Frustrations rising as Oldham development taking ‘longer than moon-landing’

A long-awaited development at Oldham Mumps has taken more time to break ground than it took to put a ‘man on the moon’, opposition councillors have claimed.

Lidl had confirmed earlier this year it intended to move forward with creating a foodstore at the Prince’s Gate site in Mumps, with leaders saying that a planning application was expected during 2022 – but which is yet to materialise.

The formal application would be a major step in the project to revitalise the Mumps area of Oldham that has been in the pipeline for a decade, and spanned five council leaders.

However, at a recent full council meeting Councillor Howard Sykes, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group said it had taken longer to deliver the project than ‘it took to put mankind on the moon’.

“So far progress to-date has been far from interstellar,” he told members.

Council leader Amanda Chadderton said the delays to the project were a source of ‘frustration’, but the authority had to wait for private developers to bring the scheme forward.

In November 2014, then-leader Jim McMahon announced that Marks and Spencer was coming to Oldham as an ‘anchor tenant’ on the Mumps site and hailed it as a ‘gamechanger’, with an opening planned for 2017.

But in 2016, after the council had invited bids from construction firms for the £60m retail development, the M&S plans were scrapped amidst the retailer reporting plummeting sales and profits.

Three years later in 2019, the authority entered into a legal agreement with Lidl and an unnamed hotel operator to deliver a mixed-use project on the site.

In February of this year then-leader Arooj Shah promised a planning application would be coming forward for both the Lidl store and the hotel – but as yet nothing has been submitted.

Coun Sykes said that it had taken 2,504 days from the speech by US president John F Kennedy in which he said ‘we shall go to the moon’ until the first lunar landing.

“It’s more than 2,900 days since Jim McMahon set out his vision of a £60million game changer redevelopment that will deliver 150,000 square feet of retail space and be populated by the UK’s retail giants, along with 800 homes and 700 parking spaces,” he added.

“That vision has been significantly watered down over the years.

"We started with the talk of ‘missing retail giants’ like Marks and Spencer and now it’s a Travelodge and a Lidl.

“It’s even been more than eight years and Labour still haven’t delivered Jim McMahon’s gamechanger, but we do have some car parking spaces.

“To put it bluntly it’s taken Oldham Labour to deliver a budget hotel and a budget supermarket longer than it took mankind to put a man on the moon.”

He asked what the impact of soaring inflation was having on Oldham’s regeneration projects, and when residents could expect to see the development at Prince’s Gate begin.

In response to a public question on the Prince’s Gate development, Coun Chadderton said the original planning and development timescales were delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and were continuing to be affected by the struggling economy and international incidents such as the war in Ukraine.

Replying to Coun Sykes, Coun Chadderton said the council was ‘not on the verge of becoming financially unviable’ because they were not reliant on borrowing, but external funding.

“We continuously bid for these projects so it’s not borrowed, it’s all or nearly all external funding,” she added.

“The reality is we are in thrall to private companies about how this [Prince’s Gate] can be developed.

"I wouldn’t allow and previous leaders would not allow the council to borrow to such an extent that it did become financially unviable just to get a hotel or supermarket.

“It’s right to be ambitious but if we went back four leaders ago to Jim McMahon and the Marks and Spencer, that was agreed with M&S but then they closed a lot of their foodstores.

"There was nothing we could do about that as a council, that was a change in their model and a reflection of their funding dip.

“And the same way with the hotel and supermarket at Prince’s Gate, we did go into a financial agreement with them in 2019 but planning permission hasn’t come forward.

“It is a source of frustration, it’s a source of frustration for me.

"But we wait for them to do it.

"If it comes forward, and I hope it will come forward because we’re in constant dialogue with them and they say it will come forward then that’s great.

“But I’m not about to put a load of the council’s money forward for it and we’ll have to see what comes back over the coming months from the developer, and that is where we are.”

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