An estate agent played a pivotal role in the decision announced yesterday to save some 400 homes in Liverpool from demolition.

Paul Sutton, of Sutton Kersh, was on the team which fought plans to demolish homes in the Toxteth neighbourbood where Ringo Starr grew up.

The tiny Save charity – with just three staff – forced the case to public inquiry last summer, at the end of which the planning inspector approved a scheme to demolish all but a handful of houses in Liverpool’s Welsh Streets, replacing them with 227 new units.

But yesterday, communities secretary Eric Pickles overruled his own planning inspector, supporting many of the arguments advanced by Save.

He said he agreed “with Save that the Welsh Streets are of considerable significance as non-designated heritage assets of historic, architectural, cultural and social interest”.

Pickles said he was not persuaded that the scale of demolition proposed was necessary or that options involving refurbishment had been exhausted.

The fight to save the area from demolition began in 2004.

The long boarded-up houses are now set to be returned to use as habitable homes.