Commercial solar panels in Leigh mean two quite different jobs. One is a steel-framed unit on Leigh Business Park, off Greenfold Way and a short hop from the A580 East Lancs Road, where the roof is recent, the structure is documented and permitted development usually covers the array. The other is a red-brick spinning mill in Bedford, beside the Bridgewater Canal, where the roof may be a century old, the building may be listed and the planning route is a different animal altogether. We work on both, and the first site visit is mostly about establishing which set of rules you're under. After that the business case is the same arithmetic anywhere: how much power you use in daylight, what you pay per unit, and how much roof or land you have facing roughly south.
We reply within one working day to book a site visit.
Leigh grew on cotton and coal, and both left big roofs behind. Leigh Spinners on Park Lane is a Grade II* listed double mill, built in 1913 and 1923, and now home to more than 60 independent businesses. Butts Mill, also Grade II*, went up beside the Bridgewater Canal in 1905 and is known for its copper-domed terracotta tower. Mather Lane Mill in Bedford, listed Grade II, dates from 1882. Five conservation areas cover parts of the town, the Bridgewater Canal among them. Panels on any of these buildings start with listed building questions and a conversation with Wigan Council's conservation officers, well before anyone orders a rail.
The newer stock looks nothing like that. Leigh Business Park, reached along the A574 Warrington Road from the A580, is made up of modern office and industrial units. Parsonage Colliery, sunk between 1913 and 1920 and closed in 1992, is now Parsonage Retail Park. Out towards Astley, a developer has applied to put a 10MW solar farm on 52 acres of the former Whitehead landfill, which shows the kind of difficult ground now being looked at for ground-mounted panels. The guided busway to Manchester opened in 2016, but freight here still moves by road, and Leigh has no railway station.
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Site survey and a review of your half-hourly data
kWh
Systems sized from your own meter readings
G99
Grid application drawn up and submitted for you
M17
Based on Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park
Mill landlords often carry a shared supply that peaks at awkward hours. A battery charged from your own panels covers the weekday evening red band, and on a newer unit it can keep a larger array viable where export is restricted.
Learn more about battery storage in Leigh →
For farms around Pennington and Astley, or a business with a spare paddock or disused yard, a ground array sidesteps the roof questions entirely. Anything beyond a small stand-alone unit needs full planning permission, which we prepare with you.
Learn more about ground-mounted solar in Leigh →
Profiled-metal roofs on Leigh Business Park and around Parsonage are the straightforward end of the work. We check the sheets, purlins and rooflights, then lay the array out to match the hours your building actually uses power.
Learn more about commercial rooftop solar in Leigh →Some of these apply to any site in the town. A couple are particular to the old mill buildings.
Medium-sized business users paid an average of 25.2p per kWh in the second quarter of 2026 by DESNZ's figures, with the Climate Change Levy included. Power generated on your roof and used inside the building replaces units bought at that sort of price, which is where nearly all of the payback comes from.
A big multi-storey mill has a lot of roof, but rarely a simple one. Valley gutters, slate, old rooflights and a century of alterations all get in the way. A structural survey shows which sections can take panels, and sometimes the best candidate is a flat-roofed later extension rather than the main block.
Leigh Spinners alone houses more than 60 businesses. In a multi-let mill, solar can feed the landlord's supply for common areas, lifts and lighting, or be metered through to individual tenants. We set out the metering options so the owner can decide how the cost is recovered.
Plant for onsite renewable generation, and storage used with it, is exempt from business rates in England until 31 March 2035. For the owner of a large, heavily rated mill, that removes one of the usual worries about bolting new equipment onto the building.
Rough grazing, farmland and old colliery or tip ground around Astley and Pennington can carry an array where a roof can't. Free-standing frames can be set at the best angle, and PVGIS puts the yield at that tilt slightly ahead of what a low-pitched roof manages in this part of Greater Manchester.
Leigh is roughly 25 minutes from us via the M60 and the East Lancs Road when traffic is light, which makes survey visits, commissioning days and maintenance call-outs easy to fit around your working week.
"Most of the mill owners we're asked to visit in Leigh assume listing rules out solar altogether, when the real question is usually which roof slope or later extension can carry panels out of public view."
There are two layers of cover on a commercial installation, and it pays to know which is which. The first is the installer's workmanship guarantee. It covers the way the system was put in: the fixings through your roof, the cable runs, the terminations, the protective devices and the commissioning settings. Its length and terms are written into the quotation, so you can read them before you sign rather than discover them afterwards.
The second layer belongs to the manufacturers. Panels normally carry a product warranty and a separate performance warranty, which promises a minimum output after a set number of years. Inverters and batteries have their own terms, often with cycle or throughput limits on storage. These vary by product, so every proposal names the exact models and attaches their warranty documents.
A guarantee is only as good as the install underneath it. That's why the structural check comes before the design is fixed, why every string is tested and recorded to BS 7671, and why the grid connection is commissioned to the settings SP Electricity North West has approved. If something we fitted fails because of how it was fitted, we come back and put it right.
In writing
Workmanship guarantee, set out in your quote
Per model
Manufacturer product and performance warranties
Test results, drawings, warranty certificates and the grid connection agreement are handed over in one pack on the last day.
We look at the roof, the electrical intake and your half-hourly data, and for a mill we ask for the listing description and any past consents. Knowing what Wigan Council has already approved on the building saves weeks further down the line.
You get a layout, expected annual yield, the share you'll use on site, payback on your current tariff and the capital allowance position. For a heritage building the drawings also show how the array would look from the canal towpath and the street.
A structural engineer signs off the roof. We then submit whichever planning route applies, prior approval or a full application with listed building consent, plus the G99 application to SP Electricity North West, adding a G100 form if export is to be limited.
Mill yards in Bedford can be narrow and shared with tenants' vans, and some roofs sit several storeys up. We plan scaffold or MEWP access, protect old rooflights and fragile sheets, and agree working hours with the landlord and tenants before anything arrives on site.
Fixings are chosen for the roof in front of us, whether profiled steel on a newer unit or a strengthened section of an old mill. Inverters go where they can be isolated quickly, and cable routes are agreed with you and your insurer.
Each string is tested, inverter settings are checked against G99, and any export limit is proven before switch-on. The DNO is told once the system is generating.
You receive certificates, drawings, the O&M manual and monitoring access. We can also carry out periodic inspections and panel cleaning, which earns its keep on roofs next to busy routes like the A580 where road grime settles on the glass.
A 70-hectare lake formed by mining subsidence sits at the heart of this 200-hectare country park between Leigh and Lowton. Eight bird hides, waterside paths and a golf course make it one of the most visited green spaces in the Wigan borough.
Learn more about Pennington Flash Country Park on Google Maps
A Grade II* listed double cotton mill built in 1913 and 1923, now home to independent businesses, a heritage centre and one of the largest surviving mill engines in the country. The heritage centre and engine house open to visitors on set days each week.
Learn more about Leigh Spinners Mill on Google Maps
The last surviving pithead headgear in the Lancashire coalfield stands here beside a huge restored steam winding engine and a collection of colliery locomotives. Volunteers from the Red Rose Steam Society run the museum on the former Astley Green pit, which closed in 1970.
Learn more about Lancashire Mining Museum (Astley Green Colliery) on Google MapsWe're a new name, so you won't find a wall of reviews here yet. We'd rather show you nothing than make some up.
For a project this size, reviews were never the best evidence anyway. Ask any installer you're considering for a reference site you can visit, a year or more of generation data from a system they fitted, and the grid connection paperwork from a past job. If they can't produce those, keep looking.
Two Leigh projects of the same size can be a long way apart on price. A modern unit on Greenfold Way is mostly panels, inverters and scaffold. An older mill may need structural strengthening, mounting that respects the heritage fabric, extra consent work and harder access. Ground arrays add groundworks, fencing and a cable run back to the building. As a rough benchmark for smaller systems, DESNZ's 2025/26 data puts 10-50kW non-domestic installations at an average of £1,167 per kW, and larger systems generally come in lower per kW than that.
On most modern units a full application isn't needed. Class J permitted development covers rooftop solar on non-domestic buildings, although arrays above 50kW need prior approval from Wigan Council on appearance and glare, decided within 56 days. Listed mills such as Butts Mill or Leigh Spinners fall outside Class J, so a planning application and usually listed building consent are needed. Ground-mounted arrays bigger than a small stand-alone unit also need a full application.
Sometimes. It depends on the roof structure, its covering and condition, the listing, and how visible the panels would be. Asbestos-cement sheeting on later additions needs proper assessment first, and HSE treats it as fragile. We often recommend over-cladding or re-roofing a section before any panels go on.
Where there's suitable land, yes. The proposed 10MW scheme on the former Whitehead landfill at Astley Green shows the sort of ground being considered locally. A business or farm array is far smaller, but the same issues apply: planning, grid connection, access and how far the power has to travel to where it's used.
Exported units can earn a Smart Export Guarantee payment, at a rate set by the supplier. Suppliers serving mainly business customers aren't obliged to offer SEG, so check with yours, and you'll need a half-hourly meter with an export MPAN. For most commercial sites the real value lies in using the power on site, because export pays well below the cost of buying from the grid.
Send a recent electricity bill or your half-hourly data with the address, and we'll tell you which route applies and roughly what the site could generate. Call 0161 524 5781 or fill in the form.
