Greater Manchester Combined Authority has allocated another £163m from its Good Growth Fund. As Place North West reported, the money splits into £53m for transport, £25m for innovation and £70m towards 789 homes.
What devolved money buys that grant funding doesn’t
The total matters less than who decided where it goes. A combined authority set these priorities, not Whitehall.
Competitive bidding rounds run from Whitehall reward whoever writes the best bid, on a national timetable, for purposes set in London. A devolved fund lets a city region put £53m into transport and £70m into housing because those are the two things currently holding it back, and it can move that split next year if the constraint changes.
Greater Manchester has been running this model longer than anywhere else outside London, and this is what it looks like when it’s working normally rather than being announced.
The housing number is the one to hold
£70m towards 789 homes works out at roughly £89,000 a home of public money.
That sounds like a lot until you look at what it’s doing. This is gap funding on sites that don’t stack up on their own, mostly brownfield, mostly in places where what the finished homes sell or rent for doesn’t cover what it costs to clean the land and build on it. Without it the sites sit empty, which is what they’ve been doing.
What the published figures don’t give is the tenure split. Whether those 789 homes are social rent, affordable rent, shared ownership or open market changes what the £70m has actually bought, and it’s the question I keep having to ask about Northern housing announcements.
Where the rest goes
The £53m for transport lands alongside the £100m step-free access programme TfGM started at Swinton last month, and a city region steadily pulling rail stations into the Bee Network.
The £25m for innovation is the smallest line and the hardest to judge. Innovation funding is where combined authorities are most tempted to spread money thinly across things that sound good. It’s worth asking what it’s concentrated on.
One scheme already visible in the pipeline is McGoff’s 153-flat build-to-rent tower near the Marble Arch in Manchester, backed by a £27.4m GMCA loan.
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