Revitalising a brownfield site close to Wigan town centre

This prominent site, close to Wigan town centre, had been derelict since the 1970s becoming an unsafe place that attracted antisocial behaviour and fly tipping.

The council had been striving to redevelop the site for many years, particularly as the area was identified as having the highest need for affordable homes across the borough.

However, all previous regeneration attempts had failed due to complex viability issues, including abnormal site levels, the absence of suitable drainage connections, contamination, and Japanese Knotweed infestation.

Unlocking this 3.4-acre site required a new and innovative approach. Working in partnership with Wigan Council and Jigsaw Homes, our project team adopted an innovative ‘fabric first’ ethos to arrive at a unintrusive engineering solution that would be sustainable, low maintenance, and viable.

This involved ‘lifting’ the whole site from the rear by four metres, and ‘capping’ the contaminated fill beneath, enabling the site to be drained by gravity alone. Lifting the site avoided an expensive, high maintenance retaining wall of up to 3.2m in height which would have posed a significant safety risk to new residents. The units were positioned slightly closer together enabling an ‘angle of repose’ to be created at the site boundary comprising an attractive landscaped embankment.

The comprehensive remediation and redevelopment of the site delivered 72 units of affordable housing fully compliant with Homes England design standards. It was later named a finalist in the Best Scheme for Affordable Rent category at the Northern Housing Awards 2021.