What's the future for Cornbrook and Pomona Island?

The Canal at Cornbrook

The last entry talked about the Council’s proposed development of Great Jackson Street. This article is about the Council’s plans for Cornbrook and Pomona. The Council plans to build a large hotel, a ‘commercial business hub’ and a number of flats. In addition, it is working with Trafford Council to build a large number of flats on Pomona Island in the future.

As with the Great Jackson Street plan, the Council has no desire to build any affordable homes or social housing on the site. The promise of some new commercial space at least shows that the Council does know that people need to have somewhere to work as well as just live. However, the Council does not look set to overturn its existing policies of attempting to attract in new employers rather than supporting local businesses to grow. We want to see some of the commercial space be set aside for either small businesses, or for an office to support small businesses and local charities. We also want to the plans to have more imagination when it comes to retaining the current environment of Pomona Island.

We also want to see a plan which takes into consideration the environment. Pomona is currently an Oasis of green at the edge of the City Centre. The site was home to a pleasure garden in the 19^th century and it would be good to see Pomona continue to have green space rather than seeing it become overdeveloped like the rest of the former docks.

The most troublesome thing about this proposal is that it has been designed without consulting the public. It has been dreamt up by the Tory heads of Trafford Council and the Labour heads of Manchester Council behind closed doors. Even Hulme Councillors were not consulted about the plans. Cllr Lee-Ann Igbon was concerned that she had not been consulted about the plans before they were released.

The Council leader Mr Richard Leese said that as only a small amount of the plan was actually in Hulme he didn’t think it was much of an issue. That statement appears to be disingenuous as Mr Leese must have surely read the report which has plans to build hundreds of flats and directly states that existing services such as schools, dentists and doctors’ surgeries would be used by the new residents.

The impact of all these new homes and other developments on transport is also a major concern. There is no plan to deal with the increase in traffic created by these plans. Chester Road, Bridgewater Way A57 are already extremely busy at peak times and a heavily built development on this site will greatly add to this problem. While there is an existing tram stop it is not plausible that this will cater for all the transport needs of the new homes and other planned buildings.

Change is always going to occur and the Hulme Greens are not against that. But we believe that changes to the city should be made with the people, not made behind closed doors with the leaders of other Councils. In addition we will be arguing for new developments to provide affordable homes, social housing with controlled rents, space for small businesses, green spaces, and amenities for the community and be designed to tackle climate change.