Oliver Cookson, the Manchester entrepreneur who built and sold MyProtein, has secured a revised planning consent for his residential scheme in the city’s New Cross neighbourhood. As Place North West reported, Manchester City Council has updated the approval for the development.
Who Cookson is
The name matters here more than the planning reference. Cookson founded MyProtein from Northwich in 2004 and sold it to The Hut Group in 2011 in a deal that made him one of the North West’s most significant self-made fortunes. He has since put money back into Manchester property through his investment vehicle. This is a Northern founder redeploying Northern money into Northern development, which is rarer than it should be.
Where New Cross sits
New Cross is the patch north east of Manchester city centre, between Ancoats and Collyhurst, that the council has designated for significant residential growth. It has spent decades as the bit you drive through, with fragmented ownership, surface car parks and gap sites. The council’s strategic regeneration framework for the area envisages thousands of new homes, and schemes like this are the mechanism by which that gets delivered plot by plot.
Why revised consents are normal, and worth watching
Developers routinely return to committee to adjust an approved scheme, and it is usually undramatic. Costs move, unit mixes change, a design gets value-engineered. But the direction of the changes tells you something about the market. In a strong market, revisions add height and units. In a tight one, they simplify specification and phasing to make the numbers work with current build costs and lending rates.
The bigger Manchester picture
Manchester’s residential pipeline is the largest outside London, and the question hanging over all of it is deliverability. Consents are not homes. The city has plenty of approved schemes sitting unbuilt because financing is harder than it was, and a permission that lapses is worth nothing to anyone waiting for somewhere to live.
Which is why a founder with his own capital, rather than a developer wholly dependent on debt and forward funding, is a useful participant in a market like this one. Equity that is not in a hurry can build through a cycle where debt-funded schemes stall. New Cross needs a few of those.
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