Work is due to begin next year on the development of a Wigton food hall, training and business services hub, which hopes to be a strategic centre for the agricultural economy in north Cumbria.
The town’s Hope’s Auction Company has been given permission to create the food hall and warehouse, plus a business park of three office blocks.
For Craig Brough, land agency manager at Hope’s, the development go-ahead is an exciting personal success, and there are high hopes that the new food hall and business park will help regenerate the rural economy.
“We are trying to create a high-quality hub basically where we have got a mix of uses on there,” says Craig. “So we have got the food hall – the food hall is going to be promoting local food and agriculture. 80 per cent of what is sourced through there needs to be sourced through Cumberland, or West Cumberland and Furness councils. So it is really focusing on Cumbrian food and Cumbrian produce.
“Obviously, it will be quite a strong local employer by the time you have employed butchers and that sort of thing.”
The development proposal has been in the planning stage for about 12 months. When it went to planning committee, the project for land to the south and east of Hope’s auction mart on Sykes Road, Wigton, was unanimously rubber stamped.
“That is the hard work that has been put in beforehand making something that is right and sensible,” says Craig, who is a strong advocate for the area.
“Wigton can often be overshadowed. You have got Carlisle, Penrith and Workington not too far away and often Wigton just gets lost and it is actually very strategically placed for someone wanting to service all those areas and the rural area around here.
“You have got very, very, good road links and you are very quickly to all those places. There are a lot of communities out there who don’t have a wide range of local services and we sort of see ourselves as a centre to all of them.
“We are opening up a new site, the whole site is 15 acres.
“Your first view of something when you come in sets the tone of the whole place doesn’t it? We have got to get that right and that’s why we have gone with the high-quality food hall. It is stone faced. It has an interesting architectural view.
“When you drive in to somewhere it has got to look right and it has to be high quality.”
Outline permission for the development, means Hope’s is talking now to prospective users and clearly intend the site to be something special for the region, with skills training for young people also part of the mix.
“The other thing we are very keen on doing is we have educational permission in the office block. While some of it will be let to local office companies.
“Part of the upper floor will be a training suite.
“We already host Kendal College one day a week on the site for their agricultural students. We will be looking to expand that out. They are just using the restaurant at the moment, which is fine for what they are doing but it is not purpose built.
“Built in power point and wifi and all of that, an IT suite, we will start to talk to other educational providers and trainers in the area.
“We think that will grow quite quickly once it’s here. If you have a starting tenant to build around, then once you get it out there you put it out for everone else. We think that is really quite interesting. It is coming together. We are looking at a cutting of ground next spring.”
Craig joined the business four years ago and has been involved in looking at ways to maximise its assets.
“The site here is 32 acres, of which the auction sits on about 10. And so we applied last year, we had a bit of spare stone yard at the back. This was the start of this change to industrial and so we hosted local company Drainwise.
“They have taken an acred stone yard around the back and they put their own shop and things there.
“The remaining land, there is 22 acres of grass and bank, so it was really about maximising the value of this site.”
By harnessing local produce, skills and services in one location, Craig sees the new hub as a way of supporting a circular economy in north Cumbria.
“It’s symbiotic, if people are coming to the site to do something, then they will either bring cattle and trade with our auction, they can go to the associated businesses and use them while they are here.
“It is about growing this whole rural hub, and if there is interest from those rural businesses in the area, then it is interesting for the young people who are coming to use the training facilities. They can then tap into the likes of the agricultural supply businesses or anyone else who comes to join us here. It is about building a whole ethos here for the centre.”
The plan is firmly rooted in the idea that Wigton has so much to offer the regional economy.
“When we build this thing, we will be tendering from local companies. We are rooted in Wigton,” says Craig. “Hope’s has been here since 1897. Wigton is our heart, it is our core. It is where we want to be and where we want to grow.
“It is a massive relief to get it through the planning stage. The conversations we are having now with people are now more positive. If you want to come on this site, we can say yes, we have permission, so it moves things forward. It frees everything up.”
Hope’s is a shareholder-owned business with many local investors, so that means another potential boost to the local economy.
“A lot of local farming families have shares in the business, and wider investors. It is shareholder owned. It is good for the shareholders to deliver value for them. A lot of the shareholders are the people who sell the livestock through the mart, where the meat will go back into the shop. So this is what it is all about, a hub and that circular economy thing.”
It’s now all systems go to prepare for work on a development that could provide a home for up to 14 business.
“I have had some long days thinking about it and it is great now to get it through,” says Craig.
