Phoenix uprising

PREPARED to protest . . . (front, from left) Robert Haslop (C&M MOT test station), Graham Whitehead (KMO Medical and Dental Laboratory) and Harold Cleworth (Cleworth Motors) with fellow workers and business owners

FURIOUS firms are set to make their voices heard when controversial plans to demolish an industrial estate are decided tomorrow.

Approval could see Phoenix Mill in Failsworth become a housing estate with 89 homes.

Businesses on the site, bounded by Cheetham Street, Duke Street and Oldham Road, are furious over their claims that they haven’t been kept up to date with the application.

Phoenix Mill is fully occupied by more than 30 companies, all of which will be forced to move or close if housing gets the go-ahead.

Robert Haslop, of the C&M MOT test station at the site, said: “We are hoping the application will be rejected but, with the way we have been treated, I’m not sure I can see that happening.

“We haven’t had any help or backing from the council this time and no-one has come to speak to us.”

He added that until the Chronicle contacted him, he was unaware that the date for the application to go before the planning committee had been set as the businesses had not been contacted.

“I had been hoping to expand the business on the site but nobody can plan for the future,” he said.

Amanda Jenkins, office manager at Auto Tec on the site, said people are disgusted with how they have been treated.

“People who have spent time and money developing their businesses over the years are now resigned to the fact that the application will be approved and they will be closing for good soon,” she said.

“A lot of us will still be going to the meeting to show our opposition to the plans. We have to try.”

The new application has been significantly changed from original plans submitted in 2011, with public open green space and a commercial element to the development lost and more homes added.