Leigh Market Refurbishment
Leigh Market is a central part of the community, providing a space for independent businesses to thrive and fostering local identity and pride. While it continues to maintain high occupancy as a traditional market, investment is needed in the building’s fabric to address essential maintenance, with opportunities to enhance the layout and customer experience. Having successfully secured capital regeneration funding, supported by input from Hayden and Emma in 2022, Wigan Council is now undertaking a transformative refurbishment to breathe fresh life into the market while maintaining its role as a vital commercial and social hub.
Next Phase is acting as the key point of contact for traders, ensuring they remain informed, engaged, and supported throughout the process. We are the critical link between traders and the design team, making sure that the emerging proposals are not just architecturally ambitious but also operationally viable. By embedding regular trader engagement into the design process, we are ensuring the market is co-designed alongside key stakeholders, mitigating risks, fostering buy-in, and creating a space that works for both existing and future businesses. Through regular structured site visits, we provide direct updates, address trader concerns, and gather insights about their businesses and aspirations, ensuring that traders’ needs are reflected in every stage of development.
Alongside trader engagement, Next Phase are leading public and wider stakeholder consultation to sense-check the direction of the project and ensure it continues to align with local needs and priorities. This includes benchmarking feedback against the 2022 engagement activities to track evolving expectations and maintain community confidence.
The insights gathered through engagement will directly inform both the decant process and the design of the refurbished market, ensuring plans reflect the needs of traders, customers, and the wider town centre. Thoughtful design development will be key to reducing project risks, securing trader buy-in, and ensuring as many businesses as possible successfully transition through the refurbishment period.
As the project develops, we will deliver a robust lettings strategy to encourage a smooth transition into the new market. This strategy is designed to make the lettings process both workable and attractive for existing traders while creating opportunities for new businesses that complement and strengthen the overall market offer.
By embedding meaningful engagement and strategic planning at every stage, we are supporting Wigan Council to ensure the refurbishment is not just a physical transformation but a long-term investment in Leigh Market’s role as a key town centre asset; a revitalised market that respects its heritage while offering a modern, dynamic, and inclusive trading environment for years to come.
