A former mill site can be used by a self-storage business after the latest in a series of plans for the land were approved.
Ackroyds textile mill stood on Factory Street, off Tong Street, until it was badly damaged by a huge blaze in 2011. The five-storey building was demolished the following year, and the site has remained empty ever since.
Now a planning application to repurpose the vacant site with multiple storage units has been approved by Bradford Council. The plans had been submitted by Twenty4 Secure Storage, which operates a similar self-storage site in Leeds.
The plans were for a “secure self-storage facility and open storage including reception/office” – and many of the storage units would be made up of shipping containers.
The application added: “The development of the site will make effective use of Brownfield Land which is currently underutilised and derelict.
“The application seeks to provide an additional employment facility within Bradford which would aid the economic development of the city and provide an ancillary facility for local businesses and residents.”
A similar application by the company had been withdrawn after Highways Officers raised traffic concerns. But earlier this year the company returned with new plans that would remove access to the site from the Tong Street slip road.
All access to the self-storage site would now be via Factory Street, a change that highways officers said would “be an improvement” to the existing layout. Planners said the site lies in an industrial area, and so an array of shipping containers on the land would not look out of place.
Approving the scheme, planners said: “Even though shipping containers have limited design merit the industrial appearance will not detrimentally affect the character or appearance of the street scene or wider area which has commercial and industrial uses with many of the buildings within the vicinity of the site having an industrial appearance.”
One of the conditions of the approval is that the site can only open between 7 am and 7 pm. The approved scheme is only in its “outline” stages – meaning more details need to be provided by the developer before work on the site can start.
In 2021 an application to turn the site into an industrial estate made up of 11 units was approved by Bradford Council.
However, that scheme never materialised, and the site has remained empty end overgrown ever since.
