Sandhills Station and Everton's New Stadium: Why the Matchday Transport Fix Is Still Being Reworked
Liverpool councillors have deferred the latest Sandhills station upgrade. What Merseytravel wants to change, what it will not fix and what happens next.
Liverpool councillors have deferred Merseytravel's latest plan for Sandhills station pending a site visit. The argument is no longer about whether the station needs help. It is about whether a larger queueing area, better facilities and a bus interchange are enough for a 52,769-seat waterfront stadium whose transport impact was being modelled years before it opened.
Sandhills was supposed to be part of the answer to moving Everton from Goodison Park to Bramley-Moore Dock. It is now part of the argument about whether Liverpool planned the move well enough.
On 25 August 2026, Liverpool City Council's Planning Committee deferred Merseytravel's latest application for the station rather than approve it as recommended by planning officers. Councillors want to visit the site before deciding what happens next.
Hill Dickinson Stadium opened as Everton's home in 2025. Sandhills is the closest Merseyrail station. Photo: Everton FC (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.
The application, reference 26F/1465, is not for a new station or a major expansion of the rail network. It would enlarge the existing crowd-management zone beside Sandhills, add permanent toilets, improve passenger and staff welfare facilities, create extra access into the queueing system and add a new bus stop and interchange on Dunes Way.
That distinction matters. The current proposal is mainly about how thousands of people wait and move through Sandhills after an event. It does not, by itself, provide more trains.
The current position
As of 2 September 2026:
Sandhills remains the closest Merseyrail station to Everton's Hill Dickinson Stadium.
Hill Dickinson Stadium has a capacity of 52,769.
Merseytravel's application 26F/1465 was recommended for approval by council planning officers.
Liverpool's Planning Committee deferred the decision on 25 August pending a site visit.
No new committee decision date has yet been published.
The planning officer report for application 26F/1465 says the intention is to increase the amount of waiting space inside railway land rather than leave large numbers of passengers queueing on Sandhills Lane.
The proposal includes:
Proposed change
What it is intended to do
Larger crowd-management zone
Hold more passengers inside the site rather than on the public highway
Four destination-based queues
Separate passengers for Liverpool/Hunts Cross, Ormskirk, Southport and Headbolt Lane services
Permanent toilets
Replace or improve temporary passenger welfare provision
Additional access to the footbridge ramp
Improve movement from the queueing zone towards the platforms
Bus stop and shelter on Dunes Way
Create a bus and rail interchange beside the station
Staff and passenger welfare facilities
Improve conditions during long event-day operating periods
Space for possible catering
Give waiting passengers access to refreshments
New gates, fencing and access changes
Manage pedestrian, emergency and operational movements
The council report says the current zone would be extended south between Dunes Way and the existing ramp to the footbridge. New stairs would connect part of the expanded queueing area into that route.
The Dunes Way bus stop is more than a football measure. Planning officers say it could also improve interchange options in the north docks outside match and major-event periods.
What the application does not solve
This is the part most likely to be missed if the scheme is described simply as a "Sandhills station capacity upgrade".
The planning report says train services would continue at the same regularity as before the proposal. The application deals mainly with passenger management on the ground.
It does not itself approve:
more trains per hour
a guaranteed number of eight-car trains
new platforms
longer platforms
a new railway line
a new station closer to the stadium
a permanent matchday timetable
changes to the wider bus network
Merseyrail can alter operations separately, and it already runs special event arrangements. Its current Everton matchday travel advice says 15-minute services can operate before and after matches on the Southport, Ormskirk, Hunts Cross and Headbolt Lane lines, with four and eight-car trains used according to the event plan.
But expanding the place where people queue is not the same thing as increasing the number of people the railway can physically carry away.
That is why the Sandhills argument keeps returning to two different questions:
Can the station hold and process a concentrated post-match crowd safely?
Can the rail network move that crowd away quickly enough?
Application 26F/1465 is mainly trying to address the first.
The pressure on Sandhills was predicted before the stadium opened
The demand did not arrive without warning.
In November 2024, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority approved up to £4.2 million from its City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement for the Stanley Dock Rail Access project at Sandhills.
The Combined Authority report said the stadium could bring 12,000 to 15,000 additional passengers to Sandhills on event days.
It also made clear that the station-access project and the Fan Management Zone were separate but interdependent pieces of the plan. The Fan Management Zone was described as being funded by Everton FC, while the additional station access was being delivered through the Combined Authority.
The basic capacity issue had been identified even earlier. A Liverpool City Region rail update recorded in 2021 discussed the possibility of between 9,000 and 10,000 people arriving at Sandhills in an hour when the station could then admit around 3,000. An additional access was expected to increase that figure to around 6,000.
Those were planning assumptions rather than a description of the station today, but they show that concentrated post-match demand at Sandhills was being discussed years before Everton played a competitive game on the waterfront.
Sandhills has already been upgraded once
The current application is not the first intervention.
Liverpool City Council approved a crowd-management zone at Sandhills in September 2024.
A second application, 24F/2773, was approved in March 2025. That allowed a new ramp, staircase, pedestrian footbridge and associated access from the crowd-management area towards the southern end of the island platform, plus emergency access towards Dunes Way.
The new second entrance and footbridge were in use by the time Everton began playing competitive fixtures at Hill Dickinson Stadium in 2025.
The significance of the 2026 application is therefore straightforward: the first round of infrastructure did not end the need for further changes after the stadium began operating at full scale.
The latest planning report says the station's continued ability to cope with match and event-day demand requires more work.
What supporters have been telling transport bodies
Everton's Fan Advisory Board has been raising transport and access concerns since the first season at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
In a December 2025 meeting involving the FAB, Liverpool City Council, Merseytravel, Merseyrail and Merseyside Police, supporter representatives raised problems with queues, bus coordination, night matches, pedestrian safety and confidence in public transport.
The FAB's report of that meeting says Merseyrail told the meeting that it had modelled around 5,000 passengers per hour but was experiencing around 10,000, requiring roughly 24 trains an hour across the relevant operation.
The same report says council monitoring showed Sandhills returning to normal levels around one hour and ten minutes after a match at the time of that meeting.
Supporters were also reporting four-car trains passing already crowded platforms and asked for more use of eight-car formations.
That is operational evidence of the point the current planning application cannot resolve on its own. A larger waiting zone can make queueing safer and more orderly. It cannot guarantee the train that arrives has enough room.
The Fan Advisory Board says the problem was foreseeable
After the Planning Committee deferred the latest scheme, Everton's Fan Advisory Board called for the proposals to be revisited urgently.
The group's position is important because it is not arguing that nothing has been done. It has taken part in meetings with the club, council, police and transport bodies and has acknowledged operational changes already made.
Its criticism is that the wider transport challenge was foreseeable.
The stadium took years to plan and build. Moving a Premier League club from Goodison Park to a 52,769-seat ground in the north docks inevitably changed where tens of thousands of people travel before and after home matches.
The FAB has said a completely new station may not be realistic, but that this cannot mean accepting the existing position. It wants the authorities and transport operators to reach a more efficient, resilient and comfortable arrangement for supporters and the surrounding community.
The application is not happening on an empty matchday route.
Sandhills Lane and Dunes Way sit within a working industrial area. Businesses still need access while football supporters are being moved through barriers, road controls and temporary event layouts.
The council's planning report records 27 representations: 26 objections and one letter of support. The objections were not 26 separate households. They included repeated representations from people connected with businesses operating from 51 Sandhills Lane.
Concerns included:
access to business premises during events
emergency and technical vehicle access
the effect of barriers and road management
underground utilities and drainage work
disability access
contaminated land
the effect of permanent infrastructure on surrounding commercial operations
Planning officers concluded that many complaints about matchday access were operational management matters rather than reasons to refuse the physical development.
Their argument is that holding more passengers inside the Sandhills site should reduce pressure on the public highway.
That does not make the business concerns irrelevant. It shows why this is a neighbourhood and transport-planning story as much as an Everton story. The stadium and the streets around it sit in Vauxhall and the north docks, a working dock district long before it was a match destination.
Accessibility is also more than a lift at the station
Sandhills is step-free, and Everton operates a pre-booked accessible shuttle between the station and Boundary Street near the stadium.
The current application also went through an inclusive-design review.
Council officers raised detailed requirements for the accessible toilet, steps, handrails, tactile surfaces, bollards and any catering counter. The report also noted that the proposed movable barriers had angled feet that could create a trip hazard and said alternative barrier types should be explored.
That is a small detail in a large planning file, but it gets to the core of crowd management. A scheme can increase theoretical capacity while still being uncomfortable or difficult to use for people with reduced mobility.
The committee deferred the plan rather than rejecting it
Council planning officers had recommended approval with conditions.
The Planning Committee did not refuse the application on 25 August. It deferred the decision so members could visit Sandhills and see the site for themselves.
That means the proposal is still live.
The committee debate was also overshadowed by inappropriate comparisons made by two Liberal Democrat councillors between the matchday arrangements and Nazi Germany and Auschwitz. Both later apologised. The Fan Advisory Board subsequently urged politicians to reduce the temperature of the argument and concentrate on the transport problem.
For readers following the planning process, the practical point is simpler: there is no final planning decision yet.
This is bigger than nineteen league home games
Sandhills is being planned around a stadium intended to operate as a major-event venue, not only as Everton's home ground.
Hill Dickinson Stadium has already been used for non-Premier League events, and its transport planning has to work around football, cup ties, concerts and other large events. It is also one of the venues selected for UEFA Euro 2028.
That creates a wider public-interest question.
Liverpool and the city region want people travelling to large events by public transport rather than adding thousands of cars to the north docks. The Combined Authority used exactly that modal-shift argument when approving funding for Sandhills access improvements in 2024.
For that policy to work, passengers have to trust the system enough to use it.
Long queues do not automatically mean a transport plan has failed. Queues can be a deliberate safety tool when large crowds arrive faster than trains can carry them.
The harder question is whether the waiting time, physical environment, train capacity, bus network and walking routes together create a system that people consider usable.
What a fuller Sandhills solution would have to cover
The current planning application could improve conditions, but the transport problem crosses several organisations.
A complete matchday system involves:
Merseytravel and the Combined Authority for transport strategy and investment
Merseyrail for rail operations, train formations and station management
Liverpool City Council for planning, highways, lighting, parking and road management
Everton FC for supporter communication, stadium operations and parts of the transport plan
Merseyside Police and safety partners for crowd and event-day safety
bus operators for commercial and shuttle services
That is why there is no single planning application that can "fix Sandhills".
The expanded crowd zone may still be part of the answer. So could more eight-car operation, better coordination between buses and rail, clearer walking routes, improved lighting and more predictable post-match arrangements.
The important test is whether those pieces are being treated as one transport system rather than a series of separate problems. Sandhills is not the only Merseyrail station stuck in this kind of limbo: the proposed Liverpool Baltic station on the other side of the city centre has its own long-running timeline questions.
What happens next
Application 26F/1465 remains undecided.
Planning Committee members are due to visit the Sandhills site before the application returns for a decision. As of 2 September 2026, a new decision date has not been published.
The more important question will come when the application returns to committee.
Liverpool has already invested in a fan-management zone, a new station entrance and a footbridge. The latest proposal would make that system larger and better equipped.
The decision councillors now have to make is whether that is a reasonable next stage for Sandhills, while the city region separately deals with the harder issue of moving thousands of people away from the waterfront quickly enough.
