THING OF THE WEEK

MONSTERS… They’re back! The spooky inflatable ghouls of Manchester have returned for another Halloween season. Perched atop buildings throughout the city centre, the monsters are more cute than creepy, but we love them all the same. There are 14 out there this year – have you spotted them all? 

Michael Gove was appointed to lead drive the levelling up agenda last September and again this month. Credit: via Social

GOVE… Guess who’s back, back again, Gove is back, tell a friend. News of Michael Gove’s reappointment as Levelling Up Secretary was widely welcomed by the property community, largely down to the politician’s reputation for ‘getting things done’. Latest Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is assembling his cabinet and clearly sees Gove as an integral part, the hinge perhaps? But whether even the much-lauded Gove has the wherewithal to open the door to growth in the regions remains to be seen. 

Northgate’s F&B units are currently being fitted out. Credit: Place North West

VENI VIDI VORAVI… It has been a good week for Chester. As the long-awaited Northgate prepares to open, the complex has added Turtle Bay to the list of occupiers taking space within the £70m scheme. The arrival of the Caribbean restaurant chain will soften the blow of Tapas Revolution pulling out earlier this year.  

Credit: Cinnabon

BUN FUN… In even sweeter news for the city, Cinnabon, specialists in expanding waistlines and making mouths water, has opened its biggest UK outlet on Northgate Street. Two floors of swirly cinnamon goodness, someone call the doctor.

Credit: Angus Rose

GHOSTS… In this week’s edition of strange surveys you never knew you needed, The Knowledge Academy has spooky North West news to report. After looking into a series of different criteria, the company has concluded that the University of Liverpool is the country’s most haunted higher education establishment. Liverpool John Moores comes in fourth on a list of 59 institutions that The Knowledge Academy crunched the numbers on. But exactly how does one determine how haunted a university is? The survey pulls from a variety of data sets – including how close the uni is to graveyards, how old the campus is, and the number of listed buildings nearby – to generate a final ‘spooky score’.  The boffins at The Knowledge Academy could have saved themselves a lot of time by focusing on just one of the data sets, though: the number of paranormal reports within two miles of any given university. By using only this metric, both Liverpool universities – boasting a combined 41 ghoul sightings – become decidedly less scary and plummet down the rankings. The winner on this front is the University of Exeter, with 59 reports of paranormal activity in and around the campus. Maybe time for an Exeter-orcism.