Greater Manchester is embarking upon an ambitious and transformative new era, says Mayor Andy Burnham: one that is greener, fairer, and more prosperous for everyone living and working here.

Launched in front of a large audience surrounded by plants on a patch of ground that will soon become Manchester’s latest urban park along the banks of the River Medlock and with eight of the ten leaders of Greater Manchester’s borough’s along with its Deputy Mayor, Police Chief and Fire Chief in attendance, Andy Burnham took to the stage setting out the basis for a new era,levelling ourselves up with all parts of the region benefiting

“by being clear and setting our course we are more likely to achieve it and buy into the vision” he tells the audience

Too many people,he said, at the start of the pandemic were forced to carry on working,too many he added found that their home was not a happy place”

So what is being promised?

Greater Manchester will soon become the first city-region where all councils agree to pay the real Living Wage to all those working in adult social care.

By the end of the year, more than half of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs will be paying the real Living Wage, soon to be £9.90 per hour. The remaining boroughs are on track to deliver the same hourly rate for their adult social care staff soon after.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority and all ten councils will only procure from Companies that pay the living wage support the good employment charter and have plans to become carbon neutral

Other pledges include powering the decarbonisation of Greater Manchester through an innovative Retrofit Accelerator and plans for 30,000 new zero carbon homes alongside a new Green Spaces Fund.

Greater Manchester pledges to be carbon neutral by 2038. At a time when residents’ energy bills are rising sharply, the new Retrofit Accelerator will support people to take action to retrofit their homes, making them better insulated, less draughty, and heated sustainably.

The Accelerator forms one part of the work of the wider Retrofit Taskforce, which is already spending £24m on retrofitting homes and has secured £97m to improve public buildings, and a further £19m to spend on social housing via the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.

Alongside the drive to retrofit, Greater Manchester will deliver 30,000 net zero social rented homes by 2038.

The city-region’s response to the twin housing and cost of living crises, the properties will also help to address the challenges of homelessness and rough sleeping.

The region will launch a new fund, with an initial value of £2.6m, to enhance or create new community green spaces.

Through the Green Spaces Fund, small grants will be available for community groups wanting to create new spaces or improve existing ones in their local area.

These might be unused areas that people want to open up for wider access, a community garden, greening a street, creating a parklet.

The Fund will be open for applications in May, and will be run under the existing Greater Manchester Environment Fund, which is already channelling £2m of funding into environmental projects in the city-region.

There will be six new what have been termed Growth Cluster areas,A North East cooridor which includes Atom Valley sitting at the heart of the development of a new industrial base

The Eastern Growth corridor which includes the controversial Godley Green development which will support the regeneration of Hattersley and Hyde

The Airport and Southern Growth region, the Central Growth cluster encompassing Manchester and Salford,The Western Growth cluster which encompasses Trafford and a Wigan and Bolton Growth area

 

 

 

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