These are the preferred options for Wigan Council’s Local Development Framework Core Strategy. We are consulting on it until the 4 th August 2009, and when it’s finalised, in late 2011, it will guide and shape the future development of Wigan Borough until at least 2026.
We face a number of key challenges in Wigan Borough that we need to try to address. The Core Strategy identifies them as follows:
Transport is a key issue that affects most people throughout the borough particularly congestion and slow journey times in our town centres and residential areas. Buses, lorries and cars have to share the same road network with its limitations and constraints, contributing to, and experiencing the same congestion. As a result, conditions for cycling and walking are often unpleasant.
In particular, and not least during the recession, housing affordability issues are important. We have a two speed housing market in the borough, with high demand and high prices in outer areas, and lower demand and lower prices in inner areas. In recent years, housing has become less affordable for more people in more parts of the borough.
Jobs and employment are a concern. Wigan is overrepresented in declining sectors of the economy such as manufacturing and underrepresented in growth areas such as skilled office jobs and research and development. We export large numbers of workers every day to areas outside the borough. Far more people in the borough have jobs than there are jobs available in it.
The level of qualifications and skills amongst the adult population is significantly below national levels, particularly in inner areas of the borough. means people cannot compete for the right sorts of jobs in growing sectors of the economy.
Health is a major issue, in particular, relatively low life expectancy and levels of participation in physical activity and high instances of multiple health problems, again particularly in inner areas.
Climate change is an issue across the world. Our current patterns of energy use locally are unsustainable and need to be looked at closely.
If we can address these issues, we can start to deliver sustainable communities. These are safe and attractive places where people want to live. They have a range of housing, jobs and services like schools, doctors, play spaces local shops and facilities. Other larger services would be easily accessible by walking, cycling or public transport and would help reduce our contribution to climate change.
In preparing the plan, we have to meet a number of key challenges. We have to demonstrate that there is community support for what we propose. We have to demonstrate that it is the most sustainable approach against a range of indicators covering the economy, the environment and social issues. We have to demonstrate that it is firmly based on sound evidence and that we can deliver what we are proposing.
Last year we consulted on a number of ‘spatial options’, issuing to each household a booklets with maps showing plans for different areas of the borough.
One was to focus most of our planned development on the East of the borough.
The second was to concentrate new developments on the West of the borough.
The third was focussing most development on outer areas, towards the edges of our borough.
The fourth was focussing most development on inner areas.
The fifth was to disperse development all around the whole borough.
And these options had advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of that earlier consultation was to draw out the positives and negatives of each.
Following this, the council’s considered preferred option is a version of the fourth choice – focussing development on the inner areas of Wigan, Ince, Hindley, Platt Bridge, Leigh and Atherton, but extending it eastwards to include a key site in Astley, and south westwards to include Ashton. We’re calling it our East/West Core. This is where we’d be focussing nearly all new employment development and around 85 per cent of new housing.
And in broad terms, we are proposing a sequential approach. We need to deliver new housing and we must capture some of the value of that new housing to help deliver much needed infrastructure for the borough. This new infrastructure will open up new sites and deliver jobs at those sites that wouldn’t be attractive without that infrastructure.
Through this approach we hope to deliver broad based regeneration.
This is the borough as it is today. You can see the borough boundary, the M6 motorway running north to south, and just outside our borough to the north east, the M61. The A580 East Lancashire Road runs roughly east to west across the south of the borough. The green belt covers large parts of our borough and existing built up areas are shown in grey.
The green belt includes a green hatched area, a current initiative to create a regional part in the centre of the borough, known as GreenHeart. The brown hatched area left of the centre of the screen is an economic initiative known as Wigan South Central, to deliver much needed jobs in the Wigan area. There are three key sites in Wigan south Central there shown in red, they are Wigan Pier, Westwood Park and the former Pemberton Colliery. There are also three sites in Leigh already available, shown in red. The first is to the south of the town centre including the former BCCI cableworks and Barlo radiator site. Just to the west of the town centre is the former Parsonage Colliery site and further west is the Bickershaw south site where the colliery pit head was located.
This slide shows what the preferred option looks like on a plan. We are proposing to be focussing on three town centres: Wigan, Leigh and Ashton.
There is also an initiative called Building Schools for the Future which you may be aware of. This project is closely correlated to what is being discussed here and what both are trying to achieve in terms of jobs, health and community cohesion
Here are eight strategic sites that we are proposing.
The first is at The Bell, Lamberhead Green, in the very west of the borough.
This site is currently green belt – it’s the only site in the borough that we are proposing to take out of the green belt. The area is a piece of land between the M6 motorway, shown here running top to bottom on the map in blue, and the large housing estates to the east. It has direct access from the M6 at junction 26, and is therefore attractive for employment development. We are proposing that around 60 per cent of that site would be brought forward for employment with the remaining being open space and landscaping. The other benefit of this site is that is could deliver a new ‘front door’ access to the large Heinz factory and Martland Park nearby, taking traffic out of from Orrell Post, Pemberton, Newtown, the Saddle Junction and Standish.
The next two sites are in the centre of the borough, to the south of Hindley and the north of Leigh.
To the south of Hindley is a large area that is currently safeguarded for future development. We’re proposing that be brought forward – approximately half for housing, about a quarter for employment closely associated with the employment site currently at the PPG Site at Leigh Road in Hindley Green, and the remainder for open space. This site would need substantial new road infrastructure to bring it forward, and we’d make sure that traffic currently going through the heart of Hindley on the A577 was diverted onto this new route as much as possible, and there would also be significant benefits for public transport, walking and cycling were delivered on that route too.
The north Leigh site would need to come forward first, as it would need a road link to the Atherleigh Way to take traffic out of Westleigh. That site would be mainly housing, to help deliver the road infrastructure, plus a large element of employment land and open space.
The next site is called the Westleigh Canalside, and as the name suggests, it is alongside the canal to the west of Leigh. It is not yet allocated, and stretches from Westleigh Cricket Club through to the former Bickershaw colliery pit head site. We propose that this land be used for housing and helps to deliver substantial new transport benefits in and around the Atherleigh Way and Twist Lane junction.
The next site is to the east of Atherton.
This area is currently set aside for future development and we propose to bring it forward in thirds.
The first part, the southern third, would be an extension to the Chanters Industrial Estate, which is a very successful low amenity industrial site.
The uppermost third is alongside the railway line close to Atherton Station and Bolton Road, which is a high frequency bus route. So we see this area coming forward as a high density housing development with good access to public transport to commute to Leigh and Bolton on the bus and Wigan and Manchester by rail. This area would also include a new link road from Bolton Road to Manchester Road with a new access into Shakerley Eastate as well to overcome the single road access from Tyldesley to Shakerley.
On the top right hand side of this map, behind the key, is a part of Bolton Borough, where the council are proposing a major development of their own. A large employment site is planned there, and we want to ensure Wigan Borough residents can access it for jobs. So the infrastructure we’re planning for this area should help people particularly in Tyldesley and Shakerley to reach that location, should it come forward.
The next site is near Garrett Hall in Astley. The southern half of this site is currently allocated for employment development and has outline planning permission. The upper part of this site is safeguarded for future development. The red line across the top of it is the route of the proposed Leigh Guided Busway.
We see the northern half of this site coming forward for housing development, with a large element of open space, but only when the Leigh Guided Busway is in place.
The final two sites are at Ashton.
The site to the east (or the right hand side) of the plan is at Stubshaw Cross. It is currently allocated for employment development. In addition to this, at the bottom part of the area, there is potential for a new High School for Ashton as part of Schools for the Future.
To make this happen, access to junction 25 of the M6 needs to be substantially improved. So the site at the top of the map, at Landgate, which is currently safeguarded for future development, is seen as coming forward for employment as it’s close to the motorway junction, and also for housing to help deliver the infrastructure.
There are two options here. One is a smaller-scale bypass for Bryn Cross, the other possibility is a more substantial one going around the back of Landgate, linking to the motorway at junction 25.
There are a range of other policy matters covered in the consultation documents. They are listed here and all development planned in the borough would have to consider them and be satisfied against them.
Outside of our preferred option areas, in other words Standish, Appley Bridge and Shevington, Orrell and Billinge, Golborne and Lowton, Tyldesley and the rest of Astley, we’d be proposing only limited housing development, namely brownfield sites within the urban area and development within existing employment sites only.
There are also Schools for the Future proposals in some of these areas, namely Standish, Orrell, Golborne and Lowton and at Astley.
These other locations, which are not in the greenbelt and could be used for development for housing or employment land, are not preferred by us and were not highlighted in the earlier consultation as key sites for development/
So to conclude, from the consultation we have carried out so far, the council believes that there is community and stakeholder support for our preferred option. We firmly believe that it is the most sustainable option against those economic, social and environmental indicators, and it is firmly backed by evidence.
It is extremely challenging but we believe it can be delivered. We are looking forward to 2026, and, in the context of the recession and economic downturn, some of the options we consulted upon are likely be affected in the early years of the Core Strategy. We have a choice to either sit back and wait for the economy to recover, or to actively prepare for when it does recover so we can take advantage of opportunities as that recovery gets underway.
If you’d like to get involved and let us know what you think, the Preferred Options documents are in all libraries in the borough, at the town halls in Leigh and Wigan, and at Civic Buildings on New Market Street in Wigan.
They are also online at the council’s website where you can view them all and submit comments online. There are email details there and a freepost address too. The summer edition of the council’s magazine Borough Life, in libraries and delivered to all homes, contains an eight page summary of our proposals with details of how you can get involved.
