CGI showing the future interior of the Spindles office space. Credit: Aew Architects

Oldham pivots workspace intentions   

GMCA funding previously earmarked for the conversion of the Prudential Building into offices will now be spent delivering workspace at Spindles instead due to delays in acquiring the former. 

The £1.4m of from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund needs to be spent by March 2025 and “time constraints caused by an ongoing compulsory purchase order” mean that the Prudential Building project would not complete in time to access the funding, according to a GMCA report. 

As a result, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has approved the redistribution of £1.4m for the Prudential project to support a 34,000 sq ft project at Spindles Shopping Centre. 

The scheme will support “entrepreneurism, tap into latent demand for accommodation targeted at the creative and digital sectors, and provide space for the new businesses to be created and grow in Oldham town centre,” a report to the GMCA said. 

In addition, the funding will go towards the ongoing regeneration of the shopping centre, which the council acquired for around £9m in 2020. 

The GMCA met in January to approve the distribution of around £15m of UKSPF cash to facilitate the creation of 280,000 sq ft of SME workspace across the 10 boroughs. 

Aside from Spindles in Oldham, the other projects to benefit are: 

  • Bolton – Wellsprings Digital Innovation Hub – £1.7m  
  • Stockport – Merseyway Digital Innovation Centre – £1.2m  
  • Salford – Innovate to Scale Programme – £1.4m  
  • Rochdale – Fire-Up Co-Working Space – £918,000  
  • Wigan – Wigan Innovation Hub – £3.2m  
  • Manchester – Manchester Enterprise Hub – £1.8m  
  • Tameside – Ashton Old Baths – £1.2m  
  • Bury – Radcliffe Works – £1.2m  
  • Trafford – Former Debenhams store – £470,000 

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This is yet another failure.

Oldham has been let down with so much promise and failure to exploit their heritage that can not only be used in a modern and profitable way like the prudential building but to redistribute the money into Spindles is a kick in the teeth.

Spindles has been a vanity project from the start and its no secret the current build for the council to move in has gone over budget as they wasted all the money on the initial furniture for the first part of the build and didnt budget for actually converting the space into an office environment.

The councils majority of 2 isn’t looking confortable if this gets into the oppositions arsenal….

By Anonymous

Another story of delay, dithering and nothing happening except the wrong things, which has been the history of Oldham for the last 50 years.

By P. W.

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