Altrincham Town Centre – Project Management

Winner of the Sunday Times Best Places to Live in the UK 2020, and Best Places to Live North West 2021.

“This thriving town has made a top turnaround, with a market that’s beyond compare”

Tim Palmer – Sunday Times.

We provided a traditional Project Management Service to Trafford Council to procure and manage a design team on their behalf to re-design the town centre of Altrincham. Altrincham had suffered a decline in occupancy rates, and the retail market had also suffered in the previous 10 years, which in turn had given a negative perspective of the area to the wider public. It was once universally acknowledged as having the worst high street in Britain.

Our role in Phase 1 and Phase 2 was to provide complete and total Project Management Services to Trafford Council for the redevelopment of the Public Realm within Altrincham Town Centre. We commenced by taking the initial feasibility study and procuring a suitable design team through public procurement (OJEU) to progress the detailed design of both Altrincham.

We carried out the appointment and management of suitable design teams, programme management, brief and change control management, management of public procurement, working with other stakeholders such as One Trafford, Nikal, Citybranch, Novo and their design teams, attending and reporting to Trafford Council senior management teams and delivering a quality design that met the brief.

Following the tender process, we appointed the contractor and managed the project through to completion and provided Trafford Council with a high quality, low maintenance and completely rejuvenated town centre that has transformed the town.

As part of the brief, we developed a series of KPIs such as footfall, vacancy rates, vehicle speed through the town and public perception, against which we could measure the success of the project. We have exceeded and delivered all of these for Trafford Council.

Since completion of the Phase 1 and 2 footfalls have increased, occupancy rates are up, and planning applications are double what they were before works commenced.

Altrincham was also the winner in the Sunday Times’ Best Place to Live in the UK in 2020, And most recently in 2021 Best Place to Live Northwest. Judges described the town as ‘the ultimate turnaround town’, Altrincham was universally acknowledged as having the worst high street in Britain, The Sunday Times explains. Now however, it boasts a revitalised centre with first-class food and drink, a great, friendly community with an ‘unspoken camaraderie’, a thriving outdoor market and two of the best schools in the northwest.