New GM mayor questions Wigan Council planning process after seeing controversial Astley warehouse development
Greater Manchester’s new mayor Bev Craig has called for questions to be asked about the planning process which allowed four huge warehouses to be built metres from people’s homes in Astley.
Wigan Council’s planning committee approved the warehouses in June 2024, with formal planning permission following that August. The council has always maintained that the correct process was followed.
But the people living next to Astley Business Park have been left with enormous industrial buildings, around 60ft at their highest point, towering over their houses and gardens. One woman said there are days when she does not even open her bedroom blinds because all she can see is the huge grey warehouse outside.
And the problem has changed since logistics company Whistl moved into one of the buildings in July. The company operates 24 hours a day and people living nearby have complained about lorries, vehicle movements and other noise through the night. One mum of three described it as being “like a construction site all night”.
Astley Warehouses Action, the group set up by people living around the site, has now asked for night-time operations to stop until it can be shown they are not having an unacceptable impact on the families living nearby.
Wigan Council’s Environmental Health team has been looking into the noise complaints and has visited the site. Whistl says it is listening to the concerns and has already made changes, including stopping night-time refuelling, changing how trailers are moved and installing noise-monitoring equipment. It has also commissioned an independent acoustic assessment.
But the fact that families are now fighting over what happens outside their homes at night has brought the argument back to where it started: how were warehouses this big allowed to be built so close to houses?
It is a question now being asked by Greater Manchester’s new mayor.
Craig was asked about Astley by a member of Astley Warehouses Action on BBC Radio Manchester earlier this month. She said she had seen the development and was “genuinely quite shocked” by it.
Wigan Council has repeatedly said the correct planning process was followed, something subsequently supported by an independent audit.
But Craig said: “The council have come back and said they followed the process so we need to look at the process.”
She also said: “I don’t think it would have got through the planning process in other places.”
The planning history is complicated, but the important point is that although the land had been earmarked for employment use for years, an earlier permission for employment development lapsed.
A fresh application was made for the four warehouses which stand there today and Wigan Council’s planning committee approved it in June 2024. An independent audit commissioned after the controversy found that the council had followed the relevant procedures.
It did, however, describe the developer’s consultation before the application was submitted as “wholly inadequate” and said it would have been appropriate for more properties with a view of the development to have been consulted.
More than 26,000 people have since signed a petition calling for the warehouses to be suspended and for an independent investigation into Wigan Council’s planning department.
New leader of Wigan Council apologises
There has now been a noticeable change in the council’s engagement with the people fighting the development.
Wigan Council’s new leader Coun Nazia Rehman and chief executive Alison McKenzie-Folan recently spent around three hours meeting Astley Warehouses Action and visiting the site. The group says it had waited almost 12 months for the meeting and site visit.
According to the Action Group, Rehman began by apologising for the distress caused and said she had seen what people had been posting online and understood how stressful the experience had been.
For Rehman, who has only recently taken over as council leader, Astley is a problem she has inherited.
McKenzie-Folan has been Wigan Council’s chief executive since 2019 and was in charge of the authority throughout the period in which the current warehouse plans were considered, approved and built.
The Action Group says the three-hour meeting has already resulted in movement. It says Wigan Council has arranged meetings with Whistl, Grace Overseas and developer PLP, while Environmental Health has become involved following the complaints about noise.
A further joint site visit involving planning officers and people living nearby is also being arranged to look at concerns including noise, the gas pipeline, bund heights, landscaping and fire safety. Perhaps most significantly, the group says a wider independent review into the actions which led to the warehouses being approved, and what has happened since, is now under consideration.
Wigan Council would need to confirm whether that further review will take place and exactly what it would examine. Despite its long-running criticism of the council, Astley Warehouses Action has described the latest engagement as progress and says Rehman’s involvement has given the group hope that things have “turned a corner”.
For the people living next door, the immediate problem remains what happens now that the warehouses are actually being used.
The buildings are not going anywhere and businesses are moving in. Whistl has taken a 15-year lease and says its operation supports around 300 jobs across the North West.The company says it wants to be a responsible neighbour and will consider further measures once its independent assessment of the noise has been completed.
Astley Warehouses Action says that is not enough and wants night-time operations stopped until it can be shown that they are not harming the quality of life of people living nearby.
And then came a striking change
The timing of another decision by Wigan Council is striking.
On August 19, just six days after Bev Craig questioned the planning rules which allowed the Astley development, the council announced that four Green Belt sites previously proposed for employment development would no longer be taken forward.
They include Bridgewater West in Astley, land west of Winwick Lane in Lowton, the proposed Moss Industrial Estate extension and North of M6 Junction 26, better known as The Bell at Kitt Green.
The Bell will be particularly familiar to people in Wigan. The huge stretch of open land beside the M6 is also where Blackpool’s famous beach donkeys spend their winters.
Wigan Council says updated evidence shows it already has enough employment land elsewhere and says it has listened to local communities.
There is no evidence that what happened at Astley led to the four sites being dropped.
But the sequence of events will inevitably raise questions. Wigan Council is dealing with the fallout from the Astley warehouses, its new leader has apologised for the distress caused, and Greater Manchester’s new mayor is now questioning the planning rules which allowed them to be built.
Six days after Craig’s comments, Wigan Council announced that four other Green Belt employment sites would no longer be taken forward.
Whether what happened at Astley played any part in that change is a question only Wigan Council can answer.
For communities across Wigan with development on their doorstep, it is an answer worth having.
