South Macclesfield Development Area

Working on behalf of Engine of the North and TG Ltd, RoC Consulting has been appointed to provide Civil and Geo-environmental Engineering expertise to support the development of the 53ha South Macclesfield Development Area, located on the outskirts of Macclesfield.

This mixed brown and greenfield strategic development site has been allocated by Cheshire East Council as a core site for the development
of 950 homes with associated retail, school, commercial and leisure development as well as the construction of a 1.5km link road.

Earth Sciences division supported the submission of an Outline Planning Application for the site, providing technical guidance and reports for the EIA process. In addition the team completed a programme of ground investigation works across the site to refine their understanding of geological and contaminated land considerations.

Our Civil Engineering team worked collaboratively with the client, local highways officers and other key stakeholders to complete the detailed design of the Link Road and site drainage strategy, which forms a key element of unlocking the site for development.

Ground investigation works revealed the site is underlain by poorly compacted soils up to 5m in depth across roughly 85% of the development footprint which presented a key development consideration and constraint.

In addition the site is bounded by the Dane Moss SSSI raised peat bog which presented a key consideration with respect to any future surface water drainage strategy.

A number of large domestic landfill sites are located both within and immediately adjacent to the site’s boundary which, coupled with the organic rich soils that underlies the site, has the potential to generate ground gasses that could infiltrate the development.

The site is currently served by a series of drainage ditches and is considered as greenfield which has an onerous restriction requirement in terms of surface water discharge.

The drainage strategy needed to address the issues associated with a greenfield run-off rate restriction on surface water discharge while providing a suitable attenuation strategy and allowing a phased delivery of the development land parcels, providing a suitable attenuation strategy and allowing a phased delivery of the development land parcels.

Site investigation works were targeted to assess the severity of ground gas ingress across the site from sources within soils as well as from nearby landfill sites. The results of our monitoring works enabled an assessment of the spatial distribution and severity of ground gasses to be completed and the scope of protective measures within to be defined.
The phased drainage strategy limits commercial requirements of the scheme during its initial delivery stages and eases pressures on cash flow.