Carrington Relief Road: Committee Date Set for 15 October

The biggest road proposal in Trafford now has a date. The Carrington Relief Road will go before the council’s planning committee on Thursday 15 October 2026, according to the borough’s own planning register. It is the first committee date set since the application arrived in December 2025.

Before that, there is a deadline for residents. A fresh round of consultation opened on 27 August and closes on 17 September 2026. Anyone who has already commented, and 232 members of the public have, can comment again on the new material.

The scheme would build a new link road between the A6144 Manchester Road and the A6144 Carrington Lane / Carrington Spur, about three miles north-west of Altrincham. Trafford Council is the applicant as well as the authority that will decide it.

Why the consultation has reopened

On 21 August the applicant filed a large tranche of Supplementary Environmental Information: a main report, a non-technical summary and eleven appendices. Under the environmental impact assessment rules, new information of that kind has to be re-advertised and re-consulted on before a decision.

That is what has happened. The council placed a press advertisement dated 3 September 2026, which expires on 24 September, and reopened neighbour consultation on 27 August.

The submission was prepared by Amey for Trafford Council. It covers:

• revised plans and a revised public right of way proposal for Restricted Byway 23
• a peat and agricultural land classification survey
• updated bat, wintering bird and terrestrial invertebrate surveys
• extra winter photography and photomontages from agreed viewpoints
• a rerun of the air quality assessment using two-way traffic flows
• additional noise survey positions on Isherwood Road and Manchester Road
• consideration of non-designated heritage assets
• updates to the transport assessment following consultee comments (Environmental Statement Supplementary Environmental Information Non Technical Summary, August 2026)

The air quality model was rerun on the wrong flows

The most concrete change is in the air quality chapter. The original December 2025 assessment used one-way traffic flows in places where two-way flows should have been used. The dispersion modelling has been run again with the corrected data.

The applicant’s conclusion did not change. The addendum reports “no significant effects on either human or ecological receptors”, the same finding as the original statement. But the correction is a reminder of what a re-consultation period is for: the number that goes into a model decides what comes out of it.

Peat, and the farmland downgrade nobody advertised

An intrusive peat survey was carried out in February 2026, after the original statement was written on the basis of mapped data. It found no peat inside the application boundary, either under the proposed relief road alignment or under the attenuation basins. That removes the need to excavate peat, dispose of it to landfill, or count the carbon released by disturbing it.

The same survey changed something else. The original statement assumed the land was Grade 2 agricultural land. The survey found it is Grade 3a and Grade 3b.

Lower-grade farmland is less sensitive, so the assessed significance of losing it falls. It does not disappear. The document records the permanent loss during operation as large for the Grade 3a land and moderate for the Grade 3b land, and states plainly that “these effects are still considered significant”. Loss of agricultural land and soil resource remains one of the scheme’s significant adverse effects at both construction and operation stage.

A byway closes, and a new equestrian route replaces it

Trafford Council asked for an equestrian route to be built into the design. It has been, and the price is a right of way.

The northern section of Restricted Byway 23 would be closed to walkers, cyclists and horse riders. The southern section stays open and would connect to a new equestrian path running alongside the link road, and to the footpath on the road itself.

The applicant’s own assessment is honest about the effect. Closing the northern section produces a moderate, significant effect because journeys get longer. Once the new equestrian path, the footpath and cycle path along the road, and formal crossing points at RB21, FP15 and FP16 are counted, the residual effect is assessed as slight adverse and not significant.

Whether that trade reads the same way from a saddle on Carrington Lane is exactly the sort of thing the consultation is for.

Noise: 34 homes north of Junction 4

The scheme’s summary table lists an adverse operational noise effect on 34 receptors north of Junction 4, on Ackers Lane, Isherwood Road, Cypress Gardens and Porta Road.

The document says funding for façade upgrades, meaning glazing or ventilation, “would be expected to control ingress of affected properties such that indoor noise levels would be acceptable”. That is conditional on the funding being available. It is worth reading twice if you live on one of those four streets.

Elsewhere the assessment reports beneficial effects: on connectivity and severance for residents next to the site and within 500 metres, on physical activity opportunities, on transport options for people within about a kilometre, and on the wider local economy.

The dates that matter

What it means for you

If you want a say, 17 September is the date, not 15 October. Comments made after the consultation closes may still be reported to committee, but the 17 September deadline is the one the council has advertised.

Comments go through the application page on the Trafford planning register, under reference 118033/FUL/25. Points that carry weight are planning points: traffic, noise, air quality, loss of farmland, rights of way, heritage, biodiversity. The 1,247 documents on the file include the non-technical summary, which is the short version worth reading first.

If you use Restricted Byway 23, or you live on Ackers Lane, Isherwood Road, Cypress Gardens or Porta Road, the new documents say specific things about your route and your house that the December statement did not.

If you drive the A6144, nothing changes for a long time yet. Even a permission on 15 October is only permission. We track what happens next in our Altrincham planning news, and the current state of the corridor in our roadworks and travel page.

Sources

• Trafford Council planning register, application 118033/FUL/25 for the committee date of 15 October 2026, the consultation dates, the press advertisement dates, the agreed expiry date and the status of “awaiting decision”.
• Application comments tab for the 250 comments, split 232 public and 18 consultee.
• Application documents tab for the 1,247 documents and the 21 August 2026 filing dates of the Supplementary Environmental Information and its appendices.
• Environmental Statement Supplementary Environmental Information Non Technical Summary, CRR-AMEY-EGN-SWI-RP-EV-03001, August 2026, published on the same documents tab, for the air quality rerun on two-way flows, the peat and agricultural land classification findings, the Restricted Byway 23 change, the noise finding on 34 receptors and the summary table of residual significant effects.
• Application details tab for the ward, Bucklow St Martins, and the parish, Carrington Parish Council.