Compulsory Purchase Clears Way For North Manchester Business Park

LONDON-The regeneration of a 395-acre site at Monsall in north Manchester is to go ahead after Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt ratified the Northwest Development Agency’s decision to impose a compulsory purchase order on 89 acres to allow developers Ask and Akeler to complete their site acquisition.

Mike Shields, Chief Executive for the NWDA said: “We are delighted with the decision. Obviously the agency thought long and hard about issuing the CPO in Monsall and we would have preferred to have reached this point through successful negotiations with landowners.”

And Ask Developments Director Ken Knott welcomed the move. “This is a tremendous vote of confidence in the agency’s courage and vision for the business park and will now enable us to move forward with the construction of our first phase – the 150,000-sf headquarters for Fujitsu.”

Since issuing the Monsall CPO, the NWDA has become more aggressive in its use of compulsory purchase to force new development through. It has issued similar orders on the 420-acre Kingsway Business Park in Rochdale and on 20 acres of land in the centre of Ancoats in Manchester in the past year.