Recession to blame for hold up of Burtonwood business park (From This Is Cheshire)

Recession to blame for hold up of Burtonwood business park

11:00am Friday 12th March 2010

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FAILURE to develop Burtonwood’s £1.25bn Omega business park could risk the borough’s economic future warned Warrington North MP Helen Jones.

Both she and Labour Parliamentary candidate for Warrington South, Nick Bent, called on the council to stop neglecting Omega, located at the former airbase, near the M62.

Mrs Jones said: “The Omega site is vital for Warrington. If we want decent, well-paid jobs in the future we have to put the work in now to prepare this site.

“Yet the council is silent and I understand the Omega strategy group has not met for two years.

“We need to be ready when the economic upturn comes. If we are not we will lose out to the big cities.”

Mr Bent added: “Warrington must not become a dormitory town where people have to travel to work elsewhere.”

The site, which was intended to provide 3.1m sq ft of industrial and office accommodation and hotel and retail use. It was given full planning permission in 2007 and remains largely untouched but developers, Miller, stressed these delays were down to the recession.

Andrew Sutherland, joint managing director, said: “Plans have not progressed as quickly as we would have liked and this is because of the recession. We are fully committed to the project and have spent a lot of time and money trying to move it forward so this is very frustrating for us.”

He stressed that delays to the transport section of the planning process also affected the schedule with proposals submitted in October 2003 and granted in June 2007 for 1.6m sq ft of development at Omega North and 1.5m sq st at Omega South.

The company said the project, which has so far only seen the old aircraft hangars demolished, had suffered after people became cautious about expanding during the recession but that there had been half a dozen inquires about Omega North since the start of the year.

Now Miller is looking at a new ‘masterplan’ at the Omega South section to accommodate health care and educational use as well as office and retail space.

COUNCIL leader Ian Marks hit back at Mrs Jones’ claims saying: “I am astonished by just how out of touch they are about what is going on in the town. The MP has no excuses and the Labour candidate for the south has only recently been parachuted in from outside.

“In the early days, Omega was delayed because of obstacles put there when Labour was running the town. If they had sorted out these problems, businesses would have moved to the site years ago.

“The council is having regular meetings with the developer, the NorthWest Development Agency and the homes and community agency (formerly English Partnerships) about the site. We remain totally committed to providing high quality jobs on Omega.”

The first two phases are only part of the development, described as one of the largest and most important projects in the UK, with another 3m sq ft of space in the pipeline, which will be built over the next 25 to 30 years and provide 24,000 jobs.

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