Stockport Council is preparing to use compulsory purchase powers to take the Daw Bank bus depot, after negotiations with Stagecoach stalled. As Place North West reported, council documents say Stagecoach, which leases the site, is “demanding a financial payment… in excess of the sum to which the council’s advisers consider it is entitled”.
What is at stake
Stockport 8 is a mixed-use scheme delivering around 1,300 homes, with phase one alone providing 435 units including 82 affordable. It has secured £41m from Greater Manchester’s Good Growth Fund.
That grant is the pressure point. Council leadership has warned that delay risks not just the construction programme but “the loss of the significant public funding that has been secured”. Grant funding almost always carries spend deadlines, and money that cannot be spent in time goes back or goes elsewhere.
Both positions are defensible
It would be easy to write this as a bus company holding a town to ransom. That is not quite the situation.
Stagecoach has a lease and an operating depot on the site. Depots are not easy to replace: they need space for a fleet, fuelling, maintenance and staff facilities, in a location that works operationally for the routes they serve. Being moved is genuinely disruptive and genuinely expensive, and a business is entitled to be properly compensated for it. Stagecoach says it remains “engaged in ongoing, positive discussions” and is working “collaboratively to support local regeneration goals”.
Equally, the council has advisers who have assessed what the interest is worth, and it is not obliged to pay more than that with public money. Compulsory purchase exists precisely for this situation: where a scheme in the public interest is blocked by an inability to agree a price. Compensation is then determined by an independent process rather than by negotiation.
The relocation plan
This is the detail that makes the council’s position stronger. It is not simply evicting an operator. The plan moves Stagecoach to temporary depots on Heaton Lane and Kingston Street, with a permanent replacement facility at Cheadle Heath. Demolition at Daw Bank is scheduled for early 2027.
A CPO where the acquiring authority has already identified and provided for a replacement facility is a much more defensible proposition than one that leaves the occupier to find its own way.
Stockport’s run continues
This is the third Stockport story in our coverage this month, after Weir Mill completing with 253 homes and seven of eight commercial units let, and the Bramhall High RAAC replacement going to committee.
Stockport has had one of the strongest town centre records in Greater Manchester over the past decade, built on the interchange, Stockport Exchange and a run of heritage conversions. Stockport 8 at 1,300 homes is the largest piece of it. The fact the council is willing to use CPO powers to keep it moving tells you how seriously it takes the timetable.
The thing to watch is the affordable proportion. Eighty two affordable homes out of 435 in phase one is around 19%, which is conventional rather than generous, on a scheme carrying £41m of public subsidy.
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