The ugly reality facing Partington and Carrington

Things are slowly going crazy for Partington, the bottleneck for all the residential housing developments currently being built and more to come!

For those that claim ‘scaremongering’ must now be hiding in shame since the reality of what has been said is starting to show its ugly face in an area that is not ready for the amount of people that will eventually live there!

Still to this very day, no new infrastructure is planned, with only one road that ‘might’ be built, and with all the residential housing developments in Carrington and still only one road in and out (Manchester Road), you can imagine the issues in the near future to come.

The latest housing developments east and west of Warburton Lane, if approved, will chew up much of the green belt and potentially damage historical parts of Warburton—something that, despite the research done by the applicant, must not be disturbed or ruined.

If the RedRow residential development gets the green light, the fear is that more housing will likely be approved by the next developer, and before you know it, more of our precious green belt will be gone forever! Developers will try to calm fears by adding a small playground facility for kids, like the one on Heath Farm Lane!

It is now likely that places for kids at Partington’s schools have been snapped up, with kids from other areas of Trafford who cannot find a school place for the new term being sent to the area, further decreasing places.

With other schools also having capacity issues, where do the children of Trafford who cannot get a place go? It is now the councillors at a live Trafford Council Planning Meeting who will be shaking their heads since, when approving the housing developments, they all knew about the serious issues regarding school places and even admitted, “We can’t send them to Warrington or Salford,” but they all approved anyway!

The number of cars, vans, and HGVs on Manchester Road and Warburton Lane will increase even with the relief road that may or may not get built! With the amount of public opposition, how could the planning committee ignore this?

Shopping in Partington, even Carrington, when everything is built, will struggle to cater for everyone, as a huge retail park is needed, and nothing at this time suggests this is going to happen. It is not likely either that the owner of Oak Road shopping facility will sell up; this area could hold a bigger shopping facility, which would help that end of Partington better than it does today.

Pollution is rising in Partington due to the number of vehicles it has to deal with. This leads us to the real dangers of the battery storage facilities in Carrington—these things are a ticking time bomb. One fire, one issue, and bang! It will be heard for miles around.

The facilities will have all the safety measures in place; however, a thing called ‘thermal runaway’ cannot be contained, and when this happens, literally Partington has to evacuate! The fire could spread to other facilities, the fire will be seen for miles around, and if you think that is that and firefighters can deal with it and all will be alright, you will be wrong. Toxic gases will be released that could cause problems for other areas, let alone Partington and Carrington.

Of course, this is a worst-case scenario, but why risk it? We have all seen how bad lithium-ion is when a bus or car catches fire; a facility is like a car park equivalent to 100 buses catching fire all at the same time. Firefighters rushing to the scene will take a while to get there; the police will probably get there first, but all they can do is close the road off! And that’s if they will attend due to the toxic gases being released.

We have to mention the disused rail line that goes over Manchester Road. This will become an important rail corridor that one day will be used again, although nothing is in the pipeline yet. Despite the Trafford Labour snubs, even they will have to concede that the corridor will be needed to get people in and out of the place. If rail or Metrolink, maybe even a walk/run/cycle path, it will be sustainable—something the ‘Net Zero’ crazies will be happy with.