Carrington Relief Road is off the 15 October agenda and now listed for 5 November. 234 objections, none in support, and the chemical works next door objects.

Councillors will not decide the Carrington Relief Road next week. The scheme has been left off the agenda for Trafford’s planning committee on Thursday 15 October, and the council’s planning register now gives its committee date as Thursday 5 November 2026.

The agenda index for 15 October lists four applications. They are in Urmston, Altrincham, Hale and Sale. The relief road, application 118033/FUL/25, is not one of them.

The register’s dates tab records an “actual committee date” of 5 November. It gives no reason for the change. The agreed expiry date on the same page still reads 30 October, a week before the new meeting.

The road would link the A6144 Manchester Road with Carrington Lane and the Carrington Spur, about three miles north-west of Altrincham. Trafford Council is both the applicant and the authority that will decide it.

The objections, by the register’s own count

The comments tab reads like this today:
Properties consulted 1,086
Comments received 238
Objections 234
In support 0

The file has grown to 1,462 documents. On 3 September, when we reported the original committee date, it held 1,247.

The chemical works next door is objecting

The most detailed new objection comes from the site the road would run past. CTO Polyolefins UK Limited describes itself as the operator of the Upper Tier COMAH site at Carrington. COMAH sites are those handling large quantities of dangerous substances, and upper tier is the stricter of the two levels.

Its solicitors, Eversheds Sutherland, filed a letter on 28 September. It says CTO has taken over an earlier objection made by Basell Polyolefins UK Ltd and adopts it in full.

The core complaint is that the council’s new COMAH Zone Risk Management Strategy “is not a risk assessment”. The letter says it is a framework for assessing risk after permission is granted. It also says the strategy does not assess:

  • the people who would be newly exposed inside the consultation zones, including construction workers, cyclists and the public
  • the use of the A1 Road as a haul route for more than two years, alongside about 200 daily HGV and vehicle movements to and from the works
  • emergency access and evacuation routes during building and after opening
  • the combined effect of the road with the roughly 5,000 homes and 360,000 square metres of employment space it is meant to unlock

The letter makes one point at length. The A1 Road is a private, gated road today. The scheme would turn it into a public highway, used by walkers, cyclists and horse riders with no training in the hazards. CTO calls that “a qualitative change in the nature of the exposure”. It also notes that security gate details are still marked “TBC with landowner at detailed design” on the revised drawings.

Its position is blunt. The council “cannot lawfully determine this application on the basis of a promise to carry out a risk assessment after planning permission has been granted”, the letter says. It then sets out conditions it wants if councillors approve the scheme anyway.

Friends of Carrington Moss: publish the business case first

The campaign group Friends of Carrington Moss lodged a second, 16-page objection on 17 September. It registers its “wholehearted objection” and asks for three things before any decision:

  • full consideration of its alternative route for the eastern part of the road
  • answers to questions from a traffic meeting with the project team on 20 July
  • publication of the road’s full business case

The group agrees with the council’s planning statement that the harm to the Green Belt deserves “substantial negative harm weight”. It disagrees that very special circumstances exist to outweigh it.

What the statutory bodies said

The official consultees replied to the August re-consultation in mid-September. None of them objects:

  • Natural England (16 September): no objection. The new survey work shows no significant harm to restorable peat inside the site boundary. A small area of buried peat was found at one borehole, outside the boundary.
  • Environment Agency (17 September): its earlier position and recommended conditions still apply.
  • Historic England (17 September): the changes do not affect its remit, and it has nothing to add to its February letter.
  • Active Travel England (15 September): recommends approval, subject to conditions.
  • Trans Pennine Trail and Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (18 September): welcomes the segregated walking and cycling routes and the Pegasus and Toucan crossings.
  • National Highways (filed 14 September): no objection on the M60.

The National Highways response carries a warning worth reading. It treats the road only as a standalone scheme. The relief road “can therefore not be relied upon as mitigation for traffic impacts at M60 Junction 8” from future building at New Carrington. Each later development will have to assess its own traffic on the motorway, it says.

All six responses are on the application’s documents tab.

What it means for you

If you were planning to watch or attend on 15 October for this item, you do not need to. The other applications on that agenda include a dental surgery at 63 Manchester Road, Altrincham.

The officers’ report for the relief road has not been published yet. Trafford usually publishes committee papers about a week before the meeting, so expect it in late October. That report will set out the recommendation and answer the objections, including CTO’s. We will read it and report it when it appears.

The consultation period closed on 17 September, but the register is still logging letters: the latest arrived on 7 October. You can comment through the application page under reference 118033/FUL/25.

For drivers on the A6144, nothing changes for now. Our roadworks and travel page covers the corridor, and our earlier report on what changed in the August submission covers the air quality rerun, the peat survey and the byway closure. The wider plan for New Carrington is on our planning news page.

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