Manchester Cheshire Networking Event Property

A No Deal Brexit threatens to push housing completions in Manchester down to levels last seen following the financial crash, Manchester City Council’s Strategic Director of Development has warned.

Eddie Smith, speaking at our Manchester and Cheshire Development Plans Conference, said that the authority is ‘pretty scared’ of Brexit.

He said that Manchester’s level of completions had plunged from 5,700 homes per annum in the year before the 2008 financial crash to just over 1,000 for several years afterwards. The number of new homes had flatlined at that level until last year when it had risen to 1,700. It is now set to double to 4,000 in the current year, before climbing again to 6,000 within two years.

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Smith said: “We’re most worried about what will happen beyond 2021. Our forecasting work is now assuming that Brexit will have a significant impact and we see a No Deal Brexit as a massive threat.”

He said another ‘strategic challenge’ facing the authority is the shift in Government focus in securing new housing away from the North.

Smith said that following the Budget the Government is seeking to channel 80% of housing investment into London and the Southern counties, leaving the rest of the country to fight over the remainder. He questioned the Government’s appetite to support Manchester’s plans for 60,000 homes over the next 20 years by providing investment to transform the city’s legacy of Victorian brownfield sites on the fringes of the city centre.

The Northern Gateway initiative, the planned northern extension from Manchester Victoria station, could deliver 15,000 new homes in partnership with the Far Eastern Consortium, with the council seeking to secure investment for the project.

The city is also facing a challenge to deliver two HS2 stations at Piccadilly and Manchester Airport, Smith said: “Birmingham Interchange and Old Oak Common, serving both Birmingham and Heathrow, are being funded by the taxpayer whereas Government is requiring Greater Manchester to pay for the Manchester Airport Station.”

Support for transport investment in Greater Manchester is failing to keep pace with the conurbation’s booming population, he said: “The Government hasn’t woken up to what is happening to the Greater Manchester conurbation. It’s not registering on official statistics yet, and so we are not getting the level of investment we need in the core and periphery of the conurbation that could relieve some of the very significant transport challenges we face. We need a governmental response to a conurbation that is going through the fastest growth trajectory we’ve seen in our lifetimes. We are being treated in a second-class way. We are being sold a pup by Government.”

Smith said that the city’s economy is growing rapidly with new employment inquiries coming in every day on a scale that the council would have ‘killed for’ only ten years ago. These included the prospect of ‘two or three’ more major employers locating in the city following in the recent footsteps of the Hut Group and Amazon.

The University of Manchester’s plans to revamp its campus could deliver big benefits for its worldwide profile, he said: “The University has huge responsibility to get this right. If they do hopefully, the University will be a world top 25 University.”

Smith also highlighted that the Council is working ‘very closely’ with the owners of Manchester City FC on plans to move Manchester Metropolitan University’s sport institute to the club’s stadium in the east of the city.

Andy Davidson, Head of Business Relations at the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, told delegates that the body is launching a business-led campaign to support the case for upgrading the speed and reliability of the north’s east-west train links.

The Northern Powerhouse Rail project is designed to deliver six services an hour between Leeds and Manchester, cutting the journey time between the two cities to under half an hour.

Davidson said: “ The UK needs both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail: we should not have to choose. Businesses in the north need to unite behind the call for it to be delivered and end decades of chronic underinvestment. In London businesses came together to argue the need for Crossrail and we need to do the same in the north.

Davidson illustrated the underinvestment in the north’s infrastructure by pointing to a recent study showing that the region’s transport would have received an extra £63bn over the last ten years if it had received the same per capita per head spending as the south east.

The Acting Chief Executive at Cheshire East Council told the event that HS2 is a ‘game-change’ for his area. Frank Jordan, who is also the unitary authority’s Executive Director for Place, said: “For us it’s not a rail project, it’s a strategic growth project. We don’t want people to move to the north west to get to London more quickly. We want people in the south east to make a strategic decision to relocation to the north west. This can kickstart the next phase of the economic growth in the north west.”

He also said the council is aiming to start on site in 2020 with a new garden village at Handforth for which a strategic plan is being prepared. The council is considering holding onto the land at the site to do a joint venture in order to have more control over the quality and price of housing as well as ensuring a future pipeline of revenues.

Planning consultant Euan Kellie, working on some major developments within the city centre, said that the need to conduct pre-application engagement is greater than at any point in the past 15 years: “Because of political changes and officer changes, the people who oppose schemes have more power than ever.”

Pointing to how schemes in Manchester city centre had has to be changed ‘quite radically’ because feedback from residents was so strong, he said: “If you can’t have affordable housing on site, you will have to display very clearly why you can’t do it.”

Annette McDonald, Deputy Managing Director of the Tatton Group, highlighted progress on two of the Cheshire estate’s proposed development areas.

At Parkgate village, which has outline planning permission for 235 houses, the estate expects full consent by February 2019, and on the Bluebell village site, she said outline consent is expected by January 2019 for up to 250 homes.
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