Burnham says housing will be major priority for Manchester

Housing will be a key priority for Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, he said as he offered a “sneak preview” of what his city’s “trail blazer” devolution deal will achieve. The metro-mayor (pictured), who alongside West Midlands mayor Andy Street, signed deals with the government to extend devolved powers in their city regions, said that the deal would allow him to focus on “joining the dots” on transport, education and housing. Speaking on a panel at the University of Manchester, hosted by the Institute for Government, Burnham said: “We are now required to blaze a trail. “That means properly fixing the fundamentals for those things that are holding the city back: transport, education and housing.” He added that he was optimistic about the future. “Devolution in England is working,” he said. “It’s place-first politics, from the bottom up. More than that, it is the most successful public policy. There is a sense of direction.” He added: “Whitehall has to let go. They don’t know best. We are at the end of the beginning, and this is where it starts to get really exciting.” But he agreed that the government as a whole needed to get behind the agenda. “At the moment it is just one government department doing a lot of the work,” he said, in a reference to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Speaking on the same panel, Oldham MP Debbie Abrahams was less optimistic, pointing to the fact that the level of funding dished out, either to the mayors or through the various levelling-up funds, was a fraction of what had been cut from local budgets. To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews