Clive Memmott, Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce outlines priorities for the incoming metro mayor to make their term of office a success.
In 2020, before the then yet-to-be-postponed mayoral elections, I identified three key issues that the newly elected GM mayor would have to focus on if they were to make their term of office a success. Those issues were transport, skills and taxation.
I think it’s safe to say that 12 months on we are in a situation that none of us could have predicted. A hugely changed world and economy, long-standing issues that have been amplified and compounded by Covid-19 and a scale of public intervention that has only ever been equalled during the world wars. Yet those three issues are still valid as focus points for the Greater Manchester Mayor – probably more so as we look to recover and rebuild our health, our economy and our community from both Covid-19 and, increasingly, the effects of Brexit.
With the effective scrapping by Government of its Industrial Strategy it is not clear what effect this will have on the whole devolution and levelling-up agenda. It very much feels like any future devolution will be centrally driven but locally applied which appears to be the policy direction in the recent ‘Skills for Jobs’ white paper.
The next mayor will have to try to avoid being dragged into chasing money at the expense of local needs and priorities. The current competitive nature of local funding bids can be divisive and means that any elected leader will need firm resolve if they are to prioritise critical local needs against central government demands.
This can be reconciled at national and local levels if politicians genuinely want to collaborate. However, endless competitive bidding is probably not the best way to do this. If funding is to be strategically applied to the places with greatest need why does this need to be executed through a competition?
However, that ability to stand up and assert themselves as an elected regional leader with a mandate is needed more than ever. And whilst some may say a more collaborative tone may well be needed in the future it feels increasingly like any future regional or local funding will have to be fought for.
When the first mayoral election took place in 2017 it was seen as the next joined-up phase of Greater Manchester’s political and governance journey, with the mayoral office working in conjunction with the Combined Authority across all of Greater Manchester. However, with landmark policies and strategies such as the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework a victim of local political differences and several local plans seemingly at odds with what is required at a city-region level, the need for uniformity and a single strategic plan for growth has never been greater.
Whilst the mayoralty is coming of age questions still remain over whether local political structures have evolved sufficiently to achieve optimum efficiency and best use of scarce resources. This has also clearly been made more difficult by the recent Government policy referred to above.
The next term for the mayor will be vital in bringing greater uniformity, agreement and moving forward. With the challenges facing its businesses and residents it is vital that Greater Manchester has leadership and a firm direction of travel as an entity.
It is likely the next Greater Manchester Mayor will have a franchised bus network to go alongside control of Metrolink and, with the Government effectively having scrapped private rail franchises, the possibility of a better co-ordinated and controlled public transport system is becoming more of a much-needed reality. This has to be balanced, though, by the acute funding challenge that confronts all public transport systems post-Covid.
This will need to be backed up with a laser-like focus on key infrastructure issues. We are still waiting of the Castlefield Corridor upgrade to allow rail services to run on time through this nationally vital piece of infrastructure. The Government’s current solution is to cut back on services. This is flawed top-down thinking on a grand scale.
HS2 and trans-pennine upgrades are needed but, more than ever, the local links and connections will be vital to get the economy moving again and also allow mobility to access jobs and training. Now is exactly the right time for further investment in our infrastructure both physical and digital.
A Clean Air Zone will be implemented across GM to comply with legal requirements as well as protecting people’s health. We still believe, as we did in 2020, that more Government funding is needed to ensure that the impact doesn’t hit businesses. Doubly important now they are already financially reeling from reduced demand and cashflow impacts of Covid.
Challenges around skills are another example of where Covid-19 has magnified the problems with previously existing issues now being faced with an overlay of increasing very large scale unemployment. Business will have an increasing role to play but not by owning the skills system but influencing it in a way that delivers a workforce with the skills needed for now and the future. The Mayor can and must play a role in helping develop the right conditions including a degree of trust between providers, business and public bodies to make this happen.
Finally, the physical impact on our high streets and city centres cannot be ignored, with the decline of traditional retail sped up by a number of years and the potential for more unused office space. Our city and town centres will have to dramatically repurpose and reconfigure. This will be at the heart of somewhere like Manchester that is heavily reliant on its cultural, hospitality and tourism offer. Without a safe return of visitors and workers the vital heart of a successful city region will be missing. This will need bold and pragmatic leadership and ever more collaboration with all towns and boroughs in Greater Manchester.
The Mayor is an important figurehead for our city region and I remain convinced that most cities and businesses instinctively think that this does help to counterbalance the deeply centralised way that we’ve historically governed our country.
As I have said in this piece we need to understand that local political structures must also evolve to better support and reflect the role of a Mayor and deliver the cohesion and economies of scale that are essential in the post-Covid era where many resources will be insufficient to meet needs. Central Government must turn ‘levelling-up’ rhetoric into a genuine commitment to do this by working with regions with a genuine spirit of collaboration and acceptance that a local approach to local problems is not irreconcilable from common national strategic approaches to some of the huge problems and opportunities facing our country – ‘centrally driven, locally applied’. Elected mayors can be an essential ingredient in making this happen if there is real political will and ambition from both sides.
Clive Memmott is Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
This blog is published as part of an occasional series by guest experts to provide a platform for new ideas in urban policy. While they do not always reflect our views, we consider them an important contribution to the debate.
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