Tony Porter Ponders: New housing is needed but where should it be?
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It is great to see many new ‘brown field’, housing developments in Wigan including the one near my home in Marsh Green. Housing is an issue in Great Britain and using land that is just wasteland is a great place to start. Look at those near Spar in Kitt Green and the amazing work going on at Eckersley Mill, which will include apartment blocks and a hotel, with parking.
I do fear, however, the urge by the Labour Government to infringe onto green belt. I did not live in Wigan during its industrial times, though can see many relics from those days, however much of this land is now habitat for wildlife and fantastic for family walks. ‘The Road to Nowhere’ A49 Westwood Way has new houses at one end and plenty of scope for more at the roundabout near the Flash, but I do fear that most of this new housing may not be ‘affordable’, look at the prices on the estate that is being completed near Little Lane, Pemberton Railway Station.
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Hide AdWhat is the solution? Hopefully our new chancellor Rachel Reeves MP will give handouts to councils and maybe mayors to build more social housing, there is hope, by locals, on Scott Lane that the new properties that will replace the sixties flats, will fill some gap. Others worry that if these are going to be filled by people who are off the streets or not from the local area.


All this will become clear as things progress, but I am pleased that there are so many projects given the green light, including, though I have seen little progress recently, The Pagefield. I do worry some of the developers are greedy and squeeze more houses on a plot than is wise, leaving little room for parking, most families have more than one car, many have vans, a few years ago I drove around the estate on the site of Billinge hospital, I was in a Corsa, even then it was tight, heaven forbid there was a fire down one end of the street and the fire brigade could not reach it.
Don’t get me started on having every house on these estates having an EV charger, again I ask why isn’t the UK government giving land to companies to develop affordable Green Hydrogen, as I wrote a fortnight ago, BP have set up in Spain to do just that, it’s insane that it’s not in this country on the site of an old steel works or similar space that is not suitable for housing due to contamination of decades.
Meanwhile, RWHope closed its Debenhams store this weekend and has relocated clothing into the old TKMax one and will open the old Wilkos for household items. The Debenhams unit will then take on a transformation, into a Street Food and entertainment venue called Stack, they have sites around the country including in York.
I will keep folks updated on my Wigan Watch YouTube show as soon as things start taking shape. It looks like there could be a few new shops opening in Makinsons Arcade, with signage hinting of new tenants, though sadly a few have recently closed. My main concern in the town centre is the lack of anything progressing on the site of the new Market Hall.
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