Why business is playing a growing role in the future of Lancashire’s landmark buildings

Across Lancashire, many landmark buildings that once defined our towns and our communities are facing an uncertain future. Lancashire’s former mills, churches and civic buildings often sit empty for years, becoming symbols of decline rather than assets for renewal they could be.

In Bacup, one such building is beginning a new chapter.

Christ Church, which has stood on Beech Street in Bacup for the best part of two centuries, is being transformed into a digital business and skills hub under the stewardship of Rossendale Digital.

The project has been led by local business owner Simon Dalley and the director of digital marketing agency GrowTraffic, alongside a group of other local investors.

Rather than approaching the building as a heritage project or a purely commercial redevelopment, the team has taken a deliberately hybrid approach. This approach blends business sustainability with skills development and community use.

Dalley is renowned as a leading SEO consultant, best known for growing GrowTraffic into an award-winning digital agency headquartered in Bacup, with a national and international client base. His experience as a thought leader in the search marketing space and as a local community leader has shaped the thinking behind the Christ Church project.

“Whilst digital work is often described as location-agnostic,” Dalley argues, “place still matters.” He goes on to say: “Where digital businesses and skilled workers cluster, opportunities expand more quickly. Where they don’t, towns such as those at the back end of Rossendale Valley risk becoming dormitories rather than centres of economic activity.”

The acquisition of Christ Church in 2024 was intended to help address that imbalance.

Ownership, Dalley believes, is what allows progress to happen. “Without commercial ownership, buildings like this often remain stuck in limbo, waiting for funding rounds or future plans that never quite materialise.”

Private ownership, however, does not necessarily mean private use. The key distinction, he argues, is stewardship. He argues this kind of stewardship and approach ensures a building is actively used, financially viable and connected to the place it serves.

In the smaller towns of Lancashire, the idea that business growth and community benefit sit in opposition often fails to reflect reality. If businesses grow but local people don’t feel they have a future, that growth rarely lasts. Equally, community projects without a sustainable economic model can struggle once initial funding or enthusiasm fades.

Christ Church is being developed in response to that tension. The building will host commercial tenants that are engaged in digital industries. This will provide the income required to maintain and improve the site, whilst also offering space for training, early-stage businesses, shared working and community activity.

The intention is not to replicate city-centre coworking models, but to create a working building that reflects how people now learn, collaborate and do business.

The project also reflects a broader shift in how regeneration is being understood across Lancashire. Whilst physical infrastructure remains important, long-term competitiveness is increasingly shaped by skills, adaptability and digital capability.

Remote and hybrid working are now established norms. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and data-driven decision-making are becoming part of everyday business operations.

Robotics, AI-facilitated decision-making, and cryptography are starting to make the future look like the one we were shown in sci-fi. The challenge for towns like Bacup is ensuring local people can participate in that economy rather than being marginalised by it.

That challenge is sharpened by what is already happening elsewhere in Lancashire.

The establishment of the National Cyber Force at Samlesbury signals the region’s growing importance in the UK’s national security, advanced computing and cyber capability.

Alongside this, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, automation and robotics are beginning to reshape how work is organised and how value is created. The next industrial era is unlikely to be defined by mills and factories, but by data, systems, machines and the people who design, manage and secure them.

Rossendale’s position is significant in that context. Sitting on the northern edge of Greater Manchester’s digital and technology economy, The Valley is close enough to connect yet far enough to risk being bypassed if skills, infrastructure and ambition do not keep pace.

As Manchester continues to attract investment in AI, advanced manufacturing and digital services, towns such as Bacup face a clear choice: remain peripheral, or deliberately anchor themselves into that wider ecosystem.

Projects like Christ Church are intended to do the latter, creating places where people can build future-facing skills locally rather than feeling they must leave to participate in the next phase of economic change.

Rossendale Digital CIC was established to address this challenge.

From its base at Christ Church, Rossendale Digital is working with a range of stakeholders and plans to deliver training in areas such as cybersecurity, data analysis, artificial intelligence, digital marketing and cross-disciplinary project delivery.

The aim is to widen access to the digital economy, not to create an exclusive enclave for a narrow sector.

Although Dalley helped establish Rossendale Digital CIC and led the acquisition of the building, he has since stepped back from the board of the Community Interest Company.

The move, he says, was intended to allow the organisation to be shaped by the wider digital, education and business community it serves.

“Long-term success,” he argues, “depends on the building being widely used and collectively owned in spirit. Projects of this nature only endure when people feel a sense of belonging and responsibility for them.

“Living and working locally also brings its own form of accountability. In smaller towns, projects and promises are visible, and scrutiny is unavoidable.”

Rather than focusing on launch dates or early milestones, Dalley suggests the success of Christ Church will be measured over time. The question is not how the building looks on opening day, but whether it is still being used productively years from now - hosting businesses, training people nd supporting collaboration as part of everyday life.

Christ Church has already served Bacup in several different ways over the past two centuries. Its current transformation reflects a growing belief that Lancashire’s future will be shaped not just by new developments, but by how existing assets are adapted for modern economic and social realities.

For business leaders across the country, the project raises a wider question: whether the private sector can play a more active role in safeguarding and repurposing landmark buildings - not as monuments to the past, but as working assets for the future.

In Bacup, at least, one answer is beginning to take shape.

To get involved with the development at Christ Church in Bacup, please email [email protected]