Manchester City Council’s full Planning Committee returns and four huge developments are on the table. Co-living towers, some of which breach national guidelines on livable space and two 51 storey skyscrapers with no affordable housing, are to be decided on. Manchester City Council’s Planning Committee sits again on 30 July tasked with signing off on […]
Coronavirus pandemic: housing activists call for more protection for tenants in Greater Manchester
Renters reliant on sick pay are at risk of eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Housing activists in Greater Manchester are calling for more protection for those in the Private Rented Sector affected by the coronavirus and for the homeless to be housed during the crisis. Dismayed at the lack of protection offered to private renters […]
Official figures show a drop in Manchester rough sleeping for first time in years – but are they accurate?
Rough sleeping in Manchester has dropped for the first time in years according to official figures released today, but research carried out by the BBC suggests the official figures underestimate the true scale of the problem five-fold. The rough sleeping count in Manchester has dropped for the first time in six years. In 2018 a […]
Leadership candidates lay out their visions for the future of the Labour Party at Manchester hustings
A lively hustings for Labour Party leadership candidates at Manchester’s Central Convention Complex last night covered a lot of ground including issues around: Brexit, housing, transport, political reform, the environment and antisemitism. The three contenders for the Labour Party leadership, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Keir Starmer, laid out their visions for the future of […]
Sustainable development or mini America – which will Manchester choose?
Andrea Sandor argues why we should use the Netherlands as a sustainable development model for integrated housing and transport, and not the USA. Attending a talk by Transport for New Homes (TfNH) recently I was delighted to discover their strapline is “Sustainable development or mini America”. As someone who grew up in America, I fully […]
Mayor Andy Burnham announces plans to make Greater Manchester a ‘Co-operative Zone’
Making progress on his previous promise to make Greater Manchester “the most co-operative region in the UK” Andy Burnham releases the report to turn that plan into a reality. Mayor Andy Burnham announced plans to turn Greater Manchester (GM) into a designated ‘Co-operative Zone’, with dedicated resources to offer business advice and support for new […]
Proposed Order will ‘create a hostile environment for homeless people’ in Manchester city centre says open letter to the council
Manchester City Council will meet tomorrow to discuss the introduction of a controversial Public Space Protection Order. Fifty eight signatories to an open letter are calling on the council to oppose the proposal, which they claim will be severely detrimental to homeless people within the city centre. An open letter addressed to Manchester City Council […]
Former UN special rapporteur says city development should ‘create landscapes for life, not landscapes for rent’
Professor Raquel Rolnik, a former UN special rapporteur, condemned the financialisation of housing provision in cities across the world, which she says is responsible for rising rents, increasing evictions and homelessness in many countries. Rolnik says neoliberal economic philosophy underpins this radical change in housing provision, which is failing to provide housing to those most […]
Manchester declares a climate emergency: what next?
By Manchester Labour for a Green New Deal: Manchester City Council declared a climate emergency on Wednesday. In following the lead of Parliament, which made history by being the first in the world to declare an emergency on the 1 May 2019, the council add their name to a growing list of public bodies that […]
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 […]