Introducing Greenworks
We’re transforming Trinity Retail Park into a community focused green technology, business and skills hub called Greenworks.
Greenworks will be Bolton’s first low carbon business park and is set to become an environmental centre of excellence for the region.
You can learn more about our plans for Greenworks on this page.
Follow Greenworks:
Here's an overview:
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What is Greenworks?
Greenworks is the name of our new not-for-profit enterprise based at Trinity Retail Park, just off the A666 St Peter’s Way, and delivered in partnership with Bolton charity Urban Outreach.
In December 2020 we purchased three large retail units and land used for parking (not all the car park), the access road, some land across the local river, some billboards, leasehold arrangements with existing tenants and the freehold of the site. We don’t own the Arnold Clark unit.
It cost approximately £2.2m and we funded it from our reserves, with no impact on tenants’ rents.
We’re transforming the site to become a new centre of excellence for skills and training of low carbon technologies that will be needed to retrofit homes to make them use fewer fossil fuels, waste less energy, be cheaper to run and prevent fuel poverty.
Once complete, the site will be a centre where businesses can train staff to learn how to fit, maintain and repair technologies such as ground source heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicle charge points.
It’ll offer workshop and office spaces for affordable hire to support entrepreneurship and encourage create collaborations between businesses and social enterprises.
It’ll serve as a site for people to learn about reducing carbon emissions, including courses on carbon literacy. And it’ll offer meeting and research and development spaces for low carbon focused businesses and new and emerging green businesses to share ideas and create networks.
One unit on the site will continue to be used by Urban Outreach for food storage and food bank delivery.
Plans are also in place to create community food growing spaces and compost at scale to turn food waste that can’t be used for the food deliveries into energy to help power the building.
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A summary of our plans for Greenworks
Our plans for Greenworks alongside Urban Outreach include:
Creating a hub for new and existing businesses in renewables and local carbon industries to co-locate and support local supply chain growth, collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Providing a space for carbon literacy training for the community and other businesses.
Investing in supporting local people to learn new skills and find work in the construction and energy industry.
Developing a training centre for employees to learn the latest skills in green technologies, which will become commonplace in retrofitting and housebuilding in the near future.
Reducing food poverty by becoming a site for food growing as well as food distribution.
Questions and answers for tenants:
Here’s a set of questions and answers for tenants and residents on our plans for Greenworks.
1. An introduction:
Net zero means eliminating our greenhouse gas emissions (like carbon dioxide) where possible and offsetting those emissions we can’t eliminate through carbon capture schemes such as tree planting or other technology.
Keeping our homes warm is one the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – from replacing gas boilers to improving insulation, almost every home in the UK needs some form of retrofitting to make it more environmentally friendly. For us, that means retrofitting thousands of homes.
Unfortunately, as most green technology such as heat pumps are new to the market, there is a huge skills shortage in the number of people trained to fit, maintain, and repair them. By investing in Greenworks, we can help businesses in Bolton and beyond to upskill their staff to carry out the work, while training local people to take up those jobs too.
Given the investment needed, training up our own staff and local community to do the work should make retrofitting quicker and more cost efficient, while it will also help more people find sustainable and quality work.
We’ve submitted a planning application to Bolton Council to make our Greenworks facility fit for purpose. This includes initial work to install classrooms, training areas, work benches and offices inside the main Greenworks learning unit, while also developing two floors of storage area for Urban Outreach’s food bank, plus modern waiting, reception and office facilities for the charity.
Our proposal also includes a range of external improvements to the units, including a new featured entrance to the Greenworks building, plus a living and breathing wall made up of a variety of plants and vegetation.
Future plans for the site also include roof mounted solar panels, electric vehicle charging points and encouraging cycling to the site.
We’re planning to start work in the summer, with the first phase of work expected to take around 18 months.
2. Funding:
We’ll fund the work required to set-up from a combination of financial reserves, borrowing and external grants, protecting money we use to provide other services.
Greenworks is an investment in tenants. It’ll help us to reduce their energy bills and generate income that we can reinvest into our services for them.
As most homes need retrofitting, this investment will also ensure that jobs stay local rather than hiring external companies from other places to do the work.
We’re exploring external funding opportunities and hope to access grants available for green technology to support our work.
We plan for the development to be a not-for-profit enterprise, for revenue to cover costs and to reinvest any surplus into employment and enterprise projects and green technology initiatives.
3. How will it impact local businesses?
We’re delivering Greenworks in partnership with Urban Outreach, who’ll benefit from an improved site and potential for food growing schemes nearby.
We’re also discussing our plans with Jump Xtreme, a valued tenant. While their unit will be unaffected by the works, they’ll benefit from the enhanced premises overall.
The site will allow businesses from across Greater Manchester to train staff up on green technology used to retrofit homes, allowing companies to better compete for low carbon contracts retrofitting and homes and making them more energy efficient.
Once complete, the site will also offer workspaces, meeting rooms and training centres for low carbon small and medium sized enterprises.
If you’re interested in potential business opportunities with Greenworks, please visit www.greenworksproject.org
4. How will it affect or benefit tenants?
This purchase will not impact what you pay to live in your home.
We’ll pay for the works through a combination of financial reserves and borrowing, and we’re seeking external grant funding to cover some of the costs.
We expect the development to pay for itself in the future through businesses using the site.
Also, we won’t need to stop or scale back any of other services to pay for this.
New homes are urgently needed throughout the borough and beyond to provide more quality affordable housing and reduce the risk of homelessness, but this wouldn’t be a suitable location to build properties or for people to live.
We’ll use the site to better respond to the increasing impact of climate change. Using the space to help us explore more green technologies will enable us to identify innovative solutions to reduce carbon emissions and develop the means to deliver sustainable improvements to tenants’ homes.
Yes. Our plans will create new opportunities on the site to benefit tenants and residents.
It’ll complement our existing training, employment and enterprise offer; help to establish new green businesses; create new jobs and lead to other reskilling opportunities.
Here's how you can get involved as a business:
We’re inviting businesses from Bolton and across Greater Manchester to get in touch, share your priorities with us and tell us how Greenworks could benefit you.
As a first step, we have survey questions and more information for you on our dedicated Greenworks business website here: www.greenworksproject.org
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