Eamonn Boylan is very unpopular in some parts of Greater Manchester. The incoming Greater Manchester Combined Authority chief executive has dared to go where many before him have feared to tread – proposing to meddle with the green belt.
As Stockport chief executive and GMCA lead for housing and planning, he oversaw the draft Greater Manchester Spatial Framework – the region’s development strategy for the next 20 years. Now, the week before his promotion, he remains at the centre of a public protest.
“As you’re probably aware, we had a public consultation exercise on a draft framework which has made me very, very unpopular in areas adjoining green belt,” he says. “But we believe that’s a really important statement for us as a city, and also an essential requirement for us to be able to convincingly and coherently manage what will be a very strong growth agenda.”
There’s a lot more work to be done. But much of the public condemnation is likely to shift elsewhere when the first directly elected Greater Manchester mayor is nominated on 4 May. He or she will have the power to define the strategy document, but only with the support of the 10 local authority leaders.
“My role is not to make policy,” Boylan says, dodging a question about whether it will be annoying if the new mayor comes in and rips up all his hard work. “My role is to implement the policy agreed by the political leadership and the accountable leadership of the city region.”
Boylan’s promotion from Stockport chief executive to GMCA chief executive will see him slip into shoes that have been filled part-time by outgoing Manchester City Council chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein. He is one player in a chessboard of power shifts at play in the region, as Bernstein steps down this week to be replaced by former Wakefield chief executive Joanne Roney on Monday.
But will it be Boylan or the new mayor who will take on Bernstein’s role of attracting inward investment into Greater Manchester? “I think the new mayor will give us the capacity to extend and improve our global reach as a city region,” Boylan says, adding that they need to continue Bernstein’s “phenomenal” job at attracting inward investment. “I think if you were to ask Sir Howard, what’s the real priority for us around investment, [he’d say] it’s to continue to generate investment opportunities that are attractive to international investors of that sort.
“So there’s no point in me and the mayor going around the world just waving a flag with Manchester written on it. We really need to work hard to make sure that we’ve got investable propositions that we can take out and have tangible conversations with investors.”
There have been mutterings that Boylan is now the man to speak to on housing and regeneration, having been a key cog in Bernstein’s succession strategy. Does he think Roney will be less involved in housing and development than Bernstein has been?
“I think it is for Joanne to answer that question,” Boylan says. “My sense is that, I cannot do what I need to do at the combined authority level unless the city is absolutely at the peak of its form. And the city needs to be able to drive forward and deliver those things that only the city can do. And so Joanne and I will need to work very closely to make sure that from a city and from a broader city perspective, we’re supporting each other in doing exactly that.”
The new balance of power is likely to take some getting used to for everyone. But Boylan is focused on the opportunities – achieving the GM ambition for 230,000 homes over the next 20 years; unlocking land from the NHS health and social care integration project; and developing “radical” growth strategies for investment around HS2 stations at Piccadilly and Manchester Airport.
He might not be popular amongst all his constituents, but he is singing in tune with the property industry, going as far as to defend MIPIM during our Cannes interview.
“It’s easy to knock MIPIM,” he says. “And as we sit here in the sunshine looking out at the Mediterranean, it’s easy to see why they would knock it, but it does still represent to my mind and to the minds of the Manchester partnership a unique opportunity to get the message across on a global level.” He’s starting to sound like Bernstein already.
Greater Manchester – what’s on the agenda?
Station control
Transport for Greater Manchester made a bid in March on behalf of the GMCA to bring rail stations under local control. If successful, the bid would give the authority oversight on station regeneration. TfGM said: “If approved, over £400m combined from existing funding streams and additional Greater Manchester investment would be invested in local stations over the next two decades, with potential to use related land assets for additional housing commercial development and improved car parking.”
North West Evergreen 2
The £50m fund will be a follow-on to the original £60m Evergreen fund, which has provided debt finance to developments including Allied London’s XYZ Building in Manchester and Peel’s MediaCity in Salford, and is set to unlock assets with a GDV of nearly £1.4bn by 2021.
The new fund, part-funded by the European Union Investment Bank, will be different from its predecessor.
“The operational agreement negotiated between the UK government and the European Commission will mean that Evergreen 2 will be more focused on projects that will deliver tangible low carbon outcomes and will support the development of small and medium enterprises, so it will be slightly less flexible in some respects than we’ve been able to be with Evergreen 1,” Boylan says.
While it is less suited to speculative commercial office developments, Boylan says they will be flexible where possible. “Where those commercial office schemes can demonstrate significant impact in respect of energy performance and low carbon outcomes, will we be creative as we can be? Yes. Where those commercial schemes can be seen to be providing opportunity through flexible working environments that could support SMEs, will we be as flexible as we can be? Yes. But we are constrained, that is a reality.”
GM Spatial Framework
The draft was published in October and recommended 227,200 new homes be built in the next 20 years. Some 28% of the new units would be on green belt land, 12,000 acres of which would be removed from GM’s protected land, equivalent to 8% of green belt in the city region. The consultation that closed this month received 25,000 responses. The publication of the next draft and consultation has been pushed back from the summer to September.
Greater Manchester’s power shift
Then
GM mayor – Tony Lloyd
Manchester City Council chief executive – Sir Howard Bernstein
GM chief executive – Sir Howard Bernstein, part-time
Now
GM mayor – To be elected on May 4
Manchester City Council chief executive – Joanne Roney
GM chief executive – Eamonn Boylan
Greater Manchester mayoral candidates
Sean Anstee – Conservative
Jane Brophy – Liberal Democrat
Andy Burnham – Labour
Stephen Morris – English Democrats
Shneur Odze – UKIP
Will Patterson – Green Party
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