MIPIM | Coogan outlines regen model to ‘take the foot off the necks of working people’ 

Actor Steve Coogan is proposing a radical new model of regeneration in his hometown of Middleton that provides an antidote to past initiatives that have excluded local people and “sucked the life out” of towns.

Coogan is co-chair of Middleton’s mayoral development corporation alongside Rose Marley, chief executive of Co-operatives UK.

The actor, better known for Alan Partridge than his interest in property, wants to right some of those wrongs of regeneration programmes by taking a grassroots approach built on a bedrock of local consensus.

“It makes sense for development if people are behind it,” he said.

“It will make it easier to do and you’ll get it right as well. You’ll make fewer mistakes, because you won’t have people going, ‘why the hell did they do that?’.”

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Coogan wants the model to “take the foot off the neck of working people” and empower Middleton residents to shape the future of their town, he told Place North West at MIPIM.

“We want to try and keep as much of exchange of goods and services in the town as possible,” he said, illustrating how the vision for Middleton is one rooted in the principles of the Co-operative movement.

“We’re not living in medieval times, but there are examples of that where that works, and in fact, where people can be incentivised.

“Sucking the life out of the town is a big multinational supermarket company that effectively comes in with a trawler and takes all the fish. That’s not fair when other people are fishing.”

Marley picks up the fish analogy to further demonstrate how the regeneration of Middleton might look quite different to other projects in Greater Manchester.

“Look at the skyline of Manchester. You have got these big high rises but actually, with hindsight, we did the fish, we made shiny buildings but where was the fishing rod?”.

To some, the vision may sound idealistic. Developers and funds do not invest for the good of their health; they expect a return on their investment.

But Marley, acknowledging viability challenges, believes there is a balance to be struck between the Middleton vision and and its antithesis, which facilitates “cartels that operate in a way to preserve their own self-interest and squeeze out the little guys” as Coogan puts it.

“We’re expecting trade-offs,” Marley said. “We’re not asking people to invest in unviable projects at all.

“We want to understand how we can make it viable for the people, as well as the developers and the fund managers, because there has to be a solution.”

Marley highlights public sector resource as a potential barrier to realising its Middleton plans.

“The public sector is very time poor,” she said. “They don’t get time to lift the head off the desk.

“So, when you present them with a diverse way of doing things it’s really challenging, because they like to lift and shift.”

Delivering the kind of change Marley and Coogan want in Middleton requires partners in both the public and private sectors to take a long-term view, show imagination, and be willing to engage with the local community in ways they might to have before. “We want to create a blueprint for the country,” Marley said.

Middleton is one of several towns in Greater Manchester to get mayoral development corporation to spearhead regeneration efforts.

The first was Stockport, which is widely held up as an example of how to get regen right, and where Coogan and Marley visited recently.

“We thought it was great,” Coogan said. “We are building on what Stockport did. What can we do to make this even better?”

Like Stockport, Middleton, Coogan believes, has solid fundamentals but “some things have now started to become dysfunctional”.

Coogan’s role as co-chair of the MDC and his appearance at MIPIM have succeeded in getting eyes on the project but its real success will be in convincing developers that the vision is an opportunity rather than a barrier.