A consultation is due to end on Wigan Council’s plan for future development, with four sites potentially earmarked for warehouses being removed.
It follows an outcry from residents over the construction of huge warehouses close to homes near Astley.
The local authority said it had listened and “struck the right balance between supporting economic growth and job creation”.
Greenbelt campaigners and opposition councillors claimed they had forced the council to act.
Councils must put together a local plan which identifies sites for housing and business development every decade or so and Wigan is in the process of updating its own.
In the version under consultation, it has said four sites would not be taken forward.
They include to the north of M6 junction 26, Moss Industrial Estate extension, Bridgewater West in Astley, and West of Winwick Lane in Lowton.
The site being described as Bridgewater West is known locally as Higher Green and more than half a million sqaure feet of employment space was to have been built.
Joanna Allsop from the Save Our Astley and Boothstown Greenbelt lives nearby and said; “It was just unbelievable that anyone could suggest that it could be anything other than Greenbelt.”
She said they are still concerned about its future, adding: “What we want is long-lasting protection. We want them to say that it is Greenbelt, not try to say that it’s Greybelt.”