MIPIM | Continuity is key to GM and Northern growth, says Manchester CEO 

While still finding his feet in the top job at Manchester City Council, Tom Stannard heads to MIPIM today with no intention of deviating from a tried and tested formula for driving growth and attracting investment.

The eve of MIPIM 2025 marks the start of Stannard’s sixth week as the city council’s chief executive. He left Salford City Council after four years to take up the job, which became available when Joanne Roney headed to Birmingham.

Such is Manchester’s recent success in growth terms – the city outperforms its regional rivals on pretty much every metric – Stannard has no plans to move away from the message and approach that has worked so well for so long.

“I won’t make any apology for continuity,” he told Place North West in one of his first interviews since swapping Salford for Manchester.

“One of the things that’s been most successful about us as a Greater Manchester family over the years is that we’ve been a strong and consistent partnership.

“One thing the market looks for, especially in areas of marginal viability where we’ve got challenges on delivering stuff and bringing stuff forward at scale, is managerial, political, and strategic consistency and stability.”

While the “open for business, open for partnership” message Stannard will be pedalling at MIPIM is one he is familiar with from his time within the GM family, he recognises there will be more eyes on him in Cannes in 2025 than in previous years.

“It’s a different kind of pressure and spotlight…because its Manchester,” he said.

“You can’t not be in the spotlight co-leading [with leader Cllr Bev Craig] one of the biggest city economies in the country. I’m up for that, I’m not afraid of that in any way. I think that goes with the territory.”

One factor that will help Manchester’s MIPIM message cut through is the recent change in government and its alignment with the politics of Stannard’s council.

“There is a different political alignment in the UK and there is a necessary focus on growth as being the top mission for the country,” he said.

While championing the various regeneration projects that will define Manchester over the next decade – think Wythenshawe, Strangeways, Holt Town, and the redevelopment of North Manchester General Hospital – will be a key part of Stannard’s raison d’être in Cannes, his position affords him the platform to shape the national narrative, too.

“The rebalancing of investment to support that growth for Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the North of the UK, is a really, really important message,” he said.

“You would not want me to depart from a message about how important the North of England is to the growth of UK PLC. I think it would be madness for anyone to be doing that, quite honestly.”

Greater Manchester is primed to play a starring role in the growth of the North and Manchester is “central to the mission growth” message for the UK, he said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Andy Burnham announced a £10bn pipeline of projects across the city region aimed at delivering much-needed homes and providing space for new businesses to flourish over the next 10 years.

But it is beyond that decade long pipeline where things get really interesting, according to Stannard.

“I take the view that actually the next 10 years is dead exciting; there’s loads of great stuff to go at. But if you think about the next 15 to 20 years, there’s a lot of that that’s not yet predictable.

“If I look back on the 20 years or so I’ve been in the North West and been around Greater Manchester…what has been delivered is completely, stratospherically different [to what was envisioned].”

He added: “When you look at the necessary ingredients for being part of that growth mission, we are absolutely up there in terms of cities that can really pull that off over the medium term.”

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