Cheshire East to appoint partner to map out ‘Greater Crewe’ ambitions

The council is in talks with consultancies about the opportunity to draw up a masterplan setting out the town’s development and investment direction over the coming decades.

Cheshire East Council is hoping to appoint a strategic partner to develop a Greater Crewe Spatial, Investment and Delivery Framework by early next year.

The appointed consultancy, working with the council and newly formed Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority, will provide a platform for the future development of Crewe, which local leaders believe has the potential and raw ingredients to act as Cheshire East’s growth engine.

The framework is likely to split ‘Greater Crewe’ up into “corridors and quarters”, according to Cheshire East Council’s deputy leader Cllr Michael Gorman, including a sports quarter around Crewe Alexandra’s Gresty Road stadium and a health quarter around the £1.4bn new Leighton Hospital.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” Gorman said. “We’re trying to match the government’s ambition for growth.”

Place North West reported last year on Cheshire East’s plan to make Crewe the best small city in Europe by leveraging its ample land holdings, the town’s connectivity, and significant employers such as Bentley.

The council is now taking a step towards realising these ambitions through the ‘Greater Crewe’ initiative, which could see the town’s population grow from 80,000 to 120,000 over the coming decades, Gorman said.

The council has not set out a definitive red line boundary for ‘Greater Crewe’ yet and Gorman said the authority is “sensitive” to surrounding settlements and their individual histories and identities.

One of the key tenets of the masterplan for ‘Greater Crewe’ will be housing delivery, specifically the densification of Crewe town centre through the redevelopment of brownfield sites.

For this, the authority hopes to obtain funding support from the combined authority to plug viability gaps – end values in Crewe are comparatively low – and help to pay for the remediation of sites that are “full of industrial slop”, Gorman said.

The council is pushing government for clarity on a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester. Cheshire East was left reeling following the cancellation of HS2 north of the Midlands, which had due to stop in Crewe before connecting on to Northern Powerhouse Rail. The Conservative government’s decision to pull the plug on the scheme dashed hopes of an estimated £750m economic opportunity for the town.

By creating an oven-ready plan for Crewe, Cheshire East is bidding to put the town on a stable, investable footing as the combined authority assesses which opportunities it is going to prioritise once a mayor is elected next May.