Housing plan for former RAC call centre site

94 properties proposed for 1.03 hectacre Stretford site

Plans to build nearly 100 houses and flats on a site once home to an RAC call centre have been unveiled.

The scheme would see 94 properties built across the 1.03 hectacre Stretford site. They would be a mix of houses and flats, planning documents reveal. All the homes would be classed as ‘affordable’.

The land, off Thomas Street, formed part of the old Stretford Gasworks. After the gasworks closed in the 1960s, it was redeveloped into the Longford Trading Estate.

Plans to create the call centre there were approved in 2000. However, the RAC eventually vacated the land, citing difficulties attracting and retaining staff at the Stretford location as a key reason, according to planning documents. The company relocated its offices to Salford Quays.

The land has stood empty since the building on it was demolished in 2024. Now, developers MCI Developments and JS Hennessey (1999) RBS have put forward plans to bring much of it back into use.

Pre-application discussions with Trafford council considered a much larger scheme. Under those plans, 192 homes would have been built over a 3.4h of land, including additional land to the northwest which the National Grid previously used as a gas holder and depot site.

Council officials raised concerns over the loss of so much employment land, however, and the proposal was scaled back to its current size. The developers said this would allow more employment space to be retained and the site to ‘continue to make an economic contribution’.

They added the ‘cost of remediation’ for the western parcel of land would have ‘rendered the site unviable for residential uses’. The companies consider the delivery of affordable housing sufficient to ‘outweigh’ any ‘adverse impacts’ from the loss of the remaining employment space.

The scheme would see 46 houses and 48 apartments built. These would range from one- and two-bed flats to three- and four-bed town houses. The apartment buildings would be four storeys in height.

Some 94 parking spaces are proposed for residents, with an additional 25 for parking.

Three communal green spaces are also planned. These include a landscaped open space at the edge of the canal, and a space at the centre of the development with ‘rain gardens’ and ‘ornamental tree planting’.

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