A MAJOR £200m deal for a new shopping park to transform Liverpool’s Edge Lane approach should be signed within weeks, the Daily Post has learned.

City planners and landowner Derwent Holdings have been holding weekly meetings for months to hammer out the details of the scheme.

Derwent say it is on the cusp of agreeing to build a retail park with around 500,000 sq ft shopping space – half the size it originally hoped for.

If it gets the go-ahead all the existing shops on the 100-acre Edge Lane retail park site will be torn down and new, higher quality units built to replace them. Derwent say the two sides have at least 95% of the scheme worked out and a planning application should be lodged by the Autumn.

A deal would finally see the end of years of fallout between Derwent and Liverpool City Council that has seen parts of the Edge Lane complex mired in disrepair – and both sides squaring up in court.

The current park is around 430,000 sq ft, meaning the new shops will total 70,000 sq ft more than the current site.

Derwent, owned by Isle of Man Tycoon Albert Gubay, is also offering a number of “sweeteners” for their part of the deal.

Mr Gubay’s representative John Taylor and Derwent’s planning consultants DPP are holding regular meetings with the city’s regeneration body Liverpool Vision.

Last week Vision received a 30-page dossier detailing the scheme. The concessions include: an extension to Mersey Care’s Rathbone Hospital; a larger “Victorian” style park to replace Rathbone Park; and a “grot-spot” free zone.

The city council launched a legal battle with Derwent over the clean-up of blighted areas of Edge Lane, including the old Traveller’s Rest site, which is still a pile of rubble.