Town hall chiefs are set to address 'confusion' and complaints about a 'clear lack of progress' on Bolton £1billion town centre masterplan.

The ambitious series of projects are set to see the council spend around £150million on building new housing, hotels and offices new across key areas in the town centre including Great Moor Street, Bradshawgate, Trinity Street and Crompton Place.

Anounced in 2017, this was intended to attract further private sector investment ultimately totalling around £1billion, but five years on the projects have now been hit by complaints that they have stalled or halted completely.

Opposition leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “Bolton people are quite rightly increasingly worried, and despondent about the clear lack of progress in the important regeneration of Bolton town centre, with many schemes making no progress at all, despite high profile promises and photo opportunities in the media.”

Cllr Peel said he accepted that the ruling Conservative group could not control all the issues around the development plans but said he wanted to see more openness around problems that the plans may have encountered.

As such, he called for leader Cllr Martyn Cox to issue a new briefing on how the plans were progressing “as soon as possible".

Cllr Peel said: “In addition, to avoid any more broken record promises, will he further commit to being more up front with the people of Bolton, and let the public know exactly what the problems are, in particular, what schemes are unlikely to progress any time soon?”

In response, Cllr Cox projects like Moor Lane, the Deansgate public realm upgrades and the building around Ashburner Street are all still underway, but he agreed to hold a full briefing this autumn.

The Bolton News:

Developments like the Moor Street site have been hit by complaints about a lack of progress

He said: “The above schemes will see more than £150m invested in Bolton town centre, three quarters of which will come from the private sector, additionally council officers have been making headway with regeneration plans for our four district centres.

He added: “I think there is perhaps an understandable confusion between projects that are ongoing and projects where the construction phase has started.”

The briefing will be held for Bolton Councillors in September.