Greater Manchester to launch ambitious Housing Strategy

Plans for every resident in Greater Manchester to have access to a safe, decent and affordable home sit at the heart of an ambitious Greater Manchester Housing Strategy.

The proposal, to be presented to leaders at this month’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) meeting, builds upon Greater Manchester’s Housing Vision, launched in January. Its central aim, to ensure that the housing crisis is addressed by meeting the needs and aspirations of current and future citizens, rests on a ground-breaking collaboration between the public, private, community, voluntary and social enterprise sectors across the city-region.

The strategy contains a commitment to deliver at least 50,000 additional truly affordable homes by 2037, 30,000 of which will be social or affordable rent, by working in partnership with housing providers, local authorities, Homes England and government to maximise investment in new social housing.

The environmental agenda also has a crucial role to play with the residential sector to make an important contribution to Greater Manchester’s bold pledge to become a carbon neutral city-region by 2038. This provoked the commitment for every new build in the city-region to be zero carbon by 2028.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “It is absolutely necessary for everyone to have a good home. We need to make sure we are building more homes and also that we are taking action to raise standards across the city-region so that the needs of all our residents are met.”

“I’ve just recently announced our support for a city region-wide Ethical Lettings Agency, being set up by Greater Manchester’s Housing Providers. We’re also committed to introducing a Good Landlord scheme across the city-region, to be developed by working in partnership with landlords, tenants and others. But we need government behind us too. Their recent announcement of an end to Section 21 notices or ‘no fault evictions’ is very welcome, but we need a clear timetable for that change. In my view it is vital that decent, quality housing is made a right in UK law.”