Bolton's "Digital City" Plans Delayed

Bolton’s high-tech ‘digital city’ scheme will not start until 2024.

12:42 13 March 2020

The council has laid out a bold plan to become a high-tech digital city but work on its previous masterplan is still dragging on. Early digital plans for the town centre development have been approved but work won’t start until 2024.

 

At a cabinet meeting, Cllr Nick Peel said: “Some of the work has stalled. There’s no other way of describing it. Church Wharf, Moor Lane – nothing seems to be happening.

 

“The council is stretched in its regeneration arm dealing with all of this so I do worry about capacity adding another one when we have other intervention areas that don’t seem to be moving.”

 

Gerry Brough, director of place at Bolton Council, said that work to develop the site would not start until around 2024 but insists that the digital city is a “longer-term initiative.”

 

He added: “We are moving on all these sites. I take the point about capacity but that’s why we need to get the developers to do a lot of the work.”

 

Deputy leader Martyn Cox explained: “This is a very ambitious regeneration project. We have a number of different sites in the town centre to develop. It is in the very nature of any large-scale regeneration that it will proceed at different paces.

 

"The idea that all ships will leave the harbour at the same time – it’s just not feasible.

 

“If a project is ready to go, we should not hold that back. But it doesn’t mean to say that any other projects have stopped or are being disadvantaged.”