cultural infrastructure investments — demonstrates that small, low-cost units attract creative tenants who then animate the surrounding area and attract visitors.
Source: Portsmouth City Council creative economy documentation
Albert Road BID — Business Improvement District
Ballot passed 2026Ballot issued February 2026 on a Business Improvement District covering the Albert Road / Elm Grove district centre. BID priorities: safety, footfall, cleanliness, environment, and promotion. A formally funded BID would give the area £100–200k/yr of dedicated management budget — cleaning, events, lighting, promotion — that individual retailers cannot afford alone.
Source: Portsmouth City Centre BID documentation; PCC consultation
Living Streets green parklets — Southsea
Active£30,000 green streets scheme transforming on-street parking spaces into community parklets with benches, planters, bike racks, and lending libraries. 12+ Southsea businesses participating. Part of Active Pompey Neighbourhood initiative (bounded by Fawcett/Lawrence Rd, Bath Rd, Goldsmith Ave, and Albert Rd). Demonstrates community-led placemaking at minimal cost.
Source: Portsmouth News; PCC Active Pompey programme
Portsmouth City of Culture 2029 bid
LonglistedPortsmouth was longlisted in March 2026 for UK City of Culture 2029. If successful, the designation unlocks approximately £10m in additional cultural investment, triggers private sector match funding, and has historically increased visitor spending by 30–40% in winning cities (Bradford, Coventry, Hull). The bid builds on the naval heritage, Victorious Festival, and growing creative industries cluster.
Source: PCC City of Culture launch; UoP support statement; Mirage News longlisting (March 2026)
What could happen next?
Everything above this line is what's actually official, funded or underway. For UK Stat Pack's own evidence-led suggestions on top of that — clearly labelled as analysis, not policy — see the Suggested Portsmouth Action Plan.
See the Suggested Portsmouth Action Plan →Sources & References
- Portsmouth Local Plan 2024–2040 (Pre-Submission Addendum, Nov 2025): portsmouth.gov.uk/services/development-and-planning/planning-policy/portsmouth-local-plan
- Portsmouth Economic Development & Regeneration Strategy 2019–2036: portsmouth.gov.uk
- Portsmouth Levelling Up Fund projects: portsmouth.gov.uk/services/development-and-planning/regeneration/levelling-up-fund
- Hilsea Lido reopening (May 2026): portsmouth.gov.uk; Portsmouth News
- Hilsea Lines moat restoration (Historic England consent): portsmouth.gov.uk/moativation-for-nature
- Bransbury Park leisure hub: portsmouth.gov.uk/services/leisure/sports-and-activities/improving-our-sports-facilities/bransbury-park-leisure-centre
- Fratton Park redevelopment (PLP7): PCC/PFC Statement of Common Ground, Oct 2024
- Southsea BID ballot (Feb 2026): portsmouthcitycentre.co.uk
- Portsmouth City of Culture 2029 bid (longlisted Mar 2026): portsmouth.gov.uk; port.ac.uk
- Invest Portsmouth sector intelligence: investportsmouth.co.uk
- Southsea Brewing Company: rediscoverportsmouth.co.uk; Portsmouth News
- Portsmouth Markets & Love Your Local Market campaign (May 2026): portsmouth.gov.uk
- Southsea Coastal Scheme (cost, phasing, co-benefits): coastalpartners.org.uk; constructionenquirer.com (8 Jun 2020); itv.com/news/meridian (4 Mar 2022, 22 Oct 2024); portsmouth.gov.uk (1 Oct 2025)
- Environment Agency bathing water classifications 2024: gov.uk/government/publications/bathing-waters-in-england-compliance-reports