Team Appointed to Deliver £51m Housing Infrastructure, City River Park

A multi-disciplinary consulting and contracting team has been assembled to support key infrastructure works within Victoria North (previously Manchester’s Northern Gateway), the biggest renewal project Manchester (England) has ever seen. This newly appointed team—with BAM Nuttall as lead design and build contractor, and Arup as lead designer—will work closely with Manchester Council and Far East Consortium’s development and master planning team to deliver the development vision for Red Bank and New Town neighborhoods.

The amount of £51.6m, secured from the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund, will address a series of upfront infrastructure requirements to facilitate the delivery of more than 5,500 new homes in the next 10-15 years—along with a new (circa 5ha) public City River Park.

Key elements of the project include:

• Investment in a new City River Park (c.5ha) along the Irk River Valley, creating a destination green space that celebrates the river and provides new, open space for residents
• Facilitating access to development sites by connecting them to the existing highway network, along with general road upgrades
• Securing and clearing undeveloped brownfield land, including the removal of contaminated land and invasive plant species to ready sites for development
• Connecting development sites to utilities (electricity, water and surface water drainage), including new high-voltage electricity cabling and substations
• Delivering flood defense works to reduce the risk and extent of flood zones

A Carbon Management Plan is also being developed to limit the carbon footprint of construction and use by the development. The project will adopt PAS2080, the first global standard for managing infrastructure carbon, to reduce carbon and costs through intelligent design, construction and use.

The detailed design process for the project is underway and an initial planning application is expected in spring 2022.