Welcome

Standish Voice is a group of local people who are working to ensure Standish is a great place in which to live and work.

We believe the house building being constructed across
Standish will create challenges but can also bring opportunities
for the village and everyone who lives and works here.

Standish Voice is a non-profit organisation which has been designated as a Neighbourhood Forum, a statutory body which has given us the power to create a Neighbourhood Plan for the whole village and which has now been adopted.

We used the views of Standish people to shape the Neighbourhood Plan. The Neighbourhood Plan can influence how the village will look over the next generation.

After our own consultation, an EGM of Standish Voice members agreed to support the Final Draft Plan. Wigan Council carried out a round of statutory consultation and then a Planning Examiner reviewed the plan and asked for modifications before the Final Plan was completed.

The Final Plan was written and was put to a vote of people in Standish in a referendum on Thursday, July 18, 2019. The result was 94.5% voted Yes to adopt it in a 30.4% turnout.

You can read the plan here. You can read all its associated documentation by clicking on the link here or by accessing the Neighbourhood Plan pages on this site.

To use an interactive tool which can explain the highlights of the plan, click here

See more information about the Neighbourhood Plan in its own section on this website.

We also want to be a positive voice for Standish and help to bring the community closer together by organising and publicising local activities, events and campaigns.

Together we can make Standish a place to be proud of!

Standish Voice was designated as the Neighbourhood Forum for Standish in 2015. Designation lasts for five years. To read details of our submission to Wigan Council to be a Neighbourhood Forum and the Neighbourhood Area we cover, click here

The Forum and Area was re-designated for another five years, beginning in 2020 and ending on May 14, 2025. You can read the documents relating to this here

Please join us and speak up for Standish. It is free of charge to join Standish Voice and you will receive a regular newsletter. To register as a member, please fill in our digital form on our New Members page here – and keep in touch via Facebook and Twitter.

News: Kilhey Court Hotel

Former Standish hotel Kilhey Court has stopped housing asylum seekers and is not expected to do so again – after the Government decided it was not appropriate to put them there.

A huge campaign from many people, including Standish Voice, our councillors, the council, our MP and individuals, was successful in overturning the Home Office decision, made in August, to house migrants at the hotel on Chorley Road.

Serco, which organises asylum seeker accommodation, confirmed the last migrants were leaving the former hotel just before Christmas and there were no plans to house more there – although it still has a contract with Macdonald Hotels until the beginning of March for emergency use.

Standish Voice and Standish councillors have been in constant contact with Wigan Council over the issue and discussions are underway about the future of Kilhey Court, a historic building which was once one of the best hotel and country clubs in the Wigan area.

Wigan Council is in discussions with the hotel owners about the future of the site, with an announcement from Macdonald Hotels expected over the coming weeks, although unconfirmed information has reach us that none of the money earned from the Serco contract will be used to refurbish the hotel.

Standish Voice will continue to urge the council to act if planning rules over the use of Kilhey Court are breached. We employed a planning consultant to look into the planning applications granted at the hotel over the past 40 years and passed his findings to the council for consideration. No breaches of the planning permissions were found but there are questions to answer about the planning status of the site and Wigan Council is looking into this, along with other planning issues at Kilhey Court.

The Home Office is continuing to use the Britannia Hotel in Standish to house asylum seekers through a national agreement with that hotel chain, though the Government has repeatedly said hotels are unsuitable for this activity and claims it is working to reduce reliance on them for this.

Standish Voice gave this statement to the media: “We are pleased that this very sad saga has come to end. The use of Kilhey Court as asylum seeker accommodation was always wrong, inappropriate and ill thought out. It created anger in the community and allowed self-seeking elements to sow division in our village.

“We would like to thank Wigan Council for working with us and our councillors to keep up the pressure on Serco, Macdonald Hotels and the Home Office. Both while the spotlight was on Kilhey Court and also over the past few months when coverage of the issue died down.

“Hopefully, Macdonald Hotels will now do the right thing on behalf of the community it badly let down and refurbish the hotel to bring it back to its former glory.”

https://www.wigantoday.net/news/politics/council/controversial-wigan-migrant-hotel-closes-several-months-ahead-of-schedule-4455001?#ht9b8exhy16

You can read extracts of Wigan Council’s letter to the Home Office objecting to the situation here: https://www.wigan.gov.uk/News/Articles/2023/August/Extracts-of-Councils-letter-to-the-Home-Office.aspx

Statement by our councillors. Standish councillors came together to issue a statement about the Kilhey Court situation which Standish Voice agreed to publish on its Facebook page. Click here to read it.

Standish Voice issued information about our organisation after untrue statements were made at a meeting in Standish. You can read this here.

At this meeting it was falsely claimed that a Neighbourhood Plan  – similar to the one in Standish – had been used to overturn the use of a hotel by asylum seekers in another part of the country. You can read about that here.