Stockport Council and Transport for Greater Manchester, with support from WSP, have been developing the strategic outline business case for the A6 to M60 Relief Road, in order to review the strategic case for the scheme. Grant funding was awarded by the Department for Transport in 2015 to undertake this initial work.
The strategic outline business case is the first phase of the decision making process for any major transport scheme, and is an initial high level assessment of whether a scheme may have strategic benefits.
Further work would be required to develop the full business case for the project if the Council decides to move to the next phase of business case development. The next phase of work – which does not yet have any funding assigned – would include further work on the detail of the scheme and at this stage work would be undertaken to fully assess any environmental impacts. This would also include public consultation on the proposals before any decision is made whether or not to proceed and submit the final business case to government for approval.
The draft strategic outline business case is due for review and comment by the Economy and Regeneration Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 2nd November, and will then be considered by Cabinet on Tuesday 14th November. At that meeting, Cabinet will consider what the next steps for the project should be, and in doing so, will have full regard to the importance of sufficient public involvement and consultation.
Papers for scrutiny meetings are published on the Council’s website 7 days prior to any meeting. However, the Council has published the draft strategic outline business case on the SEMMMS webpage in advance of this, to enable additional time for interested parties to review the document.
The draft strategic outline business case and accompanying technical documents are ‘live’ documents and will need to be kept up to date until they are finally submitted to government. At that point, documents will be finalised and published.