GM unveils projects to get share of £1bn ‘good growth’ fund
The conversion of the former Kendals department store in Manchester into 450,000 sq ft of office space will get £44m from the fund’s first wave of interventions, which could unlock 3,000 homes and 2m sq ft of workspace through £400m of loans, grants, and equity.
Scroll to the foot of this article for a full list of projects allocated a share of the £400m
The £1bn GM Good Growth Fund, touted as the first of its kind and billed by Mayor Andy Burnham as a “new model of economic growth”, has been established to unlock a £10bn pipeline of potentially transformational projects across the city region.
First reported by Place North West last week, the fund is made up of £420m of loans, £200m of grants via Greater Manchester’s integrated settlement, £200m of GMCA borrowing, and an initial £300m investment from the Greater Manchester Pension Fund.
The fund signals a fresh, local approach to smashing through the viability barrier that national government has failed to achieve.
The first £400m will provide “just enough finance to make projects viable”, according to the combined authority, and keep the city region on a trend-bucking growth trajectory.
“Greater Manchester is the UK’s economic success story of the past decade,” Burnham said.
“Powered by devolution, our journey of growth has transformed our city region and is opening up opportunities that people could not have imagined 30 years ago.
“But we know that the real test of good growth is whether every person and every place feels the benefits.”
Andy Burnham said the fund would pioneer a ‘new model of economic growth’. Credit: PNW
He added: “We’ve never believed in a busted ‘trickle-down’ theory that puts the pursuit of pure economic growth above the basic needs of our communities.
“And growth in Greater Manchester has never been an end in itself – it’s a means of improving lives by creating new opportunities and broadening access to them.
“We know we will only change the fortunes of our people and places by getting on with fixing the things national politics has neglected.
“And it’s why Greater Manchester is ready to pioneer a new model for economic growth – unlocking investment to build new homes, create good jobs, deliver infrastructure, and providing the everyday support that will enable everyone to live a good life.
“Good growth is the defining challenge of our age – and today we are setting out a serious, practical plan to achieve it.”
Stockport 8 will benefit from a big slug of funding. Credit: Our Studio
The winners
Unsurprisingly, Manchester is the big winner in the first wave of projects. Bruntwood SciTech’s Sister innovation campus will get £20m and £34.1m will go towards continued delivery at Victoria North, the 15,000-home scheme being developed by FEC for the city council that could soon be given new town status. The regeneration on Wythenshawe will get £24.5m.
A £44m cash injection for the redevelopment of Kendals on Deansgate is arguably the most eye-catching of the fund’s investments; Investec’s scheme has been stalled for several years but the funding could finally see the project get off the ground.
Cllr Bev Craig, Leader of Manchester City Council, said the fund would “rewire how investment transforms local areas and people’s lives”.
“We know that the past decade has been transformational for Greater Manchester. We’ve attracted record investment, and creating the right environment for businesses to grow, creating jobs and opportunities for our residents, not only becoming the UK’s fastest growing economy but turning the tide on decades of decline.
“Good, inclusive growth means spreading the benefits of growth to all our people and all our boroughs.”
The Prestwich project was approved in 2024. Credit: via Font
Developer Muse has a number of notable projects among the first wave of investments. As well as Wythenshawe Civic, these include Stockport 8 – ECF’s town centre residential scheme – which will get £41.3m and the 336-apartment Adelphi Village in Salford, earmarked for £23.4m.
Two more Muse schemes – the regeneration of Prestwich and the resi-led redevelopment of Oldham – will get a combined £37m.
Cole Waterhouse’s 382-home Trafford Wharf scheme will benefit from £26m, Heaton Group’s Eckersley Village in Wigan will get just shy of £24m, Ashton town centre £7.6m, and £17.1m is heading for Harworth’s 800,000 sq ft Wingates industrial scheme in Bolton.
Paul Dennett, City Mayor of Salford and Greater Manchester’s housing lead said: “From raising standards through the UK’s first Good Landlord Charter, to delivering new genuinely affordable and beautiful net zero homes for our residents, to tackling the urgent and unsustainable temporary accommodation crisis – housing is the cornerstone of a healthy, happy life, and must be at the heart of any serious plan to improve people’s lives and deliver good growth.
“This first £400m from our Good Growth Fund will fuel that effort.”
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority hopes that the fund could leverage £1.3bn of private capital.
Submissions made by developers for support from the GM Growth Fund totaled almost 22,000 homes across 69 schemes with a combined funding ask of £838m. Employment schemes put forward would add 7.7m sq ft to the market across 28 schemes – the total funding ask was £571m. Taken together, the accumulated ask to get these projects off the ground is £1.4bn, outling the scale of the delivery challenge even after the formation of the good growth fund.
Full list of projects supported in the first phase of GM Good Growth Fund allocations
Housing
- Victoria North Manchester – Far East Consortium – £34.1 – 622 homes
- Whitworth Street West Manchester – Glenbrook – £17m – 364 homes
- Postal Street Manchester – This City – £16.3m – 126 homes
- Prince’s Gate Phase 2 Oldham – Muse – £35.1m – 256 homes
- Adelphi Village Salford – English Cities Fund – £23.4m – 336 homes
- Fletcher Street Stockport – Progressive Living/Picture This – 15.0m – 245 homes
- Stockport 8 – Muse – £41.3m – 435 homes
- Trafford Wharf – Cole Waterhouse/Heim Global – £26m – 382 homes
- Cottonworks Block A Wigan – Heaton Group – £14m – 179 homes
Total funding: £222.2m
Total homes: 2,945
Additional housing schemes in Tameside, Stretford, Prestwich, Wythenshawe, Bolton, Rochdale, will get a combined £62.9m – details to be confirmed at a later date.
Employment
- Wingates Bolton – Harworth Group – £17.1m – 800,000 sq ft
- Prestwich town centre – Muse – £6.8m – 34,455 sq ft
- Upper Brook Street Manchester life sciences – Property Alliance Group – £22.1m – 81,354 sq ft
- Kendals Manchester – Kendals Regeneration (Investec) – £44m – 450,000 sq ft
- Mayfield Manchester – Mayfield Partnership – £13m – 92,000 sq ft
- Sister – Bruntwood SciTech/University of Manchester – £20m – 225,000 sq ft
- Mix Manchester – Mix Manchester JV – £7m – 121,000 sq ft
- Ashton strategic town centre acquisitions – Tameside Council – £7.6m – 197,000 sq ft
- Cotton Works Wigan – Heaton Group – £9.9m – 80,000 sq ft
Total funding: £147.5m
Total floorspace: 2m sq ft
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To be applauded. Exemplar leadership and a pathway for other combined authorities to follow.
By Ian Squires
Not a Labour voter but would happily vote Manchester Labour. They have transformed that city the last 30 years. I’m from Liverpool and we all know how abysmal the “leadership” is here.
By Peter
The recent national multiple deprivation figures showed Manchester as still the fifth most deprived local authority area in the country. That’s a shocking stat given the “success” and change in the city centre over 20 years. To say there is “more to do” is an understatement. But if Burnham/GM approach can’t make an impact, who can ..?
By Anonymous
£44m for the office project at Kendals? Did I read this right? How is that on the margins of viability? And it’s not like Manchester has a desperate shortage of office space, even if the pace of starts has slowed recently. And beyond that, the project is simply not very good – that hideous rooftop extension, plus the loss of all that retail space at a time the city centre is seriously struggling to compete with the Trafford Centre. A dreadful use of public money.
By Anonymous
Overall good but yet again Ashton gets the money as always and it never gets better. How about plays like Droylsden which really needs massive investment.
By Dg
Is that a picture of Deansgate pedestrianised? Is this part of the fund? (warmly welcomed!)
By Anonymous
Andy Burnham on BBC again this morning promoting “The North” aka Manchester. Fair play to him he certainly gets his message across
By Trevor
Statistics around deprivation are of course important but what a city should be measured by is opportunity. London has some of the most deprived communities in Britain, yet a ten minute tube ride provides a variety of ways to get on. This is Manchester’s golden future. Of course there will always be poverty and unpleasant statistics but a decent educational offer, guidance into a decent career, is now there for the taking, and it is therefore up to the individuals how they proceed.
By Elephant
Ditto Peter – not a labour voter but have voted Manchester Labour & no regrets.
For GM’s many sins, it’s a ray of sunlight to have at least one corner of the country where things are discernibly, visibly better than they were 15 years ago…
By Anonymous
Say what you want about him, but Burnham gets stuff done
By Anonymous
No endless consultations and 30 year masterplans they just get on with it. National government know this and are happy to work with them. We all know about Burnham but Bev Craig is really impressive.
By Si
You could tie a bow around it and cover it with cream and some people will still whinge. I too am not a Labour voter..nationally anyway..too much fundamentally wrong, but Manchester has had a stellar performance from the failing basket case of only 25 years ago. Still an awful lot to do though but you can feel it happening everywhere from transport to development to growing the economy. It will never happen quickly enough for me, in this country it’s so difficult raising capital and getting infrastructure approved but somehow locally they’ve found a way to make things happen. Long may it continue.
By Alfred Waterhouse
Manchester swimming in government cash.
By Anonymous
£137,000 per home for MUSE in Oldham seems like poor value in comparison to the others. Would be interested to know the specifics that are driving such woeful numbers. As a company in this one announcement they are trousering nearly £100m in public funds in their 3 schemes. They are hardly solving regeneration challenges – but rather organising a project to a point where the taxpayer comes in and gives them cash. The Deloitte / McKinsey of the development and construction world.
By Anonymous
The skyscraper fund has been lucrative for Manchester. There should be an oversight of this fund to ensure this one will be the same.
By Anonymous
What? These big developers offshored in the Channel Islands aren’t just getting better than market value loans but are now getting handouts? Why not give handouts for social housing or other public projects rather than corporate welfarism
By James
More smoke and mirrors from Mr. Burnham. I notice that the fund ‘hopes’ to leverage private capital, when I suspect in reality that it will be plugging large viability gaps.
By Anonymous
Rather than putting such a huge chunk of available funding to another office scheme (also am I right in assuming the Rylands resi-to-office didn’t need public subsidy?) ; why not put the money instead into delivering the desperately needed upgrade of Deansgate from the current unsightly, confused mess of bollards and paint to a proper high quality landscaped boulevard that is depicted in the CGI. That way you’re underpinning private investment and regeneration the whole length of Deansgate rather than a single office scheme of dubious merit.
By Anonymous
Can’t believe people are actually moaning. Manchester is a serious city that is unrecognisable from my childhood. Would you prefer nothing ever happened apart from consultations that never result in anything.
By Mister
England’s huge gap between London and its other major cities comes from centuries of extreme centralisation that concentrated political power, finance, culture, and investment overwhelmingly in the capital. Unlike Germany and France, England offered weak regional governance, underinvested in post-industrial cities, and failed to build strong transport and economic links between them. As a result, London became a global megacity while places like Manchester and Birmingham never received the long-term, strategic support needed to grow into comparable national economic centres. We now have Andy and those before him rolling their sleeves up and addressing this very issue, we should be applauding them.
By mcleod
£400m to lever £1.3 Million private capital. Should that read £1.3 Billion?
By UnaPlanner
Hi UnaPlanner. You are correct. This has now been amended. Thank you. Dan
By Dan Whelan
Brilliant news this will really make a difference to the whole of Greater Manchester. Why on earth Andy Burnham is considering a move back to Westminster is beyond me.
By Anonymous
Fantastic news but they need to start investing in public realm, green spaces and the cyan lines project
By Anonymous
Are there any more images of the rooftop extension to Kendals? I actually quite like the look of this one. Can’t figure out why people are complaining.
By Anonymous
Great news despite the odd (very odd!) perma whingers this is brilliant once again for Manchester.
By Anonymous
Well said mcleod I really don’t understand some of the hate towards Burnham in manchester
By Anonymous
Mcleod, Well said. Political and economic devolution is the answer to many societal “problems” and Greater Manchester is the living proof that it works.
By James Yates
Give Manchester more devolution. It’s clearly doing a better job at looking after itself than Westminster has ever done at looking after the country at large. The less power Westminster politicians have the better. We’d all benefit from Harrow/Eton narcissists having less power over places like northern England. Plus more devolution would protect Manchester from a Reform government.
By Anonymous
100% agree with Mcleod as well. Andy has turned the volume up on the regional/national debate and made huge inroads so many before him have struggled to do. This is all really amazing stuff and great leadership of the GM region.
By D
Pedestrianise Deansgate. Those god awful bike lines can get in the bin!
By Tom
Good point re Muse from Anonymous at 10.34. Glad to see nothing for Peel given their absolutely shocking behaviour on the Romal scheme
By Edward Lyons
Really positive to see Greater Manchester putting serious money behind viability through the new £1bn Good Growth Fund. But if we’re prepared to pump public money into making schemes stack up, shouldn’t we also be investing directly in the capacity of LPAs themselves?
High-quality growth doesn’t happen by accident. It needs in-house urban designers, landscape architects, conservation specialists and place-makers with the confidence and expertise to shape schemes before they hit committee. Without that baseline capacity, we risk funding delivery rather than delivering quality.
Why shouldn’t GM have its own version of the GLA’s Good Growth by Design programme, complete with Mayoral Design Advocates, design review expectations, and a clear regional design agenda? If we’re serious about “good growth”, then investing in the people who safeguard it should be part of the equation.
By Graeme Moore
Is this a loan or a gift from the Taxpayers of Greater Manchester?
By Anonymous
Awful rooftop carbuncle! Sadly this project would have probably taken less public money without it. What profit margin was allowed to qualify grant funding and how much allowed before it has to be paid back? Does the council get a second or third opinion on the appraisal or just take whatever Gary Neville or Muse tell them? The FEC were lauded when they came to Manchester as overseas inward investment yet all they seem to have done is dined out on the public purse? This gravy train needs further analysis and some consideration to what could be done with £1bn instead? Perhaps some genuinely affordable council housing? Although that wouldn’t get burnham to quite as many parties or “DJ Battles” etc. Absolute joke which would be better scrutinised if we weren’t living in a one party City.
By Anonymous