Andy Burnham | Manchester Mayor

[bernard o'silver]

Like the club and project, utter bollocks

Edvard Munch says hello

 

[Blue Mist]

Tritax Big Box appear to have acquired the land for the new depot and have the development plans. There are quite a few of these Strategic Rail Freight Interchanges (SRFI) planned around the country. The coalition government in 2011 pushed for them to be developed, so yes it’s a very slow process.

This is why I believe it's all smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the rags, local and national government in the news in a positive way.

2011 was when the govt got behind it but it had been proposed years before that.
I haven't seen any figures that state how much the rail freight relocation would cost. The government would have to pay for that and they haven't got the money.

If that doesn't happen, the rags can't move.

 

[Tim of the Oak]

The Metrolink extension from Didsbury to Stockport is being costed as part of a £1bill business case to the Government for funding.

The total cost of expanding the Metrolink to Stockport could be as high as £1 billion, and a business case is considered a vital step to securing funds for the work.

Loads of adds. It’s a shit website.

Latest on the Metrolink network being expanded to Stockport

Transport bosses have shared a major update.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

FWIW, I heard Andy Burnham on the radio a few months ago saying that they had secured the funds to produce the business case for the tram extension. When Andy B was Secretary of State for Health, he employed copious numbers of management consultants and allocating the business case work appears to have taken a few months.
.

 

[failsworthblueboy]

This is why I believe it's all smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the rags, local and national government in the news in a positive way.

2011 was when the govt got behind it but it had been proposed years before that.
I haven't seen any figures that state how much the rail freight relocation would cost. The government would have to pay for that and they haven't got the money.

If that doesn't happen, the rags can't move.

I've heard the Isle of Capri is free at the moment.

 

[jrb]

FWIW, I heard Andy Burnham on the radio a few months ago saying that they had secured the funds to produce the business case for the tram extension. When Andy B was Secretary of State for Health, he employed copious numbers of management consultants and allocating the business case work appears to have taken a few months.
.

The good thing about Burnham is, he's very close to Starmer and Rayner, especially Rayner. So getting funding for Gtr Manchester projects from the Labour Government shouldn't be a problem for Burnham and Gtr Manchester.

Place North West.

Mayor Andy Burnham described the integrated settlement, which will be paid in the next financial year, as “the biggest step yet” on the city region’s devolution journey.

That Greater Manchester would receive an integrated settlement as part of its trailblazer devolution deal has been known for some time. Today’s announcement from deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is the first time GM bosses have learned how much they will get.

While Greater Manchester will get £630m in 2025/26, and the West Midlands Combined Authority will get £388m.

Greater Manchester to get £630m devo cash from Whitehall - Place North West

Mayor Andy Burnham described the integrated settlement, which will be paid in the next financial year, as “the biggest step yet” on the city region’s devolution journey.

www.placenorthwest.co.uk

 

[pauls]

I've heard the Isle of Capri is free at the moment.

Cayman Islands is ideal so they are hands on with their extra allowances !

 

[Tim of the Oak]

The good thing about Burnham is, he's very close to Starmer and Rayner, especially Rayner. So getting funding for Gtr Manchester projects from the Labour Government shouldn't be a problem for Burnham and Gtr Manchester.

Place North West.

Mayor Andy Burnham described the integrated settlement, which will be paid in the next financial year, as “the biggest step yet” on the city region’s devolution journey.

That Greater Manchester would receive an integrated settlement as part of its trailblazer devolution deal has been known for some time. Today’s announcement from deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is the first time GM bosses have learned how much they will get.

While Greater Manchester will get £630m in 2025/26, and the West Midlands Combined Authority will get £388m.

Greater Manchester to get £630m devo cash from Whitehall - Place North West

Mayor Andy Burnham described the integrated settlement, which will be paid in the next financial year, as “the biggest step yet” on the city region’s devolution journey.

www.placenorthwest.co.uk

Spot on JRB. Andy Burnham is certainly using his contacts to help with obtaining funds.

I like the way he seems to have got more passionate since he was a Minister. I just don’t like Utd getting any money, nor Scousers on match days lol.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

This is why I believe it's all smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the rags, local and national government in the news in a positive way.

2011 was when the govt got behind it but it had been proposed years before that.
I haven't seen any figures that state how much the rail freight relocation would cost. The government would have to pay for that and they haven't got the money.

If that doesn't happen, the rags can't move.

Why would the government have to pay for the relocation? If Parkside is owned and developed by Tritax and TP freight depot is owned by whoever, then Tritax get their income from the rent paid by tenants who move into Parkside. The owner of TP freight depot sells their, now vacant, land to one or more parties. There will of course be incentives from the government to enable the move because it (allegedly) enables better public transport, better freight distribution and creates jobs but not the cost of setting everything up.

 

[cheekybids]

Why would the government have to pay for the relocation? If Parkside is owned and developed by Tritax and TP freight depot is owned by whoever, then Tritax get their income from the rent paid by tenants who move into Parkside. The owner of TP freight depot sells their, now vacant, land to one or more parties. There will of course be incentives from the government to enable the move because it (allegedly) enables better public transport, better freight distribution and creates jobs but not the cost of setting everything up.

They shouldn’t pay for the relocation but wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what is suggested.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

FWIW, I heard Andy Burnham on the radio a few months ago saying that they had secured the funds to produce the business case for the tram extension. When Andy B was Secretary of State for Health, he employed copious numbers of management consultants and allocating the business case work appears to have taken a few months.
.

Probably had the same people rewrite his Wiki profile when it pointed the finger at him for failings in dealing with the Stafford Hospital scandal when he was Health Secretary.

Burnham is a slimy odious character who has done little for Manchester, and just uses the Majors post as a means to get himself in the limelight at any and every opportunity.

 

[BlueSkyBlue]

Who is paying to build the new freight depot at st Helens ?
Who is buying the old freight depot where they want to move to?
Surely it is year's down the line

I've been told by a 'source close to the Freightliner depot' that the lease expires in the next year (can't remember if they said 25 or 26), and that staff have been told about relocation. So, another few hundred local jobs affected....

Not sure when St Helens will be completed.

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Probably had the same people rewrite his Wiki profile when it pointed the finger at him for failings in dealing with the Stafford Hospital scandal when he was Health Secretary.

Burnham is a slimy odious character who has done little for Manchester, and just uses the Majors post as a means to get himself in the limelight at any and every opportunity.

I don’t like Burnham but he’s got potential to do some good things for Manchester (I’m not talking Trafford)

 

[SatOnTheWall]

After I’ve asked several questions on X regarding this proposal and no answers, I hope they don’t think they are gonna ground share with us again

If they pay for last time with compound interest, we’ll consider it. The scrounging twats.

 

[petrusha]

Thanks.

Can you imagine if City bought the Etihad for that price.

That would cause utter meltdown amongst rival fans..

Saying that, City must have invested £400mill-£500mill in the Etihad stadium since the lease began after the Commonwealth Games. And Close to 100mill in rent.

Bang goes the on-going myth that City got a free stadium.

Let's look in detail at the benefits City and their owners have brought to East Manchester since 2002. The conclusion has to be that it's been a vast and transformative investment that must have been beyond the Council's wildest dreams when they hoped that the hosting of the Commonwealth Games would act as a catalyst for regenerating the eastern part of the city. But even ignoring this, it's clear that, in fact, MCFC will end up more than repaying the cost of the Council and lottery funding that enabled the creation of a stadium fit to be the club's home.

My estimate of the rent unless and until we get more accurate figures is around GBP 70 million as at summer 2025 (the response to an FoI request reportedly stated that we paid GBP 14 million in the first eight seasons of occupancy, and I've put it at GBP 4 million annually since the lease was amended in 2011). In addition to that, you have GBP 6 million in cash that the club paid to Manchester City Council when we left Maine Road and GBP 14 million that resulted from MCC's sale of Maine Road (information from another FoI request back in the day).

So we're talking about MCC having received around GBP 90 million from the club. If we paid a further GBP 63 million, that would mean we'd have paid over GBP 150 million to the Council, which is significantly more than Sport England and MCC paid to create the stadium City moved into. But if you bear in mind that Sport England had earmarked GBP 60 million for a 30K capacity temporary venue to be scaled back to a 10K athletics stadium in the event that City didn't move in, we've paid more than double the cost attributable to making the Commonwealth Stadium one to which MCFC would, in practical terms, relocate.

Any reasonable observer would agree that this represents decent value for money for the public purse on those figures alone. But then bear in mind that City have paid for the upkeep/maintenance of the stadium in full, in contrast to West Ham at their stadium, where a publicly owned management company pays those expenses (and posted a loss of GBP 11.5 million in the financial year to March 2023). Then there's the two separate expansion projects funded entirely by MCFC which have ensured that Manchester, through this stadium, will host games in the 2028 Euros, an event which would otherwise have passed our city by.

While we're talking about the stadium, the expanded North Stand, as we all know, will be more than just a stand. It will also encompass the creation of a 3,000-capacity fan zone along with the construction of buildings that will house a 400-bed hotel, commercial office space, a new club shop and a museum. The initiative aims to establish Etihad Stadium as a premier entertainment venue in East Manchester and surely has every chance of succeeding in that objective. But to focus on the stadium alone would be a mistake. The true story is so much wider in scope.

Nearby on the Campus is Co-op Live, the largest indoor arena in Europe by capacity. Built by MCFC's parent company together with a company in which CFG's minority shareholder owns a significant stake, this promises to bring to Manchester a standard of event that in the past has proved beyond the reach of our city. Already we've seen the MTV Europe Music Awards come to the arena, and there'll be plenty more where they came from. For instance, it's recently been touted as a venue for a franchise in the NBA's planned European venture.

The CFA, meanwhile, occupies a site of around 80 acres. Clearly, it was built to benefit the club but City deliberately buckled the trend of remote, our-of-town training facilities. Before the club assumed ownership, this was a noxiously polluted site with regard to which the housebuilding company that had previously acquired the land had decided its intended project wasn't viable in the prevailing economic conditions. Those conditions haven't improved since, so without MCFC you'd still have 80 acres of contaminated post-industrial wasteland sitting undeveloped.

In the vicinity of the CFA, at the Beswick Hub, are various non-MCFC facilities, built to benefit the community with funding from the club provided under various section 106 agreements. They comprise the following: rugby union pitches that enabled the creation of the East Manchester RU Academy; a leisure centre with two swimming pools (which are home to the City of Manchester Water Polo Team and are used as the main training facility for the GB National Water Polo Squad); East Manchester's only sixth-form college, this vast swathe of the city having previously had no sixth-form provision at all; and a sports medicine/sports science institute.

Next to the Etihad Stadium itself are long-established sports facilities such as the Manchester Tennis Centre, the Regional Athletics Arena and the National Squash Centre. MCC funds or contributes to the maintenance of all these facilities, but the money spent for that purpose comes from MCFC's rent for the stadium, which is ringfenced to be spent on sport. Without this, you'd highly likely have seen these facilities go the way of the Don Valley Stadium and Ponds Forge Swimming Pool in Sheffield, both demolished as the local authority couldn't afford the upkeep.

The presence of MCFC and the willingness to invest of the club and its owners, raising the profile of the area, has also been instrumental in allowing the Campus to start to grow, and it's likely to continue to do so in the future. To this end, a development joint venture has been formed, owned 20% by MCC and 80% by MCFC. It reportedly holds around 200 acres of land around the stadium, although that presumably includes areas that have already been developed, such as the CFA. This process is only just beginning, but already some results are clear.

Thus, organisations engaged it sporting governance have based themselves at the Campus. The English Institute of Sport has been on the site for 20-odd years but now it aims to be a hub for all types of professional and amateur sports. The Rugby Football League has relocated its headquarters as a tenant of the new House of Sport Manchester, and nine others are now also there according to its website. Some may be relatively small fry, but all contribute to our city's prestige as a global sporting (as opposed to merely footballing) centre of genuine depth.

And what of the future? The JV will hopefully follow the work on the North Stand by starting to develop the 42-acre Collar Site, next to the East Stand and adjacent to Alan Turing Way. MCC has long proclaimed its intention to work with the club to make the Campus a 24/7 destination, including by creating a "visitor attraction of international significance" on the Collar Site. Whether anything so grand ultimately eventuates, it would seem that the completion of the Co-op Live and North Stand developments make the time right for exciting work to begin on the Collar Site.

It's also worth noting ambitions to develop a part of the Campus as a centre for education in the field of sport. Land to the north west of the Campus, including the former Edwin Road Industrial Estate, was compulsorily purchased by MCC with a view to this area housing a proposed Sport and Innovation Zone. intended to be operated in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University. Unfortunately, MMU then pulled out but I believe there are possibilities involving other educational institutions. I'd love to see this happen, personally.

And finally, we should mention Manchester Life. This is a JV between City's majority shareholder and MCC, and has delivered nearly 1,500 homes in the Ancoats and New Islington areas of the city, with more projects planned for these areas. This isn't in the immediate surrounds of the Campus, but demonstrates the willingness of those in charge at City to invest in Manchester. it's also being crucial in the plans to bridge the gap between the city centre and the Etihad Campus, creating better connectivity with a contiguous built area linking the two rather than an area pockmarked with derelict spaces.

It's hard to argue that the contribution of MCFC's shareholders to the development of our city has been other than highly impressive. Sheikh Mansour is obviously the main figure (though Silver Lake has contributed in terms of the entertainment offer on the Campus in a way which may well be increasingly important as the Collar Site develops). The involvement of MCC with Mansour in Manchester Life is criticised by some, though they mysteriously fall silent when asked how else MCC was supposed to act in a time of austerity with local government finances crippled by swingeing central government cuts.

Now let's run a comparison with the other club to bear our proud city's name. I'm happy to be corrected, but when I look over to the Stretford/Salford border, I'm afraid I discern no sign at all of interest on the part of the United shareholders in playing any role in assisting the regeneration of the area around their club's proposed renovated or new home. The Glazers, moreover, are well known to be a bunch of carpetbaggers interested solely in self-enrichment, while Jim Ratcliffe resides in Monaco so he can escape paying British taxes.

And yet I see one of the above clubs constantly derided in the media, labelled as cheats, their major shareholder's influence since taking over the club oft proclaimed to be malign. The shareholders at the other outfit, in contrast, ask for public money to help build a new stadium at a time of great economic hardship, and press cheerleaders gleefully cite highly dubious pie-in-the-sky fantasy about knock-on benefits to justify shovelling public cash into a project that will, coincidentally, give a colossal boost to the value of the shareholdings of foreign-based billionaires.

In doing so, they parrot the 'Wembley of the North' cliche, ignoring that the comparison can't be apt because this is a club stadium while Wembley is a neutral venue whose entire purpose involves not belonging to a single club. Yet I've so far heard no one challenge this point, or demand scrutiny of decisions on public funding to ensure that taxpayers benefit appropriately. Indeed, the contrasting reactions to the role of these two clubs in regeneration projects almost seem to suggest the media couldn't give a toss what's good for the country. Funny old game, isn't it?

 

[Stiff Little Wingers]

Let's look in detail at the benefits City and their owners have brought to East Manchester since 2002. The conclusion has to be that it's been a vast and transformative investment that must have been beyond the Council's wildest dreams when they hoped that the hosting of the Commonwealth Games would act as a catalyst for regenerating the eastern part of the city. But even ignoring this, it's clear that, in fact, MCFC will end up more than repaying the cost of the Council and lottery funding that enabled the creation of a stadium fit to be the club's home.

My estimate of the rent unless and until we get more accurate figures is around GBP 70 million as at summer 2025 (the response to an FoI request reportedly stated that we paid GBP 14 million in the first eight seasons of occupancy, and I've put it at GBP 4 million annually since the lease was amended in 2011). In addition to that, you have GBP 6 million in cash that the club paid to Manchester City Council when we left Maine Road and GBP 14 million that resulted from MCC's sale of Maine Road (information from another FoI request back in the day).

So we're talking about MCC having received around GBP 90 million from the club. If we paid a further GBP 63 million, that would mean we'd have paid over GBP 150 million to the Council, which is significantly more than Sport England and MCC paid to create the stadium City moved into. But if you bear in mind that Sport England had earmarked GBP 60 million for a 30K capacity temporary venue to be scaled back to a 10K athletics stadium in the event that City didn't move in, we've paid more than double the cost attributable to making the Commonwealth Stadium one to which MCFC would, in practical terms, relocate.

Any reasonable observer would agree that this represents decent value for money for the public purse on those figures alone. But then bear in mind that City have paid for the upkeep/maintenance of the stadium in full, in contrast to West Ham at their stadium, where a publicly owned management company pays those expenses (and posted a loss of GBP 11.5 million in the financial year to March 2023). Then there's the two separate expansion projects funded entirely by MCFC which have ensured that Manchester, through this stadium, will host games in the 2028 Euros, an event which would otherwise have passed our city by.

While we're talking about the stadium, the expanded North Stand, as we all know, will be more than just a stand. It will also encompass the creation of a 3,000-capacity fan zone along with the construction of buildings that will house a 400-bed hotel, commercial office space, a new club shop and a museum. The initiative aims to establish Etihad Stadium as a premier entertainment venue in East Manchester and surely has every chance of succeeding in that objective. But to focus on the stadium alone would be a mistake. The true story is so much wider in scope.

Nearby on the Campus is Co-op Live, the largest indoor arena in Europe by capacity. Built by MCFC's parent company together with a company in which CFG's minority shareholder owns a significant stake, this promises to bring to Manchester a standard of event that in the past has proved beyond the reach of our city. Already we've seen the MTV Europe Music Awards come to the arena, and there'll be plenty more where they came from. For instance, it's recently been touted as a venue for a franchise in the NBA's planned European venture.

The CFA, meanwhile, occupies a site of around 80 acres. Clearly, it was built to benefit the club but City deliberately buckled the trend of remote, our-of-town training facilities. Before the club assumed ownership, this was a noxiously polluted site with regard to which the housebuilding company that had previously acquired the land had decided its intended project wasn't viable in the prevailing economic conditions. Those conditions haven't improved since, so without MCFC you'd still have 80 acres of contaminated post-industrial wasteland sitting undeveloped.

In the vicinity of the CFA, at the Beswick Hub, are various non-MCFC facilities, built to benefit the community with funding from the club provided under various section 106 agreements. They comprise the following: rugby union pitches that enabled the creation of the East Manchester RU Academy; a leisure centre with two swimming pools (which are home to the City of Manchester Water Polo Team and are used as the main training facility for the GB National Water Polo Squad); East Manchester's only sixth-form college, this vast swathe of the city having previously had no sixth-form provision at all; and a sports medicine/sports science institute.

Next to the Etihad Stadium itself are long-established sports facilities such as the Manchester Tennis Centre, the Regional Athletics Arena and the National Squash Centre. MCC funds or contributes to the maintenance of all these facilities, but the money spent for that purpose comes from MCFC's rent for the stadium, which is ringfenced to be spent on sport. Without this, you'd highly likely have seen these facilities go the way of the Don Valley Stadium and Ponds Forge Swimming Pool in Sheffield, both demolished as the local authority couldn't afford the upkeep.

The presence of MCFC and the willingness to invest of the club and its owners, raising the profile of the area, has also been instrumental in allowing the Campus to start to grow, and it's likely to continue to do so in the future. To this end, a development joint venture has been formed, owned 20% by MCC and 80% by MCFC. It reportedly holds around 200 acres of land around the stadium, although that presumably includes areas that have already been developed, such as the CFA. This process is only just beginning, but already some results are clear.

Thus, organisations engaged it sporting governance have based themselves at the Campus. The English Institute of Sport has been on the site for 20-odd years but now it aims to be a hub for all types of professional and amateur sports. The Rugby Football League has relocated its headquarters as a tenant of the new House of Sport Manchester, and nine others are now also there according to its website. Some may be relatively small fry, but all contribute to our city's prestige as a global sporting (as opposed to merely footballing) centre of genuine depth.

And what of the future? The JV will hopefully follow the work on the North Stand by starting to develop the 42-acre Collar Site, next to the East Stand and adjacent to Alan Turing Way. MCC has long proclaimed its intention to work with the club to make the Campus a 24/7 destination, including by creating a "visitor attraction of international significance" on the Collar Site. Whether anything so grand ultimately eventuates, it would seem that the completion of the Co-op Live and North Stand developments make the time right for exciting work to begin on the Collar Site.

It's also worth noting ambitions to develop a part of the Campus as a centre for education in the field of sport. Land to the north west of the Campus, including the former Edwin Road Industrial Estate, was compulsorily purchased by MCC with a view to this area housing a proposed Sport and Innovation Zone. intended to be operated in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University. Unfortunately, MMU then pulled out but I believe there are possibilities involving other educational institutions. I'd love to see this happen, personally.

And finally, we should mention Manchester Life. This is a JV between City's majority shareholder and MCC, and has delivered nearly 1,500 homes in the Ancoats and New Islington areas of the city, with more projects planned for these areas. This isn't in the immediate surrounds of the Campus, but demonstrates the willingness of those in charge at City to invest in Manchester. it's also being crucial in the plans to bridge the gap between the city centre and the Etihad Campus, creating better connectivity with a contiguous built area linking the two rather than an area pockmarked with derelict spaces.

It's hard to argue that the contribution of MCFC's shareholders to the development of our city has been other than highly impressive. Sheikh Mansour is obviously the main figure (though Silver Lake has contributed in terms of the entertainment offer on the Campus in a way which may well be increasingly important as the Collar Site develops). The involvement of MCC with Mansour in Manchester Life is criticised by some, though they mysteriously fall silent when asked how else MCC was supposed to act in a time of austerity with local government finances crippled by swingeing central government cuts.

Now let's run a comparison with the other club to bear our proud city's name. I'm happy to be corrected, but when I look over to the Stretford/Salford border, I'm afraid I discern no sign at all of interest on the part of the United shareholders in playing any role in assisting the regeneration of the area around their club's proposed renovated or new home. The Glazers, moreover, are well known to be a bunch of carpetbaggers interested solely in self-enrichment, while Jim Ratcliffe resides in Monaco so he can escape paying British taxes.

And yet I see one of the above clubs constantly derided in the media, labelled as cheats, their major shareholder's influence since taking over the club oft proclaimed to be malign. The shareholders at the other outfit, in contrast, ask for public money to help build a new stadium at a time of great economic hardship, and press cheerleaders gleefully cite highly dubious pie-in-the-sky fantasy about knock-on benefits to justify shovelling public cash into a project that will, coincidentally, give a colossal boost to the value of the shareholdings of foreign-based billionaires.

In doing so, they parrot the 'Wembley of the North' cliche, ignoring that the comparison can't be apt because this is a club stadium while Wembley is a neutral venue whose entire purpose involves not belonging to a single club. Yet I've so far heard no one challenge this point, or demand scrutiny of decisions on public funding to ensure that taxpayers benefit appropriately. Indeed, the contrasting reactions to the role of these two clubs in regeneration projects almost seem to suggest the media couldn't give a toss what's good for the country. Funny old game, isn't it?

This is an utterly brilliant post. Thank you

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Let's look in detail at the benefits City and their owners have brought to East Manchester since 2002. The conclusion has to be that it's been a vast and transformative investment that must have been beyond the Council's wildest dreams when they hoped that the hosting of the Commonwealth Games would act as a catalyst for regenerating the eastern part of the city. But even ignoring this, it's clear that, in fact, MCFC will end up more than repaying the cost of the Council and lottery funding that enabled the creation of a stadium fit to be the club's home.

My estimate of the rent unless and until we get more accurate figures is around GBP 70 million as at summer 2025 (the response to an FoI request reportedly stated that we paid GBP 14 million in the first eight seasons of occupancy, and I've put it at GBP 4 million annually since the lease was amended in 2011). In addition to that, you have GBP 6 million in cash that the club paid to Manchester City Council when we left Maine Road and GBP 14 million that resulted from MCC's sale of Maine Road (information from another FoI request back in the day).

So we're talking about MCC having received around GBP 90 million from the club. If we paid a further GBP 63 million, that would mean we'd have paid over GBP 150 million to the Council, which is significantly more than Sport England and MCC paid to create the stadium City moved into. But if you bear in mind that Sport England had earmarked GBP 60 million for a 30K capacity temporary venue to be scaled back to a 10K athletics stadium in the event that City didn't move in, we've paid more than double the cost attributable to making the Commonwealth Stadium one to which MCFC would, in practical terms, relocate.

Any reasonable observer would agree that this represents decent value for money for the public purse on those figures alone. But then bear in mind that City have paid for the upkeep/maintenance of the stadium in full, in contrast to West Ham at their stadium, where a publicly owned management company pays those expenses (and posted a loss of GBP 11.5 million in the financial year to March 2023). Then there's the two separate expansion projects funded entirely by MCFC which have ensured that Manchester, through this stadium, will host games in the 2028 Euros, an event which would otherwise have passed our city by.

While we're talking about the stadium, the expanded North Stand, as we all know, will be more than just a stand. It will also encompass the creation of a 3,000-capacity fan zone along with the construction of buildings that will house a 400-bed hotel, commercial office space, a new club shop and a museum. The initiative aims to establish Etihad Stadium as a premier entertainment venue in East Manchester and surely has every chance of succeeding in that objective. But to focus on the stadium alone would be a mistake. The true story is so much wider in scope.

Nearby on the Campus is Co-op Live, the largest indoor arena in Europe by capacity. Built by MCFC's parent company together with a company in which CFG's minority shareholder owns a significant stake, this promises to bring to Manchester a standard of event that in the past has proved beyond the reach of our city. Already we've seen the MTV Europe Music Awards come to the arena, and there'll be plenty more where they came from. For instance, it's recently been touted as a venue for a franchise in the NBA's planned European venture.

The CFA, meanwhile, occupies a site of around 80 acres. Clearly, it was built to benefit the club but City deliberately buckled the trend of remote, our-of-town training facilities. Before the club assumed ownership, this was a noxiously polluted site with regard to which the housebuilding company that had previously acquired the land had decided its intended project wasn't viable in the prevailing economic conditions. Those conditions haven't improved since, so without MCFC you'd still have 80 acres of contaminated post-industrial wasteland sitting undeveloped.

In the vicinity of the CFA, at the Beswick Hub, are various non-MCFC facilities, built to benefit the community with funding from the club provided under various section 106 agreements. They comprise the following: rugby union pitches that enabled the creation of the East Manchester RU Academy; a leisure centre with two swimming pools (which are home to the City of Manchester Water Polo Team and are used as the main training facility for the GB National Water Polo Squad); East Manchester's only sixth-form college, this vast swathe of the city having previously had no sixth-form provision at all; and a sports medicine/sports science institute.

Next to the Etihad Stadium itself are long-established sports facilities such as the Manchester Tennis Centre, the Regional Athletics Arena and the National Squash Centre. MCC funds or contributes to the maintenance of all these facilities, but the money spent for that purpose comes from MCFC's rent for the stadium, which is ringfenced to be spent on sport. Without this, you'd highly likely have seen these facilities go the way of the Don Valley Stadium and Ponds Forge Swimming Pool in Sheffield, both demolished as the local authority couldn't afford the upkeep.

The presence of MCFC and the willingness to invest of the club and its owners, raising the profile of the area, has also been instrumental in allowing the Campus to start to grow, and it's likely to continue to do so in the future. To this end, a development joint venture has been formed, owned 20% by MCC and 80% by MCFC. It reportedly holds around 200 acres of land around the stadium, although that presumably includes areas that have already been developed, such as the CFA. This process is only just beginning, but already some results are clear.

Thus, organisations engaged it sporting governance have based themselves at the Campus. The English Institute of Sport has been on the site for 20-odd years but now it aims to be a hub for all types of professional and amateur sports. The Rugby Football League has relocated its headquarters as a tenant of the new House of Sport Manchester, and nine others are now also there according to its website. Some may be relatively small fry, but all contribute to our city's prestige as a global sporting (as opposed to merely footballing) centre of genuine depth.

And what of the future? The JV will hopefully follow the work on the North Stand by starting to develop the 42-acre Collar Site, next to the East Stand and adjacent to Alan Turing Way. MCC has long proclaimed its intention to work with the club to make the Campus a 24/7 destination, including by creating a "visitor attraction of international significance" on the Collar Site. Whether anything so grand ultimately eventuates, it would seem that the completion of the Co-op Live and North Stand developments make the time right for exciting work to begin on the Collar Site.

It's also worth noting ambitions to develop a part of the Campus as a centre for education in the field of sport. Land to the north west of the Campus, including the former Edwin Road Industrial Estate, was compulsorily purchased by MCC with a view to this area housing a proposed Sport and Innovation Zone. intended to be operated in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University. Unfortunately, MMU then pulled out but I believe there are possibilities involving other educational institutions. I'd love to see this happen, personally.

And finally, we should mention Manchester Life. This is a JV between City's majority shareholder and MCC, and has delivered nearly 1,500 homes in the Ancoats and New Islington areas of the city, with more projects planned for these areas. This isn't in the immediate surrounds of the Campus, but demonstrates the willingness of those in charge at City to invest in Manchester. it's also being crucial in the plans to bridge the gap between the city centre and the Etihad Campus, creating better connectivity with a contiguous built area linking the two rather than an area pockmarked with derelict spaces.

It's hard to argue that the contribution of MCFC's shareholders to the development of our city has been other than highly impressive. Sheikh Mansour is obviously the main figure (though Silver Lake has contributed in terms of the entertainment offer on the Campus in a way which may well be increasingly important as the Collar Site develops). The involvement of MCC with Mansour in Manchester Life is criticised by some, though they mysteriously fall silent when asked how else MCC was supposed to act in a time of austerity with local government finances crippled by swingeing central government cuts.

Now let's run a comparison with the other club to bear our proud city's name. I'm happy to be corrected, but when I look over to the Stretford/Salford border, I'm afraid I discern no sign at all of interest on the part of the United shareholders in playing any role in assisting the regeneration of the area around their club's proposed renovated or new home. The Glazers, moreover, are well known to be a bunch of carpetbaggers interested solely in self-enrichment, while Jim Ratcliffe resides in Monaco so he can escape paying British taxes.

And yet I see one of the above clubs constantly derided in the media, labelled as cheats, their major shareholder's influence since taking over the club oft proclaimed to be malign. The shareholders at the other outfit, in contrast, ask for public money to help build a new stadium at a time of great economic hardship, and press cheerleaders gleefully cite highly dubious pie-in-the-sky fantasy about knock-on benefits to justify shovelling public cash into a project that will, coincidentally, give a colossal boost to the value of the shareholdings of foreign-based billionaires.

In doing so, they parrot the 'Wembley of the North' cliche, ignoring that the comparison can't be apt because this is a club stadium while Wembley is a neutral venue whose entire purpose involves not belonging to a single club. Yet I've so far heard no one challenge this point, or demand scrutiny of decisions on public funding to ensure that taxpayers benefit appropriately. Indeed, the contrasting reactions to the role of these two clubs in regeneration projects almost seem to suggest the media couldn't give a toss what's good for the country. Funny old game, isn't it?

Fantastic as usual Peter (and apologies for misquoting you the other day).

But apart from that, what have the Emiratis done for us?

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

I don’t like Burnham but he’s got potential to do some good things for Manchester (I’m not talking Trafford)

Which are? He has been in the post for eight years and we are still talking about potential?

 

[john blue]

Let's look in detail at the benefits City and their owners have brought to East Manchester since 2002. The conclusion has to be that it's been a vast and transformative investment that must have been beyond the Council's wildest dreams when they hoped that the hosting of the Commonwealth Games would act as a catalyst for regenerating the eastern part of the city. But even ignoring this, it's clear that, in fact, MCFC will end up more than repaying the cost of the Council and lottery funding that enabled the creation of a stadium fit to be the club's home.

My estimate of the rent unless and until we get more accurate figures is around GBP 70 million as at summer 2025 (the response to an FoI request reportedly stated that we paid GBP 14 million in the first eight seasons of occupancy, and I've put it at GBP 4 million annually since the lease was amended in 2011). In addition to that, you have GBP 6 million in cash that the club paid to Manchester City Council when we left Maine Road and GBP 14 million that resulted from MCC's sale of Maine Road (information from another FoI request back in the day).

So we're talking about MCC having received around GBP 90 million from the club. If we paid a further GBP 63 million, that would mean we'd have paid over GBP 150 million to the Council, which is significantly more than Sport England and MCC paid to create the stadium City moved into. But if you bear in mind that Sport England had earmarked GBP 60 million for a 30K capacity temporary venue to be scaled back to a 10K athletics stadium in the event that City didn't move in, we've paid more than double the cost attributable to making the Commonwealth Stadium one to which MCFC would, in practical terms, relocate.

Any reasonable observer would agree that this represents decent value for money for the public purse on those figures alone. But then bear in mind that City have paid for the upkeep/maintenance of the stadium in full, in contrast to West Ham at their stadium, where a publicly owned management company pays those expenses (and posted a loss of GBP 11.5 million in the financial year to March 2023). Then there's the two separate expansion projects funded entirely by MCFC which have ensured that Manchester, through this stadium, will host games in the 2028 Euros, an event which would otherwise have passed our city by.

While we're talking about the stadium, the expanded North Stand, as we all know, will be more than just a stand. It will also encompass the creation of a 3,000-capacity fan zone along with the construction of buildings that will house a 400-bed hotel, commercial office space, a new club shop and a museum. The initiative aims to establish Etihad Stadium as a premier entertainment venue in East Manchester and surely has every chance of succeeding in that objective. But to focus on the stadium alone would be a mistake. The true story is so much wider in scope.

Nearby on the Campus is Co-op Live, the largest indoor arena in Europe by capacity. Built by MCFC's parent company together with a company in which CFG's minority shareholder owns a significant stake, this promises to bring to Manchester a standard of event that in the past has proved beyond the reach of our city. Already we've seen the MTV Europe Music Awards come to the arena, and there'll be plenty more where they came from. For instance, it's recently been touted as a venue for a franchise in the NBA's planned European venture.

The CFA, meanwhile, occupies a site of around 80 acres. Clearly, it was built to benefit the club but City deliberately buckled the trend of remote, our-of-town training facilities. Before the club assumed ownership, this was a noxiously polluted site with regard to which the housebuilding company that had previously acquired the land had decided its intended project wasn't viable in the prevailing economic conditions. Those conditions haven't improved since, so without MCFC you'd still have 80 acres of contaminated post-industrial wasteland sitting undeveloped.

In the vicinity of the CFA, at the Beswick Hub, are various non-MCFC facilities, built to benefit the community with funding from the club provided under various section 106 agreements. They comprise the following: rugby union pitches that enabled the creation of the East Manchester RU Academy; a leisure centre with two swimming pools (which are home to the City of Manchester Water Polo Team and are used as the main training facility for the GB National Water Polo Squad); East Manchester's only sixth-form college, this vast swathe of the city having previously had no sixth-form provision at all; and a sports medicine/sports science institute.

Next to the Etihad Stadium itself are long-established sports facilities such as the Manchester Tennis Centre, the Regional Athletics Arena and the National Squash Centre. MCC funds or contributes to the maintenance of all these facilities, but the money spent for that purpose comes from MCFC's rent for the stadium, which is ringfenced to be spent on sport. Without this, you'd highly likely have seen these facilities go the way of the Don Valley Stadium and Ponds Forge Swimming Pool in Sheffield, both demolished as the local authority couldn't afford the upkeep.

The presence of MCFC and the willingness to invest of the club and its owners, raising the profile of the area, has also been instrumental in allowing the Campus to start to grow, and it's likely to continue to do so in the future. To this end, a development joint venture has been formed, owned 20% by MCC and 80% by MCFC. It reportedly holds around 200 acres of land around the stadium, although that presumably includes areas that have already been developed, such as the CFA. This process is only just beginning, but already some results are clear.

Thus, organisations engaged it sporting governance have based themselves at the Campus. The English Institute of Sport has been on the site for 20-odd years but now it aims to be a hub for all types of professional and amateur sports. The Rugby Football League has relocated its headquarters as a tenant of the new House of Sport Manchester, and nine others are now also there according to its website. Some may be relatively small fry, but all contribute to our city's prestige as a global sporting (as opposed to merely footballing) centre of genuine depth.

And what of the future? The JV will hopefully follow the work on the North Stand by starting to develop the 42-acre Collar Site, next to the East Stand and adjacent to Alan Turing Way. MCC has long proclaimed its intention to work with the club to make the Campus a 24/7 destination, including by creating a "visitor attraction of international significance" on the Collar Site. Whether anything so grand ultimately eventuates, it would seem that the completion of the Co-op Live and North Stand developments make the time right for exciting work to begin on the Collar Site.

It's also worth noting ambitions to develop a part of the Campus as a centre for education in the field of sport. Land to the north west of the Campus, including the former Edwin Road Industrial Estate, was compulsorily purchased by MCC with a view to this area housing a proposed Sport and Innovation Zone. intended to be operated in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University. Unfortunately, MMU then pulled out but I believe there are possibilities involving other educational institutions. I'd love to see this happen, personally.

And finally, we should mention Manchester Life. This is a JV between City's majority shareholder and MCC, and has delivered nearly 1,500 homes in the Ancoats and New Islington areas of the city, with more projects planned for these areas. This isn't in the immediate surrounds of the Campus, but demonstrates the willingness of those in charge at City to invest in Manchester. it's also being crucial in the plans to bridge the gap between the city centre and the Etihad Campus, creating better connectivity with a contiguous built area linking the two rather than an area pockmarked with derelict spaces.

It's hard to argue that the contribution of MCFC's shareholders to the development of our city has been other than highly impressive. Sheikh Mansour is obviously the main figure (though Silver Lake has contributed in terms of the entertainment offer on the Campus in a way which may well be increasingly important as the Collar Site develops). The involvement of MCC with Mansour in Manchester Life is criticised by some, though they mysteriously fall silent when asked how else MCC was supposed to act in a time of austerity with local government finances crippled by swingeing central government cuts.

Now let's run a comparison with the other club to bear our proud city's name. I'm happy to be corrected, but when I look over to the Stretford/Salford border, I'm afraid I discern no sign at all of interest on the part of the United shareholders in playing any role in assisting the regeneration of the area around their club's proposed renovated or new home. The Glazers, moreover, are well known to be a bunch of carpetbaggers interested solely in self-enrichment, while Jim Ratcliffe resides in Monaco so he can escape paying British taxes.

And yet I see one of the above clubs constantly derided in the media, labelled as cheats, their major shareholder's influence since taking over the club oft proclaimed to be malign. The shareholders at the other outfit, in contrast, ask for public money to help build a new stadium at a time of great economic hardship, and press cheerleaders gleefully cite highly dubious pie-in-the-sky fantasy about knock-on benefits to justify shovelling public cash into a project that will, coincidentally, give a colossal boost to the value of the shareholdings of foreign-based billionaires.

In doing so, they parrot the 'Wembley of the North' cliche, ignoring that the comparison can't be apt because this is a club stadium while Wembley is a neutral venue whose entire purpose involves not belonging to a single club. Yet I've so far heard no one challenge this point, or demand scrutiny of decisions on public funding to ensure that taxpayers benefit appropriately. Indeed, the contrasting reactions to the role of these two clubs in regeneration projects almost seem to suggest the media couldn't give a toss what's good for the country. Funny old game, isn't it?

5 STARS, BRILLIANT.

 

[Kirkstall Blue]

He’s had a hard time from the Nth East on X, Burnhams map of the North West. He’s busy telling the N/east moving freightliner to Merseyside will help them.:)

“A fifth of the population of Manchester is on work related benefits” according to the BBC yet Burnham is supporting and helping to relocate, freightliner on to green belt land in St Helens Merseyside helping Liverpool, using tax payers-money to do so.
On the same original two track railway line, long term jobs in Manchester moved to Merseyside we end up with more service industry employment.

 

[Kirkstall Blue]

Probably had the same people rewrite his Wiki profile when it pointed the finger at him for failings in dealing with the Stafford Hospital scandal when he was Health Secretary.

Burnham is a slimy odious character who has done little for Manchester, and just uses the Majors post as a means to get himself in the limelight at any and every opportunity.

The people of Levenshume station are delighted to get step free access, which is nice and an upgrade on Manchesters railway system :)
.