Burnham outlines plans for Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester’s leaders have outlined radical plans to ensure the city-region can thrive at a time of national uncertainty, including an affordable homes target of 50,000.

Alongside Deputy Mayors Sir Richard Leese and Bev Hughes and the leaders of Greater Manchester councils, Mayor Andy Burnham set out a series of bold and far-reaching new housing and transport proposals that showcase the region as a ‘confident, ambitious hub which places its people at its heart’, with plans for a minimum target of 50,000 additional affordable homes – 30,000 of which will be social housing - and better use of Greater Manchester’s brownfield sites.

Additionally, in a UK first, Mayoral powers are to be used to regenerate a major town centre, with Burnham set to work with Stockport Council to consult on bringing forward a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) for the town. It is the first time MDC powers have been used to regenerate a town centre.

This is alongside plans for transport links for people to get around the city-region, improvements to the environment to clean up our air and new opportunities for people to access great jobs. Greater Manchester’s 2040 Transport Strategy Delivery Plan sets out all the transport improvements to be implemented by 2025.

Burnham said: “In this time of national social and economic uncertainty, and with politics in Westminster paralysed by Brexit, Greater Manchester is taking the initiative and setting out an innovative blueprint to give people, communities and businesses hope and confidence for the future. When we consulted people on the first spatial framework, the public were clear that we hadn’t got the balance right. We listened, reflected, and can now present a radical re-write as promised. It also lays the foundations for radical reform in other policy areas such as housing, the environment and transport.

“Together, we are harnessing the full power of the most advanced devolution deal of any city-region in England for the benefit of our three million residents. And we are putting together the pieces of the jigsaw to reveal the big picture - a Greater Manchester where prosperity, opportunity, health, hope and happiness are widely and fairly shared across all our people and places.”