After a miserable winter, Stephen Retford thought things were looking up. How wrong he was.
The retired police officer, 70, has lived on the Henfold Estate in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, for 40 years – moving into this quiet slice of suburbia as soon as it was built.
For almost all of those four decades, the garden of his house backed onto fields and he enjoyed the views over them.
But that came to an abrupt end last year with the construction of the Astley Business Park, made up of four hulking warehouses – up to 60ft tall, on that land, just over his garden fence.
Distraught residents told The Independent of their anger over the construction of the four warehouses, claiming that the process was damaging their homes, while the views from their windows were blocked by the massive structures which now tower over them.
Construction completed in January 2026 and distribution firm Whistl became the first organisation to operate from one of the warehouses, setting up shop last month.
Now, the locals claim that Whistl is working through the night and the noise of its operations, in particular its heavy goods vehicles, in such close proximity to their homes is making their lives a misery.
Mr Retford’s home is directly opposite the firm’s service yard and he says the noise means he cannot sleep.
“The noise is 24/7. It is constant throughout the night,” Mr Retford told The Independent.
“Given the hot weather we’ve been having, if you have your window open, it’s like sleeping on a motorway service station – in the heavy goods vehicle part.”
Mr Retford remains frustrated that Wigan Council allowed the construction of the warehouses that now tower over his home. But he believes the granting of a licence to Whistl to work overnight has added insult to injury.
“Not only did they build these warehouses right on top of our homes, but they then granted a 24/7 operating certificate for them,” he said.
“If you ever want to crush a community, build them in the first place, and then give the occupants a 24/7 operation permit.”
Mr Retford is part of local action group Astley Warehouse Action, which has brought together residents from the various housing estates surrounding the business park.
The group was formed to oppose the development and is demanding that overnight operations are stopped immediately.
They met with representatives from Whistl and Wigan Council on Wednesday, and a spokesperson for the distribution firm said it put forward a proposal to address their concerns. The local authority welcomed that and added it would “assess whether the steps taken have the desired effect and, if necessary, to explore other potential options”.
John Peters, 72, who has lived on the estate for more than 30 years, is among the leaders of the campaign group. He said that what residents are enduring now is proving to be even more challenging than the construction phase.
He told The Independent: “It’s probably worse than we ever imagined because we didn’t realise the volume of a national logistics company operating metres away from your house – the volume and the impact that would have on the local residents, especially the ones that live on the border.
“People always talk about traffic and noise pollution and whatever, but the actual working noises on a 24/7 basis, so close to bedrooms at 2am or 3am, is having a real severe impact on local residents who live near it.”
Mr Peters counts himself lucky that, due to the location of his home on the estate, the biggest personal impact on him is the loss of a view from his house. But he will keep fighting, with more of the warehouses to be filled by other firms.
“We have an awful visual impact that obviously can’t go away,” he added.
“But as a group of residents, we’re sticking together with the people that are now affected [by noise], and because there are a whole group of people who don’t know they’re going to be affected, as there are two more warehouses sitting brand new but empty at the moment.”
Sound monitoring at the business park found that noise from Whistl’s operation is having a “significant adverse impact” on neighbouring residents at night.
Murray Acoustics monitored noise continuously for four nights at the closest home to the warehouse yard using a sound meter and synchronised audio recording.
When assessed against the British Standard for industrial and commercial noise, the warehouse noise exceeded the existing night-time background level by between 18 and 26 decibels once the character of the sound was taken into account, the action group said.
While there is no single fixed decibel limit, the standard says a difference of around 10 decibels from the existing background level is likely to indicate a significant adverse impact.
The findings led the group to demand Wigan Council’s environmental health department force Whistl to stop operating at night until it resolves the issues with noise.
An acoustic fence, designed to block out some of the noise, has proven to be useless, according to Mr Retford.
“You cannot believe how difficult it is to live here right now,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to live here.
“We’ve got an acoustic fence there that’s about 16 feet high, supposed to kill all the sound. Let me tell you, it stops absolutely nothing.
“It’s just a big, ugly wooden fence that we believe hasn’t been constructed correctly. It’s unbelievable, we thought it would be bad, but we didn’t think it would be this bad,” he added.
A spokesperson for Whistl said: “During a meeting on Wednesday 26 August between Whistl, Wigan Council, and the Astley Warehouse Action Group, Whistl put forward a proposal to address local residents’ concerns about nighttime noise from its operations at PLP Astley.
“This proposal is now being considered by local residents, and we hope to soon reach agreement on further nighttime noise reduction actions we can take now while Whistl, Wigan Council, the site’s owner PLP, and Astley residents work together towards a long-term solution.
“In the meantime, our existing measures to monitor and mitigate noise levels remain in place and under daily review.”
“At the same time, we are on-the-ground reviewing the site’s operations on a daily basis to monitor our activity and put in place immediate measures to address residents’ concerns as they are raised by them to us.”
A Wigan Council spokesperson said: “We welcome Whistl’s commitment to working with residents to mitigate the impact of their operations at Astley Business Park.
“We will continue to work with them to assess whether the steps taken have the desired effect and, if necessary, to explore other potential options.
“We take the concerns of residents very seriously and have again met with the action group this week to discuss the present situation as part of our ongoing engagement with the local community.”
