Manchesterism beyond Manchester

“What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow,” Benjamin Disraeli reportedly commented in the 1870s.

Nearly 150 years later, that line has acquired a new political relevance. Andy Burnham has entered Downing Street after almost a decade in which Greater Manchester became the most closely watched test case for English devolution. The question is whether the factors behind that success - collaboration across councils, long-term place-based planning and a willingness to align public leadership with private investment - can travel beyond the city-region.

The Government has described No 10 North as the new situation room for growth, bringing local economic growth, devolution strategy and local growth policy together. This approach will make a significant change to the path of planning and development because many development barriers are created by divided responsibility, short funding windows, and conflicting maps, timetables and incentives.

Despite working in Manchester, I’m not a fan of the term ‘Manchesterismsim’, because I believe there is a risk is that it becomes a slogan with little substance attached. If it is treated as a brand to be exported, it will fail. If it is treated as a method - aligning land, infrastructure, housing, skills, investment and accountability at the scale of the real economy - it could be one of the most powerful growth initiatives Britain has seen for some time.

‘Manchesterism’ has entered the national conversation because Greater Manchester’s performance gives it empirical weight. Centre for Cities’ Big Cities Outlook 2026 shows Manchester outperforming the UK on population growth and jobs growth over the past decade, with productivity also improving more quickly than the national average. It records Manchester’s 10-year job growth rate at 19.7%, compared with 13.9% for the UK, and identifies 244,000 knowledge-intensive business services jobs. Centre for Cities has also argued that the UK’s largest cities outside London could add £35bn to national economic output each year if their economic potential were unlocked.

GMCA analysis adds another useful measure: average annual economic growth in Greater Manchester of 3.1% over the past decade - approximately around double the UK rate. These figures do not mean every region should copy Greater Manchester. They suggest that place-based growth, supported by collaboration, infrastructure planning and investor confidence, can shift a regional economy’s trajectory.

A model, not a template

Not every region wants to become a version of Greater Manchester. Manchesterism should be understood as a method rather than a template. As one LocalGov analysis put it bluntly: you can do Manchesterism, but you cannot do Englandism. The aim should be to create more places with the powers, funding and confidence to act for themselves.

Greater Manchester had advantages which not every place can copy: a defined regional centre, major universities, a strong private-sector base, transport opportunities and a long history of collaboration. Devolution worked partly because the city-region collaborated effectively before it received more formal powers.

The first lesson is that devolution cannot be reduced to transferring functions from one tier of government to another: it depends on whether authorities can agree complementary roles, sustain a shared economic direction and make strategic choices without treating every neighbouring area as a competitor.

The delivery test

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act gives this agenda enhanced planning and development powers. It creates strategic authorities, supports spatial development strategies, gives mayors wider powers to intervene in applications of potential strategic importance, extends Mayoral Development Orders and Mayoral Development Corporations, provides for a mayoral community infrastructure levy and confers functions relating to land acquisition and development. It also strengthens the brownfield-first emphasis.

That is a considerable toolkit, but not an outcome. The test is whether these powers make good development easier to bring forward. If they clarify where growth is expected, how infrastructure will be sequenced and who is responsible for constraints, they will be valuable. If they create another layer of bureaucracy, they will not.

Devolution is most valuable when it facilitates the transition from allocation, to investable proposition, to deliverable site. Industrial development may depend on grid capacity, water capacity, highway works, land assembly and a trained workforce. Housing may depend on school places, health provision, utilities, consent and remediation funding. These requirements are rarely controlled by the same organisation. But a mayor with the right powers, funding and political authority can require the relevant bodies to work to a coordinated programme.

Planning at the scale of the economy

This is where the approach taken in Manchester offers most to planning. Businesses, supply chains, labour markets and infrastructure networks do not stop at district boundaries. A city-centre office market, a life-sciences cluster, an advanced-manufacturing campus and a motorway-linked logistics location need different land, buildings, skills and transport. A mature strategic plan should not encourage every authority to chase identical sectors, but help places perform complementary roles.

Greater Manchester’s experience is instructive. Places for Everyone, adopted by nine authorities in 2024, created a long-term plan for jobs, new homes and sustainable growth up to 2039. Greater Manchester’s Integrated Pipeline goes further, bringing together projects intended to support 175,000 homes and five million square metres of employment space over ten years, alongside six growth locations and strategic transport investment. The purpose is sequencing:sequencing, ensuring that land, housing, infrastructure and commercial development work together.

Confidence, housing and infrastructure

Andy Burnham’s economic approach has been described as ‘state-led intervention’ by some and ‘business-friendly pragmatism’ by others. The reality is somewhere in the middle: greater public control over essentials such as transport, combined with collaboration with private investors, business and higher education.

Housing is part of that investment environment. Andy Burnham has proposed the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period, using vacant public land to reduce costs, and has argued for higher-density residential development in towns to support high streets and protect green space.

The case for more council homes is strong, but borrowing, central government grant, land value, materials costs and construction labour will all matter. Various delivery models and tenures, such as the private rented sector and Build to Rent (BTR) will therefore remain part of the answer.

Infrastructure is equally central. The Bee Network made Greater Manchester the first place in England to retake control of buses after nearly 40 years of deregulation, with 577 routes, 1,600 buses and more than 160 million trips a year under local control. It shows how integrated transport can work in large city regions.

The same principle applies to development. As mentioned earlier, new communities and employment locations need energy, water, wastewater capacity, public transport, digital infrastructure and social infrastructure. If devolution is to drive growth, it must align planning, infrastructure and investment from the outset. A spatial development strategy should therefore be an investment prospectus as much as a planning document.

Capacity is the missing word

The danger is that government devolves responsibility faster than it can be managed at a local level. Local government is already under severe financial pressure, and the ongoing local government reorganisation, while creating larger bodies with broader responsibilities, risks weakening established relationships with communities.

Recent commentary has warned that devolution could deepen inequality if new regional authorities adopt a one-size-fits-all approach or lack clear accountability. This could have a significant impact on planning. Public consent depends on whether residents understand the choices being made, whether benefits are visible and whether delivery follows promises. Mayors may be better placed than Whitehall to explain trade-offs, but only if they have planning teams, evidence, funding and delivery partners capable of turning a strategy into outcomes. Otherwise, the country risks an uneven approach to devolution - and therefore to the opportunities for planning and development.

Beyond one city

Andy Burnham’s premiership will test whether devolution can move from local success to national renewal. But I would judge it less by No 10 North than by whether other regions become more investable. The Midlands, the South West, the North East, Yorkshire, the East of England and London all have distinct economic roles. Each needs the ability to plan at the right geography, assemble a credible pipeline, align skills with sectors and secure the infrastructure that growth requires.

If ‘Manchesterism’ is to exist beyond Manchester, it should mean a more polycentric economy, not a Manchester-centric one. It should recognise the economic strengths of different regions - from advanced manufacturing and clean energy to life sciences, logistics, universities, creative industries and professional services - then ask what land, infrastructure and housing are needed to turn those strengths into durable growth.

Andy Burnham may have achieved considerable success in Greater Manchester, but his next challenge is different: to enable the conditions which supported that success to be created elsewhere, or adapted for different circumstances. For planning and development, that means moving on beyond abstract arguments about where power sits and towards a more practical test: deliverable sites, funded infrastructure and investor confidence.