Response to independent audit - Astley Business Park
In June 2024, Wigan Council’s Planning Committee considered and approved an application for the development of warehousing units on land at Astley Business Park. This land has been designated for warehousing development since 2006.
As part of the planning process, Wigan Council carried out a statutory consultation, which included publishing site notices, placing an advert in the local newspaper and writing to 99 properties in the vicinity of the site. This is the standard consultation process for planning applications nationally.
In total, 96 individual objections were received, including several from multiple people at the same address. Every objection was made available for Planning Committee members to view, and the issues raised were set out in the officer’s report, to ensure members could make an informed decision. Following approval, there was a six week window in which anyone objecting could seek a legal challenge of the decision. No challenge was made during this period. It was only in spring 2025, when the site was under construction, that complaints about the development began to be raised.
Since then, we have worked closely with residents and the developer to address concerns and respond to complaints. To provide further reassurance and transparency, we commissioned an independent audit of the planning process.
After careful consideration, and having discounted a number of other suppliers due to conflicts of interest, we appointed Planning Officers Society Enterprises as the most suitable organisation to conduct this review. The audit’s terms of reference included:
- Reviewing whether all statutory requirements for registering and publicising the application were met
- Assessing the adequacy of consultation with internal and external consultees
- Examining whether there was any inconsistency or ambiguity in the plans and documents forming the planning permission.
The audit is now complete. Its findings have been shared with the Council and the residents’ action group and will be published online to ensure full transparency.
The independent report confirms that the planning permission granted in 2024 is consistent with national policy and legal frameworks.
The report details the planning history of the site, and while some of the houses close to the site predate the warehouse development, it’s important to highlight that many others were built after the site was designated for employment development, and after the previous outline planning permission for employment development (offices, manufacturing and warehouses) had been granted. This information would have therefore appeared in property searches at the time the houses were purchased.
The report provides a helpful overview of the Council’s processes in handling planning applications, and identifies some areas to consider in order to maximise transparency. As a learning organisation we will reflect on these and make any necessary adjustments to our procedures going forward.
We fully acknowledge the strength of feeling among residents and have worked with them and the developer to resolve issues on site. We believe that it is critical that the planning system strikes the right balance between deep local engagement and the need for efficient decision making in a policy-led system, and we will be submitting a copy of this response to the Government as part of that conversation.
Looking forward, construction of the development is ongoing, and the Council will have a role in ensuring compliance with the remaining planning conditions, in particular:
- Measuring the final heights of the bunds once completed
- Confirming that the landscape planting has been completed in accordance with the approved specification as a minimum, although the developer has also committed to planting larger specimens across the site in order to increase the screening effect of the planting as it establishes
- Working with the developer to finalise the updates to the permanent site drainage design, that were initially brought forward before Christmas in response to residents’ concerns about flooding.
We would like to thank residents for raising their concerns and for their continued patience and cooperation throughout this process. We would encourage residents to raise any day to day concerns about the site directly with the developer via email to [email protected].
Any potential breaches of planning conditions can continue to be reported via enforcement and breaches.
Posted on Tuesday 6th January 2026