History of Trafford Park – Part II

Competition and decline

Whilst the threats to Trafford Park from globalising trade identified by Colonel Stevens were closing in, the initial shocks came from much more local competition. Already, industrial estates were being developed elsewhere as government sought to direct both industrial and regional development through the Distribution of Industry Act (1945) and the Town and Country Planning Act (1947). Consequently, the Estates Company was finding it difficult to encourage industrial development on the Park, especially on so far undeveloped land or on larger, bomb damaged or derelict sites. 

As it had in the past, the Estate Company resisted government and local authority involvement in its business and, together with Slough Trading Estate Ltd., formed the Industrial Estates Association in order to oppose any legislation that damaged the interests of its members. Nonetheless, the decline of the Park had begun as evidenced in the fall in the number of those employed; from 75,000 in 1945 to its pre-War level of around 50,000 in 1965.

Throughout the 1960s, a decade of amalgamation, rationalisation and take-overs that beset industry in the UK more generally, the numbers employed continued to fall reaching 40,000 by 1970 and falling significantly after the early years of the Thatcher government; by 1985, the number employed had reduced by two thirds from its peak, to 24,500. 

As the Park shrank economically so too did the influence of the Trafford Park Estates Company. The considerable investment that it had made in the Park’s infrastructure, particularly in its railways, started to make weaker returns as road transport began its inexorable domination in the 1950s. It had already sold off the houses in the Village in 1948 as profits declined because of rent controls, introduced by the government in war time. 

Decay has its own momentum and it became more widely recognised, including by government, that the Park was facing possible terminal decline although effective action was slow to follow. In 1973, the Village was regarded as slum housing and in 1976, demolition of the first 298 houses began.

It was at this point that the residents, with the help of Manchester Polytechnic, produced a short collection of photographs and recollections about living in the Park, which is almost the only accessible record of almost three generations of families who lived there.

Work to clear the next tranche of 325 houses began in 1979 and in 1981/2, the final 84 houses were demolished, leaving only the parade of shops on Third Avenue – which still stands, providing limited commercial services to those working in the area.

The Development Corporation

The closure of some of the Park’s larger employers during the economic downturn of the 1970s saw the emergence of a number of ‘mini-estates’ on the Park, housing smaller companies. This kind of development which, despite the ‘bust’ which followed the ‘boom’ years of the Heath government, remains a defining characteristic of the Park today where there are many fewer large employers than in previous periods of its history.

In 1981, an area of the Park was awarded ‘Enterprise Zone’ status. This was part of a generally weak central government industrial policy that, in the event, tended to benefit developers and landowners rather than manufacturers and traders (see, e.g., Bond and others, 2013; Chaudhary and others, 2019). By 1983, the limitations of central government policy were becoming clear as far as the regeneration of the Park was concerned and more local initiatives, led by Trafford Metropolitan Borough began to take shape that at least stabilised the decline in economic activity on the Estate.

From these, emerged a recommendation to establish an Urban Development Corporation (UDC). This was formally established in 1987 and included the whole of the Park and the Barton Dock area as well as neighbouring parts of Stretford. The UDC took over responsibility for planning decisions and the management of land and property assets currently owned by local authorities. It also was the conduit for additional central government investment.

The UDC immediately began to address the appearance of the site that had been a cause of considerable local concern since the early 1970s and had been the subject of a damning Civic Trust Report in 1974. As well as general environmental improvements, this resulted in the development of an Ecology Park on the site of the de Trafford family’s ornamental lake which had been used as a site for tipping and had been seriously affected by seepage from the adjoining oil storage depot, owned by the Anglo American Oil. Co. 

The UDC identified Ship Canal Company land at the western end of the Park (Quay West) and developed this as a showpiece site with considerable success, in part fuelled by the credit-led boom of the late 1980s/ early 1990s. The UDC also began the remediation of the transport infrastructure of the Estate, including a direct link to the motorway network. It invested in the development of local skills training and employment on the Park began to increase, despite the downturn in the UK  economy during the early 1990s. Indeed, by the time it came to be wound down, the UDC had secured £1,759M of private investment, levered in by the £202M of public money  and had secured 28,000 new jobs, a net increase in employment in the Park in excess of 10,000 (EKOS and others, 2008 p. 23). 

The undoubted revival in its fortunes during the period of the UDC leads Nicholls in his summary of the first hundred years of the Park to conclude that it was, on the eve of a new millennium, “a place of enterprise and optimism’ (Nicholls, 1996 p. 106). Indeed, with the opening of the Trafford Centre (1998) on land to the west of the Park, the opening of the Imperial War Museum (North) in 2002 and the growth of traffic in and out of Manchester’s Euroterminal to the east, there were grounds for optimism. However, without the central organising principle of the UDC, the Park’s fortunes began to level off in the early 2000s (see Ekos and others, 2008  Fig. 3.20 p 101). In particular, employment density dropped as heavy manufacturing declined sharply as retail, warehousing, and distribution grew and changed the employment profile of the Park. 

Even so, in 2008 (EKOS and others, 2008 p. 14) a detailed economic analysis “revealed a relatively healthy picture for the Park in terms of employment and business numbers, the introduction of new sectors to the Park, the presence of some well established employers and new major employment developments planned for the area”. 

With the advance of the service sector, at the expense of its historic manufacturing role, the infrastructural and other communication needs of the Park present significant challenges for its future, especially in the context of rapid modernisation taking place on its immediate boundaries (e.g. the development of the Media City and elsewhere on ‘Salford Quays’). However, the planning process for the Park has been slow to gather the momentum of the period when it was the responsibility of the UDC. Nothing came of attempts to have the Park  accepted as a Business Neighbourhood Planning Area in 2013 and the Trafford Local Plan (2019) remains at the consultation stage.

The Park now …

Nonetheless, there have been some recent significant investments in the Park, especially the extension of the Manchester Metrolink into the Park but there remains an apparent lack of coherent and cohesive planning for the future of the Park as a whole.

Certainly, to the casual observer, there appears to be a very uneven spread of development. Some of the smaller estates within the Park do seem to be thriving, to judge by new build but some areas, especially the older and larger manufacturing sites seem to be declining rapidly. There is little evidence of the environmental improvements that were key to the success of the UDC in attracting new firms to the area. Certainly in the context of the pale grey glass and blue light of the Salford Quays towers, areas of the Park seem to reflect what Lowry saw rather than the aspirational and futuristic architecture of the Lowry Centre on the opposite side of the Ship Canal.

How far the Park, with its greater emphasis on retail and distribution rather than on manufacture is able to withstand the replacing rather than enabling technologies of the next decades remains to be seen (see Frey, 2019) but there must be doubts.

That is not to ignore Trafford Park’s history or its significance as an engine of the local and national economy; nor to erase the traces of those who have lived and worked there. The Park has reinvented and reconstructed itself many times in the past. It may well do so again.

References:

Bond, S. A., “The Impact of Enterprise Zone Tax Incentives on Local Property Markets in England: Who Actually Benefits?” Journal of Property Research 30.1 (2013): 67-86.

Chaudhary, N. and Potter, N., “Evaluation of the Local Employment Impacts of Enterprise Zones: A Critique.” Urban Studies 56.10 (2019): 2112-159. Web.

Cliff, K. and Southern, P. (2003) Images of England: Trafford Park. Tempus Publishing Ltd., Stroud, UK.

EKOS, CBRE, URBD and WSP (2008) Trafford Park Masterplan Baseline Assessment, EKOS Consulting (UK) Ltd. Manchester

Frey, C.B. (2019) The Technology Trap; Capital, Labor and Power in the Age of Automation. Princeton University Press, Oxford and Princeton, USA.

Nicholls, R. (1996) Trafford Park: The First Hundred Years. Butler and Tanner Ltd., London and Frome.

Russell, D. and Walker, G. (Eds.) (1979) Trafford Park 1896-1939, Manchester Studies, Manchester Polytechnic, UK.

Trafford Park Arts (1992) Third Avenue: Dawn ’til Dusk. Trafford Park Arts, St. Anthony’s Centre, Trafford Park, UK.