A vast car park sitting in the middle of a former cotton-manufacturing town in northwestern England has become a symbol of what Britain’s incoming prime minister believes went wrong with decades of development policy — and what he intends to fix.
Andy Burnham, who served as mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until June of this year, is expected to be sworn in as Britain’s seventh prime minister in ten years on Monday, succeeding Keir Starmer. His approach to governing centers on directing public money into housing, transportation, and urban renewal in order to draw in the larger-scale private investment needed to breathe life back into struggling town centers.
Burnham has kept quiet about the specifics of his first 100-day plan or his broader governing agenda. However, Reuters spoke with at least 10 officials, former aides, and people who have worked alongside him, and they point to projects like the town center of Middleton as a blueprint for what he wants to do nationally.
Middleton, a post-industrial town near Manchester, has been described by locals as little more than a “drive through” — bisected by two major roads and dominated by a large car park. Its shopping center is filled with charity and discount stores, well-paying jobs are scarce, and residents feel left behind, according to Rose Marley, a mayoral adviser in Manchester who now serves as co-chair of the Middleton Mayoral Development Corporation, which launched last year.
The regeneration plan for Middleton is still in its early stages, but it envisions the construction of up to 1,200 new homes, new commercial spaces, and investment in green areas to restore a sense of pride to the community, Marley said.
The success or failure of projects like this one carries major political weight for the Labour Party. The populist Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, has been climbing in opinion polls and gaining traction in exactly these kinds of towns, feeding on widespread frustration with the mainstream parties’ inability to improve everyday living standards.
In his first speech after returning to parliament last month, Burnham, 56, said he hoped to foster a more cooperative style of politics — one that puts “place first, not party first.”
That philosophy was already put to the test in the nearby town of Stockport, where a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) renewal effort has transformed abandoned streets into one of the largest town-center redevelopment projects in the country. The historic Underbank area, which was dotted with shuttered storefronts a decade ago, is now thriving again. A new transit hub with a rooftop park is in the works and will link to Manchester’s tram network.
Earlier this month, the Institute for Government think tank held up Stockport — a town of 300,000 residents — as a successful model, noting that 1,500 new homes have been built since 2019, with 200 of those classified as affordable units. The town has set a goal of reaching 8,000 new homes by 2040.
“Collaborative politics is part of the secret sauce,” said Gavin Barwell, who once served as chief of staff to Conservative former prime minister Theresa May and now chairs the Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation. That body has attracted £600 million in private investment, and local authorities report a 40% year-on-year increase in visitors to the town’s shopping center.
In Middleton, Marley said Burnham encouraged her to build support across party lines — and that three local Reform councillors are now actively involved in the project. She hopes to release the findings of a community consultation soon as the team works to secure the private and cooperative funding needed for housing, public spaces, and transit improvements.
According to former advisers and Labour insiders, Burnham’s ambition is to take this model to the rest of the country. They describe the strategy as relying on quicker delivery, bringing in outside experts to sidestep the slower pace of the public sector, and working across party divides.
He faces real constraints, however. To ease concerns in financial markets about government overspending, Burnham has pledged to stick to fiscal rules requiring that day-to-day spending be matched by revenue, as well as Labour’s 2024 promise not to raise taxes on working people. That leaves him with limited room for new spending initiatives.
Burnham argues his approach is about attracting private capital by putting in public money first — rather than waiting for the market to “magically solve the challenges that were left behind in the aftermath of deindustrialisation,” as he has put it.
He points to a decision to publicly fund a residential building alongside Stockport’s new transit hub after the private market deemed it financially unworkable. “Were we going to let the market decide what Stockport could be, or were we going to do that? It has paid dividends already — that development is fully let,” Burnham said in November.
Mark Roberts, the Liberal Democrat leader of Stockport Council, describes the Stockport model as one that goes beyond building for profit. For Middleton, Burnham has said that companies looking to participate must be willing to offer apprenticeships to local young people.
Burnham frequently cites Greater Manchester’s economic track record as evidence that his strategy delivers results. The region’s economy expanded by 17.4% between 2017 and 2023, the fastest growth rate among 46 British sub-regions, well ahead of second-place West England at 13.4%, according to official figures.
Reproducing that growth on a national scale will be far more difficult, analysts say. Greater Manchester benefited from decades of concentrated investment and the gravitational pull of a major city economy, bolstered by universities with strong science and research programs — advantages that rural and coastal parts of Britain simply do not have.
With the next national election three years away, time pressure is also a factor. Starmer lost the support of his own Labour lawmakers in part because he failed to slow the rise of Reform UK, and he was seen as having gotten off to a slow start — losing the confidence of the very business community that Burnham will now need on his side.
The Confederation of British Industry welcomed Burnham’s emphasis on investment outside of London, but cautioned him against adding further to the cost of doing business, which it said was already at a “tipping point.”
“Economic benefits of devolution are unclear, but the costs are tangible,” said JPMorgan economist Allan Monks. “Some transitional costs in the near term appear likely, together with some loss in economies of scale. This could raise spending overall.”
