{"id":628869,"date":"2025-12-12T19:59:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/628869\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T19:59:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:59:47","slug":"andy-burnham-got-a-letter-this-week-thats-hugely-significant-for-greater-manchester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/628869\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham got a letter this week that’s ‘hugely significant’ for Greater Manchester"},"content":{"rendered":"

“This is a hugely significant outcome for Greater Manchester”Andy Burnham was buoyed by the letter(Image: Jason Roberts \/Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham received a letter this week he believes is \u2018hugely significant\u2019 for Greater Manchester\u2019s \u2018next decade\u2019.<\/p>\n

A buoyant mayor revealed on Friday morning (December 12) the government has formally signed-off on his plans to revolutionise Greater Manchester\u2019s education system and supercharge development in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s extremely good news in terms of laying out that next phase of devolution,\u201d he told a Greater Manchester Combined Authority meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cBacking the MBacc and backing for the Good Growth Fund really sets us up for huge progress in the new year. This is a hugely significant outcome for Greater Manchester. It sets us up for the next decade to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s education plans centre on his \u2018Greater Manchester Baccalaureate\u2019, or MBacc. It creates a new pathway for technical education in the city which is linked to Greater Manchester\u2019s key industries, so teenagers can select the GCSEs, and later B-Tecs or T-levels, necessary to land top jobs without going to university.<\/p>\n

The move was confirmed in a letter from Rachel Reeves and local government minister Steve Reed after lengthy talks. The 3,818 word letter also approved his new \u00a31 billion \u2018Good Growth Fund\u2019 to supercharge development in the city-region.<\/p>\n

Some 30 projects<\/a> were given the go-ahead last week under the fund, with millions more still to be spent. The \u00a31b fund uses \u00a3300m from the controversial housing investment loans fund (HILF), the operation of which was subject to court action earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Competition Appeals Tribunal upheld the HILF was run properly, although the case is set to go to appeal next year. Questions still remain over how the public and politicians will scrutinise millions of pounds of public money going to private developers, Mr Burnham recognised late last month.<\/p>\n

He said at November\u2019s GMCA meeting, when leaders approved creating the fund: \u201cIt opens up the question of what is the oversight mechanism for the Good Growth Fund beyond here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does that look like in relation to this fund? There\u2019s no sense of doing anything other than monitoring as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“This is a hugely significant outcome for Greater Manchester”Andy Burnham was buoyed by the letter(Image: Jason Roberts \/Manchester…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[8916,748,2266,393,4884,11564,2465,29712,285,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-628869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-andy-burnham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-greater-manchester-combined-authority","14":"tag-manchester","15":"tag-manchester-development","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115708378153135953","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}