STOCKPORT, England (Reuters) -The northern English city of Manchester on Thursday launched a 1 billion-pound ($1.31 billion) fund to invest in housing and employment projects, marking a major step in Britain’s process of devolving power to its regions.
The “Good Growth Fund”, the largest of its type, will allocate 400 million pounds in its first wave to projects that the city region hopes will be matched by 1.3 billion pounds of private investment.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said the fund marked the biggest moment for the city since the government’s devolution deal 10 years ago that created city regions with mayors.
Manchester vies with Birmingham for the status of Britain’s second largest city. Inequalities between London and other British cities are some the worst among similar economies, although Manchester’s economy has grown rapidly in recent years.
“Greater Manchester is the UK’s economic success story of the past decade,” Burnham said, adding that the fund would aim to include parts of Manchester that had not felt the gains of the city’s relatively rapid economic expansion.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer plans to devolve more power to Britain’s regions and boost skills training, but Burnham said the northwest was still waiting for long-promised investment.
“The single biggest risk to Greater Manchester’s growth in the next decade and beyond is the lack of commitment to the big rail and road infrastructure that the northwest desperately needs,” Burnham added in a speech in Stockport, a town in the south of Manchester.
With finance minister Rachel Reeves due to present her annual budget next Wednesday, Burnham said the fund would have more firepower with backing from Westminster.
“We are asking other public finance institutions to join (the fund) as investment partners, institutional partners, just as the Greater Manchester pension fund has done,” Burnham said.
($1 = 0.7647 pounds)
(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by Catarina Demony)
