Oldham Engineering Group Training Association has shut its Lees Road centre after decades of preparing apprentices for the town’s manufacturing sector, with the building now set to reopen as a warehouse and retail unit.

Council planners have approved proposals to convert the two-storey Mount Pleasant Business Centre site into part-storage, part-shop space that will include external cold storage. Dr Kanadi Jagafa of Mason and Marlowe architects told the town hall: “Over the last few years the training centre has been experiencing declining enrolments and partnerships. It becomes untenable for the business to be sustainable. Therefore, the training centre had to close its doors.”

The centre, which once trained about 75 engineering apprentices annually, is still listed as active on Companies House and Ofsted, yet its website now returns a 101 error and its Facebook page has vanished. Accounts filed for 2024 show income almost halved from £720,000 to £370,000 in twelve months, despite an Ofsted report last September awarding the college a ‘good’ rating and praising tutors who delivered courses from welding to Aircraft Maintenance Licences. Locals fear the loss of a recognised route into engineering, once one of Oldham’s dominant industries, after the centre is presumed to have closed suddenly this autumn.

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