IN Brief:
- Trafford Council has finalised the main construction contract with Casey for Longford Park.
- The £6 million programme combines heritage refurbishment, landscape works, sport, play, and public-realm upgrades.
- Mobilisation begins in August, with the main construction programme expected to last around 12 months.
The Casey Group has signed the main construction contract with Trafford Council for the £6 million redevelopment of Longford Park in Stretford, moving the scheme from pre-construction preparation into a 12-month delivery programme.
Casey was appointed earlier this year under a pre-construction arrangement while the council and project team completed design and cost work. The final contract has now been sealed, with mobilisation taking place during August before the principal construction activity begins.
The People, Place and Nature project covers a wide range of interventions across Trafford’s largest municipal park rather than concentrating on a single building. Works include improvements to Pets’ Corner, play areas, gardens, sports facilities, seating, signage, footpaths, landscaping, and public spaces, together with restoration and reuse of retained heritage features.
A central building package is the Long Barn, which will be converted into a more energy-efficient community facility supporting volunteering, training, and skills activity. The scheme will also reinterpret the former footprint of Longford Hall, retaining the site’s historic identity within the redesigned landscape rather than replacing the park with a wholly new composition.
The wider proposals include improvements to tennis and basketball courts, football facilities, cricket, disc golf, and provision for BMX activity. Longford Brook also forms part of the environmental work associated with the masterplan, alongside planting, paths, lighting, seating, and measures intended to improve biodiversity and flood resilience.
More than £3 million has been secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with the balance assembled from Trafford Council and project partners. That funding brings obligations extending beyond physical construction, including community participation, interpretation, volunteering, and long-term use of the restored landscape and buildings.
The contract is therefore a mixed building and landscape programme with interfaces between refurbishment, civils, ecology, public realm, utilities, heritage, and active park operations. Unlike a closed development site, Longford Park will continue to accommodate visitors and existing activities during much of the work, requiring phased closures and separation between construction zones and public routes.
Trafford intends to keep as many facilities open as practicable, although temporary closures will be needed for safety. Logistics and sequencing will consequently be central to delivery, particularly where work affects paths, recreation areas, building access, deliveries, compounds, or sections of the park used by several groups.
Casey’s portfolio spans civil engineering, landscaping, refurbishment, restoration, public realm, and housing. That combination suits Longford Park because the project crosses normal trade boundaries: hard and soft landscaping must be coordinated with structures, drainage, paths, heritage fabric, building services, and recreational infrastructure rather than treated as a final finishing package.
The project has also had a lengthy development period. Main planning proposals advanced in 2023, while Casey’s earlier appointment this year placed the contractor into pre-construction work rather than awarding the full construction package immediately.
The latest agreement is therefore a genuine delivery milestone rather than a repeat of the earlier appointment. Pre-construction allowed the contractor and design team to work through scope, sequencing, buildability, cost, and interfaces before committing to the principal works; sealing the contract now releases the physical programme.
For a £6 million scheme, the number of interfaces is considerable. Public-park projects often contain relatively modest individual packages, but their risk lies in coordination: drainage and earthworks affect landscaping, building refurbishment can expose hidden conditions, ecological constraints influence programme, and public access limits where compounds, plant, and deliveries can operate.
The retained buildings introduce a different set of uncertainties. Refurbishment generally offers less certainty than new construction because existing fabric has to be investigated, repaired, adapted, and connected to modern services and performance requirements without losing the features that justify retention.
The Long Barn conversion will be one of the clearest tests of that balance. Improving energy performance within an existing structure requires insulation, airtightness, ventilation, heating, electrical services, accessibility, fire safety, and durability to be coordinated around the constraints imposed by the building rather than designed freely on an empty site.
Landscape works will proceed alongside those building packages. Paths, drainage, planting, habitat, lighting, seating, sports areas, play provision, and restored structures all have to reach completion as a functioning public estate rather than a collection of independently completed contracts.
The operating park adds another layer. Temporary routes, fencing, site security, deliveries, and public information will have to change as work moves between different parts of the scheme, while the contractor maintains safe separation between construction activity and visitors.
Casey is expected to spend roughly a year on the main programme, taking the works into summer 2027. After several years of planning, consultation, funding, and pre-construction activity, Longford Park is moving into the part of the programme where progress depends on coordination between trades, retained structures, landscape work, public access, and the less photogenic details of day-to-day site delivery.
