Land previously set aside for housing will now be used to build a major new multi-storey storage building.
This comes after Bolton Council approved plans by Lok’n’Store to start work on an 8,000 square metre new site at Lower Bridgeman Street, between Manchester Road and Gorton Street just outside the town centre.
Despite the fact that the land had been designated for housing according to Bolton Council’s development plan, the majority of the site off Lower Bridgerman Street now contains an Audi dealership.
Planning committee member Cllr Nick Peel said: “When do you get to the point when land that’s been allocated for a particular reason is clearly not going to be developed for the reason that was outlined?
“That’s what’s happened with this site, its been in the allocation plan for ten years and there has been no interest shown to the council for the land, to develop it into housing.
“I happen to think that the land or part of the land that permission was given to the car dealership for could have been developed actually because its cheek by jowl with other family housing units.
“The fact that this then went to a dealership site somewhat abandoned this narrow strip of land to be pretty much undevelopable for housing unless its going to be a high rise and we know there’s even less demand for high rises in Bolton town centre.”
He added: “It’s a key gateway, a derelict gateway site into the town centre and something must be done with it.”
The new facility will be built on the site of the former Bolton Community College, which has since been demolished.
Planning officials also believed the focus on housing elsewhere in Bolton town centre, like Moor Lane, Central Street and Bark Street, also meant that moving the focus away from new homes on Lower Bridgerman Street was justified.
Once work Is finished, the new building will be able to be used by the public to hire storage space.
But representative from the borough’s other towns, like Horwich and Blackrod’s Cllr David Grant said they were concerned that if land meant for housing in the town centre was instead used for commercial buildings then the demand for new homes would fall in others areas instead.
He said: “Our five year housing supply is something that we always get battered with, that we’re not providing enough housing and here we have something on the allocations plan which we’re now changing over to commercial.
“Well any shortfall invariably ends up falling on our greenspaces in our outer towns.”
Concerns were also raised by Westhoughton’s Cllr David Wilkinson about changing the intentions for land like this.
He said: “It does concern me when we don’t know how many houses were allocated on this site.
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“We then change our allocation plan and there’s reference that what we’re building in Bolton town centre will help us in the suburbs or the outer districts.
“Well that’s not worked very well lately in terms of decisions affecting Horwich and parts of Blackrod and Westhoughton, so when we have an allocation and we change it I think there needs to be a lot more clarity than just altering things.”
The council eventually voted to approve the plan.
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