New supermarket officially opens its doors at Hollinwood Junction

Lidl's new Hollinwood Junction store opened quietly on Albert Street, giving drivers leaving the M60 at junction 22 a supermarket within 200 yards of the slip road. The Mayor, Council Leader Arooj Shah and Year-9 pupils from Hollinwood Academy cut the ribbon, watched by staff who had already stocked the bakery shelves before sunrise.

The discount chain's arrival is the first completed piece of the £25 million overhaul of the former industrial pocket between the canal and the motorway. When Langtree finishes the wider scheme in summer 2026, the site is scheduled to host 720 jobs in total; 40 of them are already inside the Lidl, created through the council's Get Oldham Working scheme that pairs job-seekers with training and mental-health support.

For Tristian Campbell, who had been out of work for six months, the timing meant a five-minute walk to a paid role instead of a bus ride to the Chadderton branch where he had been covering shifts. He will transfer permanently this week, one of several recruits the council matched to vacancies before the tills opened.

The store joins Costa Coffee and a Euro Garages forecourt on land once occupied by small mills and a scrap yard. Planners say the same footprint will eventually hold 2,000 new town-centre homes and a relocated market hall at Spindles, turning a traffic junction into one of Oldham's largest employment clusters.