Andy Burnham: Why he's mad about Manchester

Andy Burnham doesn’t miss Westminster. In fact, he feels liberated without it.

The Greater Manchester mayor, who spent 16 years on the green benches before being freed by his election in May, now wants to burst the London-centric political bubble in which he made his career.

“I am sick of the old world of point-scoring,” he says. “I am here to make a difference and I want to make a difference as quickly as I possibly can.”

Five months after his election his track record already demonstrates his commitment to change. Actions have included ordering a “radical rewrite” of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework with a new focus on town centres; leading plans to create a “council of the North” to combine political weight in influencing Westminster; and opening a homeless fund to start work towards meeting his pledge to end rough sleeping by 2020.

Has his influence been felt by the property sector? Manchester-based developers say not a lot has changed since Burnham’s election as mayor and Sir Howard Bernstein’s departure as chief executive of Manchester City Council, to be replaced by Joanne Roney.

The team around council leader Sir Richard Leese is broadly the same and a succession strategy which saw Eamonn Boylan take on Sir Howard’s position of chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority means the industry still has an easy access point to policy directors.

One Manchester-based property developer summed it up with: “The king is dead; long live the king”.

However, change is coming. Burnham has promised a “much more interventionist approach” to housebuilding in the region. He says he will use CPO powers to buy out bad landlords, redirect the Manchester housing fund and move away from a developer-led approach to unlocking sites through the spatial framework.

His decision to rewrite the GMSF, drafted by Boylan before his election, has been criticised by the property industry as a measure that will slow down housing delivery, employment growth and infrastructure investment.

“There is a pressing and absolute need for housing to be addressed as an issue now,” says Jeremy Hinds,” head of planning, North, at Savills. “If you want to have a solution that looks at a wider gambit of other goals, that is great and laudable but not at the expense of treating the housing crisis that we face.”

I am sick of the old world of point-scoring. I am here to make a difference and I want to make a difference as quickly as I possibly can.

Burnham argues that the original plan was not “thought through enough”. He thinks housing too often operates in a “silo” and should be seen through the prism of other welfare priorities such as health and employment.

He also objects to releasing land for green belt for development and wants to see a denser housing delivery in town centres.

“To turn around the fortunes of some of these towns is to recognise that they will never be the retail centres that they once were,” Burnham says.

“So I look at Leigh, my former constituency, and it has retail space that we are kind of clinging on to, that then gets filled with low-grade spaces that make the whole place look a bit depressed.

“And I think the difficult thing when you come to town centre regeneration is to recognise that there is quite a lot of redundant retail space that should be taken away. The retail core of those places should be shrunk back, hopefully to a more quality core, and then you free up much more residential space.”

The GMCA is currently reviewing the list of sites identified for development. The next version of the spatial framework will be published in June, says Burnham.

Devolution is central to his new place-based strategy. “I think when you make it [politics] about place rather than party… I think it is even easier then for business to engage because then there isn’t a settlement, unknown agendas, and I think devolution presents that opportunity.”

He adds: “I really do not want it to become a new form of Westminster politics run out of Manchester. We have really got to change things because it is only by changing things that voice will get heard and those old Treasury ways of London can be finally and successfully challenged.”

Burnham’s powers

Local transport plan (with agreement of two-thirds of council leaders)
Devolved transport budget and bus regulation
Control of £300m housing investment fund
Creation of spatial development strategy, with unanimous approval of councils

By “old Treasury ways” he means its tendency to prioritise investment in London transport infrastructure over improving infrastructure in the North of England.

He condemned the government over the summer for its decision to back Crossrail 2 after cancelling rail electrification schemes in the North of England. However, he owns up to the fact that he was the person who made the decision to fund Crossrail 1 in 2007 as chief secretary to the Treasury.

Why did it get through? He explains: “It got through because it can meet something called the BCR, which is what the Department for Transport or the Treasury use when they assess transport schemes.

“What that is, is principally an economic test, not a social value test, and it grades subjects on the extent to which they can add GVA to the country and the economy. So, obviously schemes in London always will score a higher BCR than schemes in the North of England.”

Rail is at the top of Burnham’s Budget 2017 wish list. Investment in an east-west rail connection would also create the most exciting regeneration opportunity for the region, he says.

“We need that basic infrastructure to get us going, and the minute they commit to a proper Crossrail for the North, the development opportunities would open up for us all and those partnerships.

“If we can bring that together and get clarity from government, the potential for Piccadilly would be enormous, and at the airport, in my view.

“I think an HS2 system linked to a modern, east-west system would create vast development potential for Greater Manchester.”

Will his demands be heard in Westminster? Anger about the North-South divide is growing. Geographical divisions within the Labour party took over from political divisions at this week’s party conference in Brighton, where Burnham accused Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour of being too “London-centric”.

With the Conservative Party arriving in Manchester on Sunday to start its own party conference, he will be given another platform to take a stand for a large section of the electorate that feels neglected by the government.

In less than six months Burnham has transformed his image from Westminster politician to “voice of the North”. It couldn’t have come at better time.