An exhausting planning process that ended successfully for Westmorland Group’s bid to open its Tatton Services motorway service area (MSA) last month has not slowed the drive of the woman who has been behind the business for 20 years.
Sarah Dunning OBE, who chairs the family business and whose parents started it all, insists she is as ambitious as ever to expand the Westmorland network, which has seen it grow from its original Tebay Services, opened in the early 1970s, to four and soon to be five sites. Her plans include possibly opening services on A roads and expanding the sustainable credentials of the business with the addition of solar panels and more electric vehicle chargepoints.
However, her immediate priority is getting Tatton Services to its opening date. The site, at the M56 J7/8 Bowdon Interchange near Manchester airport, has planning permission for a 100-room hotel, farm shop, and a forecourt with up to 96 chargepoints, including provision for HGVs. It is an 80/20 joint venture with local landowner Tatton Estate as minority shareholder.
It has not been an easy process. After receiving approval from the unitary Cheshire East council in late 2024, the then-Conservative government took the unusual step of referring it to the Planning Inspector. Opposition to the proposal, from local campaigners as well as a neighbouring authority, centred on a claim that the MSA would be built on green belt land.
However, the planning enquiry deemed the land to be grey belt – the site would sit in the centre of a loop of access roads to the motorway – and the government has now given the proposal the green light.
Despite this, Dunning says the project will have to be reviewed as the cost has risen considerably since the original plan was approved. “It is wonderful we are there,” she says. “We are now looking back at the business plan to see what has changed. We submitted detailed planning permission, but there is still a whole lot of design work to do before we go out to tender to build the site.”
While not quite an urban location, Tatton Services sits on the southern edge of Greater Manchester and so will be a very different proposition to Westmorland’s other MSAs – Tebay, Cairn Lodge on the M74, south of Glasgow, and Gloucester on the M5 (there is also a truckstop at Orton, near Penrith). With Manchester airport and the city’s commuter belt on its doorstep, it will rely more on short-distance traffic.
However, Dunning says that while details of the retail offer still have to be agreed, it will be “an extension of our philosophy”, championing local food, crafts and community.
“Our idea of motorway service areas is about celebrating the place and celebrating local producers in the area, and being part of the community where they are located, and so that is very much our model, the local impact model. We want our businesses to be rooted in their place through the supply chain, through their colleagues, and through community contribution,” she says.
“Because of its location it will be different. It’s a learning process you go through on these projects because each one is different and that’s what makes it exciting.”
Dunning took the helm of the service station part of the business 20 years ago while her sister Jane has been running her parents’ sheep and cattle farm, a mile from Tebay Services. Her sibling, two years her senior, also runs her own agricultural business in Norfolk with her husband.
Dunning was in her late 20s at the time and had been pursuing a career in finance in London, and, as she puts it, “finding her identity”. A languages graduate, she had never intended to join the family business where she had worked weekends as a teenager.
But she was attracted back north in 1999 when her parents John and Barbara revealed plans to open a leisure centre at Rheged, Cumbria, and to develop Tebay. She took the decision to be part of those projects and moved to Cumbria with her husband Joel, a heart surgeon from Eastbourne. She says she has never regretted it.
“I wouldn’t be doing anything else now. It is a real privilege to be part of your own family business because you have the ability to put your stamp on it in a way that you don’t always get to when this is not the case,” she says.
The 1,000-acre family farm and Tebay Services are inextricably linked. Dunning’s parents started as hill farmers and opened Tebay Services after the M6 was built through their land. Complete carcases, from livestock at the farm, are used at the butcher’s counters in the farm shops at the southbound and northbound services, as well as the hotel on the northbound side. Little is wasted, which is part of the company’s identity.
“The farm is at the heart of the business. Not many butchers do full carcass butchery, so we have to find something to do with the heart, the lungs, the kidneys and livers, and the non-premium bits, everything. What it means is that when we are deciding our menus here we can’t just do the fancy bits that everyone likes we have to use the whole carcass, and this drives a nose to tail ethos in the business.”
Famously, Westmorland has eschewed partnerships with the third-party brands common to other MSAs. You will not find a Costa Coffee or a Burger King, a Waitrose or a WH Smiths in any of its sites.
“We have a very simple concept in the business,” says Dunning. “Everyone else has franchises and brands. We don’t have that, we just have our farm shop and kitchen and the basic idea behind that is offering our customers what we call ‘proper food’, food that is sourced well, made with really good ingredients you can trace back to their origins, and responsible food from a human health point of view and an animal welfare point of view, and environmental point of view and hopefully it tastes delicious too.”
Since taking the job at Tebay, Dunning has opened Gloucester Services, a £45 million project built on two former potato fields next to the M5, which Dunning describes as a “deeply fulfilling turning nothing into something” project, and Cairn Lodge, which was also acquired around 10 years ago.
Last year, the Cairn Lodge farm shop was doubled in size – part of a development programme across its estate, with Tebay Services southbound currently being improved. The four months’ of works at the latter, which opened in 1993, is due to finish this April and will include more car and HGV parking spaces, and EV charging bays.
There will be a larger entrance foyer for customers to “orientate themselves” upon arrival, the introduction of smaller “food stations” replacing the serve-over carvery experience, aimed at faster service and smaller queues. Additionally, sections for bakery, deli, hot meals, and hot sandwiches make them easier to merchandise.
Once completed Dunning will turn her attention to bringing the northbound site into the “modern era”. Since it opened in 1972 it has grown with “shed upon shed extension”, says Dunning. “It is a special place, where it all started with probably six tables, a tiny shop and a couple of petrol pumps.”
Non-motorway sites are also a possibility. “I would say it is a germ of an idea,” says Dunning. “There are some interesting opportunities on A roads, with many being as busy as motorways. If you look at the motorway services market there’s not very many gaps in the UK and the ones that are left are usually left for a reason because they are difficult.
“It’s challenging getting new planning permission on the motorway service area network. So I think it is a very obvious place for us and others in our position to consider A roads as well. We look for sites with a good volume of traffic that will fit our business model,” she adds.
“We have never been in a rush to grow. We would much rather do it properly, put down roots really well and build really good businesses in the place that we are in.”
Electric vehicle charging has also been cited as an area to develop. Over the past 18 months the business has installed 80 chargers across its estate, and owns the equipment. In the next couple of months it will install an EV hub of 30 chargers at its Rheged meeting place café, cinema and gallery, near Penrith.
Recognising the growing demand on the grid with the arrival of EV, it is also planning on installing solar panels at sites, with planning applications in place.
Above all, Dunning says she is determined to retain the family spirit of the business. Her parents, in their early nineties, visit Tebay Services for a coffee every morning. And together with her sister, she plans to sustain and grow the business for the third generation: she has two children: aged 20, and 21, while Jane has three.
“We’ve continued mum and dad’s philosophy, which was always about local and definitely built on it,” says Dunning. “Jane and I both realised when we started running the business that if we were going to survive as a very small player in a much bigger market we have to continue differentiating and being our own people and not doing what everybody else did.”
She adds: “I think playing the big players at their own game won’t end in a good place, so we always realised that our difference was our greatest asset really and that everything we do in the business should build on that difference.
“Now that Tatton is on the horizon, I think Jane’s and my philosophy is that we absolutely do want to grow, because growing makes you challenge your existing way of doing business so you learn a lot through growing, it’s less easy to learn when you are not growing.”
