Cheshire East's transport plan gives Macclesfield's Flowerpot junction £6.882m, none of it before April 2028. Cabinet decides on 3 September.
Cheshire East’s cabinet meets on Thursday 3 September to sign off the transport spending programme it will send to Government, and the largest single item in it for Macclesfield is the Flowerpot junction. The plan allocates the scheme £6.882m. Not a pound of that arrives before April 2028. (Cabinet agenda, 3 September 2026, item 13)
The council’s own programme table splits the money like this:
| Financial year | Flowerpot allocation |
|---|---|
| 2026/27 | £0.000m |
| 2027/28 | £0.000m |
| 2028/29 | £3.482m |
| 2029/30 | £3.400m |
| Four-year total | £6.882m |
Source: Appendix 1, Final Local Transport Delivery Plan. The table also records £3.3m of match funding against the scheme from outside this programme.
The report puts the scheme further forward than the council’s public web page does. It describes the Flowerpot as providing “additional highway capacity, Road Safety improvements and Active Travel measures, identified through the Macclesfield Movement Strategy, to deliver the Planned Local Plan Growth”, and states that it “has been fully designed, and is ready to move forward to the Compulsory Purchase Stage”.
The council’s Flowerpot page, last reviewed on 17 March 2025, still tells residents something different: that the council “is currently exploring options to address the affordability of the full scheme before we can confirm the next steps for delivery”, and that construction is expected to start “sometime between 2026 and 2029”. (Cheshire East Council, Flowerpot Junction Improvement, Macclesfield)
What the scheme actually changes
The published design adds three dedicated turning lanes at the signals:
- a right turn lane out of Ivy Lane into Congleton Road
- a left turn lane out of Park Lane into Congleton Road
- a left turn lane out of Oxford Road into Park Lane
It also reconfigures the crossings. Ivy Lane and Congleton Road get signal-controlled Toucan crossings for pedestrians and cyclists; Oxford Road and Park Lane get Puffin crossings for pedestrians, with a new island on the corner of Oxford Road and Park Lane. The footway around the corner from Congleton Road to Park Lane, and the one outside the Flower Pot pub, are both to be widened to three metres. The gates onto Congleton Road and Park Lane are to be removed to improve access to the open space.
The 30mph limit stays. The council says the junction will be resurfaced and fitted with a new signal control system, and that it has already been negotiating with adjacent landowners for the land it needs.
The allocation has gone down, not up
The figure in front of cabinet is smaller than the one Cheshire East submitted in March. The report lists “Reduced funding for the Flowerpot following a review of projected costs” among the principal capital changes, and the appendix of amendments puts the reduction at £1.118m across the four years.
It is not the only local line that was trimmed. The Knutsford Movement Strategy is down £0.700m over four years, the Poynton to Stockport active travel link is down £0.150m, the Greater Bollin Trail is down £0.150m and the Manchester Road active travel scheme is down £0.200m. (Appendix 2, significant changes from the draft submission)
What else is in it for this side of the borough
| Scheme | Four-year capital | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| The Flowerpot, Macclesfield | £6.882m | Junction capacity, safety and active travel; fully designed, next stage compulsory purchase |
| Knutsford Movement Strategy | £3.950m | Capacity work at two Knutsford junctions, plus an A50 active travel and bus priority study |
| Poynton to Stockport active travel link | £2.550m | New route using capacity released on the old A523 by the Poynton relief road, linking into the Greater Manchester Bee Network |
| Connecting Hurdsfield | £0.900m | A multi-modal access plan for the Hurdsfield employment area |
| Manchester Road active travel, phase 2 | £0.400m | Full resurfacing alongside the active travel measures, following the phase 1 works now on site |
| Greater Bollin Trail | £0.150m | Development costs and the first phase of the trail |
Source: Appendix 1, Final Local Transport Delivery Plan. The Poynton link also carries £0.250m of revenue funding. Knutsford has £2.5m of section 106 money behind it, which the council says it has already collected from developers.
On Hurdsfield, the report is blunt about why it is on the list. The area is “a substantial employment site including nationally significant organisations”, naming AstraZeneca, and it “experiences persistent issues of congestion, severance and disruption”.
Macclesfield also appears in the bus budget. The plan funds “feasibility and implementation work on town-specific ticketing schemes to help transition Macclesfield (Silk Town Ticket) towards a wider promotional fares offer”. The fares and ticketing budget it sits in was cut for 2026/27 from £0.485m to £0.055m, and by £1.1m across the four years.
Where the money comes from
The Department for Transport changed the way it hands out transport money in December 2025, merging separate pots into one consolidated multi-year settlement. The money now goes to the Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority, which passes it on. Cheshire East’s share of capital across 2026/27 to 2029/30 is £169.13m, made up of the Local Transport Grant (£47.15m), the highways maintenance blocks (£77.32m and £28.81m), the Local Bus Grant (£8.36m), the Active Travel Fund (£5.32m) and the electric vehicle fund (£2.17m). Revenue adds £13.37m.
The Combined Authority takes £90,000 a year off the top to cover its own running costs.
The finished plan has to reach Government by 31 October 2026, covering 2027/28 to 2029/30.
What it means for you
Nothing changes on the road this year, and the plan itself does not give any scheme the go-ahead. The report is explicit: the delivery plan “is a strategic planning document and does not itself authorise the delivery of individual schemes”, and projects still need procurement, financial approvals, planning permissions, land acquisition, traffic regulation orders and consultation before anything is built.
If you use the Flowerpot, the practical reading is that the design is done and the money is real, but it is parked in the last two years of the programme. The council has not published traffic management arrangements or any road closure dates, and says it will update its scheme page when it has them.
- Cabinet meets at 10.30am on Thursday 3 September, in Committee Suite 1, 2 and 3 at Delamere House, Delamere Street, Crewe, CW1 2JZ
- The deadline to register to speak, or to submit a question, was midnight on 27 August, so it has passed
- The full agenda and every appendix are published in the agenda reports pack
- Cabinet is being asked to endorse the programme for submission, not to approve construction of anything in it
We will follow what cabinet decides. In the meantime, current closures and diversions are on our Macclesfield roadworks and travel page, and schemes reaching the planning stage are covered in Macclesfield planning news.
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