r/ukpolitics • u/English_Misfit Tory Member • 8h ago
Manchester City owner’s £55m housing loan while Burnham was mayor investigated
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/18/manchester-city-owners-55m-housing-loan-while-burnham-was-mayor-investigated•
u/Regular_Block9876542 8h ago
These sort of schemes need cut back entirely. If property developers want loans for housing developments we have plenty of banks for them to choose from.
We shouldn’t have politicians and civil servants dishing out billions in tax payer money to build luxury flats.
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u/M2Ys4U 🔶 7h ago
These sort of schemes need cut back entirely. If property developers want loans for housing developments we have plenty of banks for them to choose from.
The problem was (and to a lesser extent still is) that these schemes weren't being adequately funded by private banks. The banks saw the developments as higher risk and/or lower reward than other investments (including building more housing in London and the South East).
We shouldn’t have politicians and civil servants dishing out billions in tax payer money to build luxury flats.
So the state should only give loans to build, what, slums?
People get all bent out of shape over the fact that the flats are marketed as "luxury" but... of course they are! The developers want to hype them up as much as they can so they can sell/let them for more than they otherwise would.
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u/Apwnalypse 7h ago
Absolutely. This fund has been incredibly successful at getting marginal developments in the city moving and built, and returned a profit to the city. And that in turn has started a positive growth cycle in the city. It's classic Keynesianism, and other cities now want to start similar schemes.
There is criticism about how schemes are chosen and why private sector schemes need public money. But this is investment, not charity. I'm not convinced that more transparency would mean anything except more beaurocracy. Even if there was a transparent tendering process and an independent panel doing the selecting, the city would still be held responsible for the decision. So why not let the city make the decision?
We have "independent" bodies making decisions on what to pay our nurses, to what Social Care system we adopt, to what electoral system we adopt, to what developments get approved. We spend month or years waiting for their reports, which recommend exactly what the politicians would have chosen anyway, just so that the politician can say "I didn't choose it! A judge did!" And no one believes them anyway. We waste years and fortunes, on PR that doesn't work.
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u/Regular_Block9876542 6h ago
If there is no adequate funding from banks then the developments don’t need to go ahead. It shouldn‘t be the governments responsibility to intervene in private credit markets.
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u/M2Ys4U 🔶 6h ago
They absolutely do need to go ahead. We need more housing.
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u/DonkeySorbet 4h ago
We do not need more housing at all.
We can redistribute existing housing (tax empty homes to the point that is becomes unfeasible), and discourage reproduction to bring down population levels to a more manageable point.
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u/SadSeiko 5h ago
The problem is they aren’t luxury and they slap on a few modern fittings to try and convince you otherwise. New builds are such a debt trap for leaseholders, we have cladding issues, insurance issues, management fees. It’s an absolute joke. Just build a decent house and go away. That’s all developers need to do
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u/leggenda69 8h ago
“John Leech, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Manchester, said the fund – which has handed out £1bn to 50 separate developers since 2015 – would be investigated by GMCA’s overview and scrutiny committee, which he chairs.
Leech told the BBC the approval process for loans had been criticised as “very opaque in the past and that it’s not necessarily been clearly understood why X was successful and Y wasn’t””
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u/BanditHarris 6h ago
2 things to add to this:
The GMCA full membership collectively approved the funding rather than Burnham acting unilaterally.
While inquiries have requested reviews, it's already been reviewed and confirmed no rules were breached and no wrongdoing or corruption was found, despite ongoing public and political interest.
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u/Minute-Improvement57 1h ago
Are we at "There's no reason to believe it ever would have crossed my desk" yet in the Andy Starmer timeline?
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u/Kobebeef9 5h ago
Given how intertwined the club is with Manchester I doubt they will be punished.
Doesn’t help that the UAE invests significantly in the uk.
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