In response to a recent blog post by Sir Richard Leese, we’ve been asking local groups to share their experiences of working Manchester City Council. Sir Richard Leese says the council are open to working with any parties interested in environmental and development issues. The following article by Pete Abel of Manchester Friends of the […]
Food Poverty Action Plan aims to tackle hidden crisis in GM
The latest estimates are that 620,000 people in Greater Manchester are living in poverty, and struggle to put food on the table. Of those, around 200,000 are children experiencing food poverty. £30 billion per year has been cut from welfare budgets since 2010. By 2020, Local councils will have lost 60% of central government funding […]
‘Critical for a liveable, prosperous and sustainable city’: Manchester City Council leader weighs in on bus reform
As public support grows for bus regulation in Greater Manchester, campaigners from Better Buses for Greater Manchester this week have been taking local council leaders for a ride… on a bus. Throughout Better Buses Action Week local residents have been inviting council leaders onto their commutes to convince them to support bus regulation and to […]
10 reasons why the bus companies’ partnership proposals will not ‘revolutionise’ our buses: we need regulation
Why do passengers and staff want a regulated network when £100 million has been offered for the alternative – partnerships? The fact that bus companies are suddenly offering a £100 million partnership package as an alternative to regulation shows just how great re-regulation of our buses is, and how much bus companies will do to […]
Greater Manchester plan for jobs, homes…and the environment?
After several delays the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has published the new draft of its Spatial Framework. The previous version, published in late 2016 met considerable criticism, especially from groups campaigning on green space but also from other quarters, including our own critique of its assumptions of accelerated “economic growth”. On the other side the […]
Is Burnham’s A Bed Every Night scheme enough?
On the first day in his role as mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Andy Burnham pledged 15% of his £110,00 salary (£16,500) to his newly created Mayor’s homelessness fund. He had soared to victory in the election with 63% of the vote on the back of a pledge to end rough sleeping in Greater […]
Bus franchising: a route to cleaner air for Greater Manchester
“Levels of air pollution in Greater Manchester(GM) are lethal and illegal”, states a new analysis by King’s College London, estimating that 1.6 million life years will be lost in GM in the next century due to poisonous air. The equivalent is reducing the life expectancy of all current residents by six months. A recent World […]
Tenants are fighting back against the crisis in private renting
Tenants Union UK and Greater Manchester Housing Action are organising Renters’ Forums across the city to push for a renter-led policy response to the crisis of private renting. We are bringing together a diverse group of renters, policy makers and 3rd sector organisations to re-balance the power between landlords and renters, and give tenants a […]
Greater Manchester’s social and solidarity economy revealed
Transform GM – an action research project looking to understand, map and promote ‘alternative’ economic activity in Greater Manchester (GM) – have just launched a new website mapping the social and solidarity economy (SSE). The SSE is made up of initiatives which prioritise other values over the economic bottom line and, unlike many charities, are […]
Developers are turning our heritage into profit, and we’re paying them for the pleasure of it
Flats at Crusader Works, one of the largest surviving textile mills and new luxury property venture by Capital & Centric where one bedroom apartments are going for heady sums upwards of £189,000, are on sale again. Since the project began the MEN has released a slew of articles gushing about how the development, on Chapeltown […]