Respond to the Consultation

As the first Carrington Relief Road (CRR) consultation goes live today (20^th January 2025), we are issuing our first Call for Action to local communities.  Please take the time to respond and encourage friends and family to participate too.

The consultation period includes some face-to-face sessions, and we hope you will be able to attend one of these.  Just a reminder that the current CRR team are NOT responsible for the decisions made in the past and that they have been directed to give a very limited scope to the consultation, which is only based on the design of the road! 

The inadequacies of this consultation have been determined by Trafford Council, and they have repeatedly rejected our requests for communities to be able to influence the wider aspects of transport solutions for the area – our next Call for Action will address this failure (see below).

This consultation ends on 28^th February.  Your inputs are extremely important, so do click on this link to read Trafford’s materials and submit your own response.  We will be discussing this consultation at our next online public meeting on 28^th January (6pm), the link to the meeting is here and all are very welcome to join us.

At the meeting, we will highlight some of the key points to consider, which include the following:

• there are two parts to the Carrington Relief Road (CRR):
  • we are totally supportive of the upgrading of the A1 route in Carrington (this runs through the employment zone from Isherwood Road to the A6144 near Saica Paper), all HGVs should be encouraged to use this road, rather than the A6144 through Carrington Village – this could have come forward years ago without any objections!
  
  
  • we are totally against the development of the road across Carrington Moss and have been proposing our alternative to Trafford for the last 4 years, without success – they are only interested in promoting the CRR, despite its escalating costs – it is a commitment to support development – not a solution aimed at benefiting existing communities

• how the current design ‘benefits’ communities:
  • Carrington residents will only benefit from this new road if through-traffic and HGVs are unable to use the A6144 through the village, with appropriate traffic calming mechanisms put in place (otherwise, residents here will just be surrounded by constant traffic and the associated pollutant impacts)
  
  
  • Partington and Warburton residents will, sadly, not benefit from the scheme – Trafford has acknowledged that the road will induce additional traffic, much of which is likely to continue through Partington and Warburton, seeking an alternative route to the motorways, furthermore, given the low levels of car ownership in Partington, a new road will not reduce the isolation of this community (unlike a tram/train connection)
  
  
  • Sale West residents will be the most negatively affected by the scheme, they will suffer from huge increases to air, noise, light, vibration and water pollution, a significant, intensified and more frequent risk of local flooding, and the loss of the current safe, healthy and pleasant traffic-free recreational routes – we recognise that the recorded and unrecorded public rights of way will still be there, but, with the road solution, residents will be walking, cycling and horse riding next to the over 40,000 motor vehicles expected to use the road each day (including over 3,000 HGVs) – the number of vehicles will significantly increase from the current traffic numbers due to the proposed developments in the area and the induced traffic using the road as a ‘rat-run’!
  
  
  • Urmston residents will not benefit from the scheme either, but they are also likely to see an increase in traffic on their local roads and the risk of local flooding will increase due to the loss of water capture and storage on Carrington Moss (we do not believe the proposed attenuation ponds will be sufficient to replace the capacity lost when the road is built)

• how the design ‘mitigates and compensates for the impact on the natural environment’:
  • the part of the road that cuts across Carrington Moss will severely impact red listed birds (including, for example, the skylark, which is prevalent along the route of the road) and protected/endangered species – we are very saddened by the thought of yet more roadkill!
  
  
  • the road will fracture the corridors used by wildlife and birds to access food and water sources – this will result in further depletion of their species
  
  
  • the road will also damage the peat moss (a restorable 335-hectare irreplaceable habitat according to Natural England) and the sites of biological importance/site of special scientific interest, even where these are not directly impacted – this is because of the changes to hydrology that will be required to keep the road water-free
  
  
  • it is likely that Trafford will consider that the attenuation ponds will replace the immense water capture and storage functionality of the moss – we think they underestimate the level of water captured here and this could lead to huge risks for local communities
  
  
  • Trafford is also likely to assume that these pond areas will create biodiversity gains, but what must be considered is that the losses will be experienced immediately, whereas any gains could take years to deliver, and, in that time, species will be lost to the area forever
  
  
  • the road will also impact the potential opportunities to support the Local Nature Recovery Strategy
  
  
  • the loss of productive Grade 2 agricultural land will impact future food security as this cannot be replaced elsewhere in Trafford

• how the design constrains the development of the New Carrington Masterplan which is currently under development and covers the whole allocation area:
  • the CRR will significantly restrict and constrain what is possible in terms of recreational, ecological and natural capital benefits for the Sale West area, considerably increasing the inequities of access to green space for residents
  
  
  • the Natural Infrastructure Strategy underpinning the Masterplan has not yet even been discussed – this should determine the approach to mitigation and compensation for environmental and ecological harms to be caused across the allocation area (including the cumulative harms) – such issues should not be addressed as piecemeal solutions for individual developments, including the CRR.

Whilst we are keen for residents to respond as constructively as possible to this consultation, we also need to recognise that Trafford has not given communities the opportunity to influence either:

• the choice of transport options for this area (why weren’t we asked if we wanted trams or trains, given the size and scale of the developments they are proposing, the number of years this has been under consideration, and the sheer common sense that we should make full use of the former railway lines running through the allocation area and the proximity of the Manchester Ship Canal?), or
  
• the route options for the road.

You might want to mention this in the final section of the response questionnaire (headed “Further Comments / Queries), but with these things in mind, there will be a future Call for Action from local communities to address the total lack of previous consultation about the CRR. 

Look out for our next blog for more community action on the Carrington Relief Road Consultation.