News on Urmston Active Neighbourhood Map

One Trafford Partnership, a collaboration between Trafford Council and Amey Plc, have been awarded circa £11.3m through the Mayor’s Challenge Fund bidding process to create an active neighbourhood in the area of Urmston (including Flixton, Davyhulme East and Davyhulme West.) The project known as Urmston Active Neighbourhood aims to encourage people in making walking and cycling a natural choice for shorter journeys, which will improve their health, while improving the air quality in the area.

I have been working as part of the project team for the Mayor’s Challenge Fund Urmston Active Neighbourhood Scheme since it first launched earlier in the year. During the launch event my main role was to showcase the engagement website where the community were able to log on and provide comments in areas across Urmston, where they wanted changes to be made.

Once the initial consultation period came to an end, my role became a little more analytical, which included collating the data from the approx. 3,300 comments that were uploaded to the engagement site and analysing these to create solutions and proposals to feedback to the community. I also collected collision data from across Urmston (including all four wards) over the last five years and cross referenced this information with the comments received via the engagement site.

A report was then created providing all the data and the measures that could be implemented to address the collisions and to make Urmston an active neighbourhood.

To make the report as diverse and inclusive as possible it was important for me to create location plans, as well as illustrations of the measures and present these in plain English, so that they could be added to the virtual reality room.

The second part of the consultation is to engage with the people of Urmston and continue our dialogue with them to progress the project and continue the momentum that began as part of the initial consultation. We want the community to discuss their thoughts about the project, before any proposals are finalised.

To get involved in the next stage of the engagement exercise, visit the virtual room which consists of all the data, illustrations and location plans or register to attend online web chat sessions to speak to the project team. Find out more about Urmston Active Neighbourhood by visiting www.trafford.gov.uk/UrmstonActiveNeighbourhood

Bilal Valley

Engineering Degree Apprentice at One Trafford Partnership