Focus on the Station Quarter masterplan

COUNCIL chiefs were due to receive an update last night on key regeneration and pedestrian and cycle route plans in Runcorn.

Attention was likely to be focused on the Station Quarter proposals and the development of a ‘masterplan’.

Part of the project’s aim is to make the area around where rail passengers board and alight is more welcoming and draws visitors to the town centre.

The project will depend on the delinking of an approach road loop linking the Bridgewater Expressway with the Silver Jubilee Bridge and its replacement with a junction.

Better signage will also be pursued.

Some hints at what the Station Quarter might look like were previously exclusively revealed by the Weekly News in December in Halton Council’s Runcorn Vision document.

A report published ahead of last night’s environment and urban renewal board meeting said Runcorn’s regeneration goals are being developed by a working party that meets monthly and comprises councillors Bill Woolfall, Mike Fry, Paul Nolan, Pauline Sinnott, Andrea Wall and Geoff Zygadllo.

It added that a commercial road to the port of Weston could be closed off also as it causes a noise nuisance to residents and is no longer needed.

Plans to redevelop the site are reported to be in their ‘early stages’.

The report added that councillors have been ‘broadly content’ with efforts to boost the appeal to companies of Astmoor Industrial Estate, which it said ‘presented a real opportunity to generate some future business rates uplift’.

Other projects considered by the board last night included the Liverpool City Region ‘rights of way improvement plan’ (ROWIP), which is due to replace the borough’s last ROWIP produced in 2009 and is due to be updated every 10 years.

It said the schemes being brought forward in Runcorn are improvements to Bridgewater Canal’s pedestrian and cycle routes, Runcorn East railway station access, ‘sustainable links’ meaning pedestrian and cycle routes alongside the A56 Chester Road to Sci-Tech Daresbury and the ‘Astmoor Business Hub Corridor’.

Halton Council has said the scheme will boost healthy modes of transport and provide better routes for residents with impaired mobility.