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“More control for local communities over their economic destiny so we will level up wealth and opportunity everywhere," the Chancellor said, delivering his first Budget as thousands of public sector workers took to picket lines across the country.
In what he termed a 'Budget for growth', Jeremy Hunt announced an extension of support for household energy costs, a major expansion of free childcare, a freeze on fuel duty and abolished the lifetime allowance limit on pensions. He also claimed the UK will avoid recession this year.
But this Budget was particularly significant for Greater Manchester. The agreement of a new ‘Trailblazer’ devolution deal will see Andy Burnham handed full control over a single local budget. Mr Hunt says the deal will give the mayor more financial freedom and make the combined authority more like a government department.
It’s been the result of much toing and froing between officials here and in Westminster and though Mr Burnham admits he didn’t get everything he wanted, he describes the deal as a ‘significant breakthrough’. Nevertheless, this new power will come with greater scrutiny with his decisions set to be pored over by committees of local MPs. More on that later.
Our region was also named as one of 12 Investment Zones set to benefit from £80m to invest in skills, infrastructure, tax relief and business rates reduction. The Chancellor announced the second round of transport funding worth £8.8bn over the next five years. And he listed Oldham and Rochdale as areas which could be part of new Levelling Up Partnerships with £400m of funding available.
Dancing to our own tune
After long and very drawn-out negotiations over the Trailblazer deal, Mr Burnham seemed in good spirits today.
Speaking to him after the budget announcement, reporter Joseph Timan asked how this deal differs from the other six devolution deals agreed with Greater Manchester over the years.
"Of all of the devolution deals that we've done so far, this is the most significant,” he said. “The reason I say that is because for the first time Whitehall will be treating us more like Wales or Scotland. We will have a single funding settlement which will give us much greater flexibility.
"We'll be able to do more of what we want to do, rather than dance to the tune of the individual government departments who are often putting lots of conditions on the funding pots that they give out. It's a very significant moment."
So what does this new trailblazer deal mean for Greater Manchester?
Local leaders say this deal is a ‘vote of confidence’ in devolution here. They’ve got what they asked for - mostly. And it means Greater Manchester will be able to create the country’s first integrated technical education city-region through a new partnership with the Department for Education.
The region will also have more influence on regional rail services to deliver the Bee Network by 2030. And as part of work to raise standards in the social and private rented sectors, the region will get £150m of brownfield funding and powers to underpin the new Greater Manchester Good Landlord Charter.
The deal will build on existing responsibilities over transport, business support, employment and skills support, policing, spatial planning, housing investment and health. Mr Burnham hailed it as ‘a new era for English devolution’.
“I have always been a passionate believer in the power of devolution, and I’ve been in the privileged position of being able to exercise those powers and make a positive difference to people’s lives,” he said.
A paradigm shift
So how will these new powers enable Greater Manchester to do things differently?
Mr Burnham this afternoon tried to explain it to Radio 4’s Evan Davis. Using the example of technical education he said the country has long been ‘obsessed’ with the university route.
“We haven’t ever, in my view, done anything to create parity between the university route and the work route and this will give us the ability to do that,” he told PM.
“I want to create the UK’s first integrated technical education system. Where we as a city-region can commission the colleges to provide the number of coding T Levels we need or nursing T Levels we need. That’s a paradigm shift when it comes to technical education.
“That’s an example of us doing something very differently on a very big scale that I think will fix a problem that has long bedevilled the rest of the UK.”
How to haunt a civil servant
When Michael Gove was in Manchester for the Convention of the North earlier this year, he joked that Andy Burnham agreed with him so often it could be 'fatal' for the Labour mayor's career.
He apparently needed no convincing that Greater Manchester should have more devolved powers over things like transport, housing and regeneration.
But at the time, the Levelling Up Secretary pointed to ‘resistance’ within central government to hand over more powers. Mr Gove told host Evan Davis that civil servants in Whitehall are 'haunted' by the need to demonstrate value for money and worry about giving up control but still being blamed for 'wasteful' spending. However, he assured politicians, business leaders and community representatives in the audience that this mindset is 'diminishing in power and influence with every day that passes'.
Not so, it would seem. According to the FT’s Jennifer Williams, the money handed to Mr Burnham and his West Midlands counterpart Andy Street today will come with an added level of scrutiny from committees of local MPs.
Jen reports that the mayors will face ‘quarterly panels of local MPs, similar to the House of Commons public accounts select committee’. It follows heavy lobbying by Conservative MPs in Greater Manchester, as well as pressure from within Whitehall. Presumably from those haunted civil servants.
Mr Burnham says both he and the region’s other leaders have pushed for more accountability arrangements in return for more responsibilities.
It’s perhaps understandable that Tory MPs would want to keep a close eye on how Mr Burnham handles the budget, but what of Conservative mayor Andy Street? Would he have faced such close scrutiny if a Labour mayor wasn’t in power up here?
Draught relief ‘doesn’t go far enough’
Today’s budget also included an increase in the draught relief, a move the Treasury calculated will make alcohol duty 11p lower on pulled pints compared to supermarket sales.
But Greater Manchester’s night time economy adviser, Sacha Lord, says it doesn’t go far enough as the current situation in hospitality ‘continues to be dire’.
"In the face of rising bills, business rates and inflation, operators urgently need ongoing support and the Chancellor's announcements, or lack of them, will only further frustrate and anger the industry," he says.
"By its very nature, hospitality is an industry with higher-than-average gas and electricity usage, and is a sector that has seen incredible economic damage over the past three years.
"It is therefore disappointing that the Chancellor has not announced a delay to the planned decrease in business energy support or any sector-specific package for the industry.
"The tapering off of business energy support from the end of March has been forecasted to add £4.5 billion to bills compared to the current scheme, and simply put, this will place the industry in an unsustainable predicament and create a sinkhole of financial difficulty for venues across the sector."
Mass walkout
Huge crowds of striking workers marched through Manchester city centre this morning.
Members of a number of different unions joined forces for the march down Oxford Road, as Ashlie Blakey reports.
Junior doctors, teachers, civil servants and university staff all set off from Manchester Royal Infirmary at 11am, before marching down Oxford Road, onto Oxford Street and to St Peter's Square.
Many carried posters, banners and placards protesting over pay, jobs, pensions, conditions and cuts. Some bus services had to be halted briefly while the march took place, while traffic was also stopped on the main road.
Workers involved included junior doctors from the British Medical Association, civil servants from the Public and Commercial Services Union, university staff from the University and College Union and teachers from the National Education Union.
This march was just one of hundreds across the country as part of a huge walkout. Up to half a million workers are believed to have taken industrial action today.
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Weather etc
- Thursday: Yellow weather warning of rain. 11C.
- Road closures: A669 Lees Road, Oldham, in both directions closed due to water main work between B6194 Cross Street and Moorhey Street. Until 15th March.
- M67 Eastbound entry slip road closed due to long-term roadworks at J2 St Annes Road (Denton). Until 1st December 2025.
- Trivia question: How many devolution deals has Greater Manchester agreed with the government?
Manchester headlines
- Inquiry: The developer behind plans to build 75 flats at a Tesco car park in Manchester has appealed local councillors' decision to refuse planning permission. The Didsbury development dubbed Blackbird Yard will now be revisited at an inquiry with a government-appointed inspector set to make the final decision. It comes after Manchester council's planning committee voted against the development at the bottom of the Tesco car park off Parrs Wood Lane. More than 200 residents wrote to the local authority raising concerns about the traffic and parking problems that the build-to-rent scheme would cause. More here.
- The best: Mackie Mayor has been voted the best food hall in the UK, beating competition from London, Liverpool and Sheffield. The city centre venue scooped the top spot and was praised for its ‘exceptional’ food by global travel site Big 7 Travel and hospitality specialists Enjoy Travel, who teamed up to find the best food halls in the UK. More here.
- Manc Way closures: A series of night-time closures will take place along the Mancunian Way motorway next week. Lanes will be closed overnight for repairs between 8pm and 5am on March 16, 20 and 21 and on March 27 to 30. To mitigate the disruption to motorists, specialist bridge inspections will take place during the closures as part of routine upkeep, as will gully cleansing and street light repairs.
Seven Sisters: Campaigners have been given fresh hope Rochdale’s landmark ‘Seven Sisters’ flats could be spared demolition after a landlord confirmed it was reviewing all its major projects. Rochdale Boroughwide Housing - which owns the College Bank high rises - has long been planning to drop four of the tower blocks as part of its ‘masterplan’ to regenerate what it calls the ‘town centre area’. But interim chief executive Yvonne Arrowsmith - who took over following the sacking of Gareth Swarbrick - is heading up RBH’s ‘recovery plan’ and this week told councillors the organisation was prioritising its existing stock ahead of building any new homes. She later confirmed that it was ‘currently relooking at all of our of key projects’.
On yer bike: A pilot scheme allowing bicycles on board Metrolink trams across Greater Manchester is being drawn up. The city region's new active travel commissioner, former Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey, has revealed she's working with transport bosses and the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to devise a trial. In a new mission statement on the benefits to all of cycling, walking and wheeling, designed to 'ensure' active travel is 'completely embedded' into a London-style transport system for Greater Manchester, Dame Sarah says a review of current policies surrounding mobility aids on trams is also now underway. More here.
Worth a read
“It's a town of almost 8,000 people. But there's no train station, it's a 35-minute bus ride to the nearest theatre or cinema and even the pubs have closed down,” writes Damon Wilkinson in this piece about the Trafford suburb of Partington.
A charity on the outskirts of town is overseeing the rebirth of a building once dubbed 'Britain's biggest youth club'. Built using a £5m government grant, when it first opened in 2011 the Fuse centre offered a 250-capacity theatre, dance and recording studios, sports hall, café and computer suite. But it closed after just 18 months.
Then Debra Green OBE, director and founder of Redeeming Our Communities, was offered the building rent-free on a 22-year lease to provide some of the facilities and activities Partington badly needed. They’ve been working to do that ever since.
You can read more about it here.
That's all for today
Thanks for joining me. If you have stories you would like us to look into, email beth.abbit@menmedia.co.uk.
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The answer to today's trivia question is: The latest 'Trailblazer' deal is the seventh.
