The long delayed plans to create a business and distribution park at Junction 25 of the M6 has moved another step forward. It is part of a masterplan for housing, jobs and the environment in Greater Manchester known as the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. You can see the full plan online.
The delayed and revised plan 2020 will be presented to AGMA Executive Committee on Friday October 30 2020. It will be then go through all ten councils, including Wigan, for approval. The consultation on the final plan will go live on gmconsult.org from December 1 2020 to January 26 2021.
After this it will be put forward to government.
Junction 27 Distribution Park
The huge expansion of the current industrial land remains. Access would change from the sole A9 link by Marus Bridge retail park. There will be an additional direct link to and from the motorway slip road. This will allegedly avoid congestion. Sounds familiar? Who knows?
The expansion is for approximately 140,000 sqm of ‘high quality’ floorspace.
The site will have walking and cycling routes from Winstanley, Hawkley and Bryn.
The plan states: The M6 Junction 25 site presents a major opportunity to provide a high quality location for substantial employment development in the M6 corridor.
The M6 is a major business asset. It is the UK’s most important strategic route for freight movement between the north and south of the country, and Wigan is the only district in Greater Manchester which has direct access to it.
The site is large, relatively unconstrained, directly accessible to the motorway and has a long visible frontage along it.
These attributes make the site highly attractive to the market, including key growth sectors such as logistics and advanced manufacturing which are growing rapidly in the North West.
Other Affected Areas of Wigan Borough
The plan no longer includes a large housing development near Pennington on Greenbelt land. An earlier 2016 version of the plan did included it. So do you think this should have happened to the J25 proposals too?
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The “most important strategic route for freight movement, etc” should be the West Coast Main Line railway not the M6. This development will only add to the chaos that the M6 presently causes.
Definitely a sensible call, particularly if the government are to follow through on their green environment policies.