Cheshire East Council will be working to secure external funding to develop a walking, wheeling and cycling route within the north of the Borough.
Known as the Greater Bollin Trail, the route would provide connections between established trails, such as the Middlewood Way, Bridgewater Way and the Trans Pennine Trail, to public transport nodes and links to towns, villages and their communities as well as places of interest including Lyme Park, Quarry Bank Mill, the proposed Tatton Services, Tatton Park and Dunham Massey.
The route would also provide links to key employment connections such as to Manchester Airport, the proposed Tatton Services, Adlington Business Park and Altrincham. In addition, it would link into the Handforth Garden Village and, in part, relies on this development coming forward.
It will take many years for the full route to be completed and to progress the scheme, it will be necessary for the Council to apply for grant funding when and if it becomes available as currently there is no budget set aside for this project.
Speaking at the meeting on Thursday, 3rd April, Councillor Mark Goldsmith, Chair of the Highways and Transport Committee, said "When we get devolution and the government have made it quite cleat it is a when and not an if we will need reports like this to get money into our area as well because those decisions for things like this will be increasingly made in the Northwest and not in Whitehall and therefore we need to get our plan.
"I know people will say there's no money for this, why should we bother? Well because we have to have the plan to get the money. If we do it the other way round we will never get the funding."
He added "A lot of these organisations want to see how we will spend it, have we done the detail thinking behind it that they can fund it. If we have all that information to hand then we are fare more likely to get the funding. It is going to happen also on a phased basis so we don't have to get all the money as once. We can get it from different pots over a period of time that then builds into the masterplan."
Councillor Sue Adams said "I think it's absolutely fantastic i wish I could see more of this strategic thinking from the Council and it's the sort of thing we need."
Members of the Highways and Transport Committee voted unanimously in favour of supporting the concept and objectives of the Greater Bollin Trail. As well as delegating to officers to work with neighbouring authorities to ensure aspects of the route outside of Cheshire East are incorporated into the plans and delegating to the Head of Infrastructure to work with key stakeholders to identify, develop and submit external funding bids to take forward to delivery elements of the route.
Image: Visualisation of how the Greater Bollin Trail will look.
Comments
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It seems to me these Councillors are just trying to make a name for themselves and trying to justify their position instead of concentrating on the important subject that almost everyone is shouting about, namely POTHOLES POTHOLES POTHOLES
I'm certain most of the "walking, wheeling and cycling" fraternity are also motorists and would prefer to see the roads in a better condition instead of the Councillors coming up with these costly hair-brained schemes.