Located between Manchester and the beautiful moorland of the Pennines, there's more to Rochdale than you think. While the countryside provides tranquillity, the borough’s towns of Heywood, Middleton and Littleborough celebrate the fact that they were an early powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution.
Today the energy, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that shaped the past, is at the heart of their approach to meeting the council’s ambitions for Rochdale and its residents.
Kingsway Business Park is one of the most active regeneration projects in the UK. Metrolink has arrived into the town centre and a new state of the art £12 million Transport Interchange has opened its doors. A new retail and leisure development is on the way too.
Rochdale’s Sixth Form College is outstanding and the best college in the country for value added performance in the Department for Education’s performance league tables. Nearby Hopwood Hall College is the best performing college in Greater Manchester, according to government’s national success rates league tables.
Thirteen schools have been re-built or refurbished as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme and 85% of the area’s schools are rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted. Employment prospects are looking increasingly promising too, with numbers of young people aged 16-18 not in education, employment or training at an all-time low, and the borough seeing the highest increase in Apprenticeships in Greater Manchester.
A proud place, with a great history, now starting to see the results from years of hard work, planning and investment.
With easy access to the motorway network, the cities of Manchester and Leeds are both close by.