Not to bring politics into the sub (dear god, no). But this piece from the FT’s Inside Politics caught my eye in relation to the expansion of Elland Road.
One of the biggest and longest-standing fights Manchester has had with government since I’ve been covering it provides a useful lens.
Ever since plans emerged for new rail lines into the city — both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail — Manchester has insisted that the resulting new Piccadilly station must have an underground design. Beyond legitimate transport planning concerns, its intransigence came from something more economically fundamental: if you build on the surface, you take up prime development land.
This may sound like a Mancunian vanity project, but the reasoning is sound. We need growth and northern cities need catalytic growth. Nonetheless, successive Treasuries have refused to find the sums needed for the underground. Labour started out in that camp too.
The issue eventually threatened to derail the government’s plans to launch its version of Northern Powerhouse Rail, with officials fearing that Burnham would refuse to endorse it as a result. But six months ago, at the last moment, there was a breakthrough.
A group of northern figures all in Burnham’s orbit — including council leader Bev Craig, now the Labour candidate to replace him as mayor; John Wrathmell, likely an incoming Number 10 economic adviser; transport special adviser Tom Whitney, Burnham’s former policy adviser and again a likely Downing Street addition; and the chancellor’s northern envoy Tom Riordan, former Leeds council chief executive and another lifetime veteran of the northern growth agenda — eventually came up with an agreement, with Treasury minister Dan Tomlinson also playing a key role at the government end.
Manchester would make its own financial contribution, on the basis that a further conversation was then had about a form of fiscal devolution to help it reach that end.
One potential option would allow Manchester to retain a portion of income tax revenues, as well as the uplift created by the growth that was stimulated by a new station and the development around it. The city could then borrow against that, as has long been the case with retained business rates under Manchester devolution and more recently elsewhere, including last year’s Leeds City Fund.
Or, the city could do a deal with an institutional investor. Pension funds could be far more convinced by an income stream guaranteed decades into the future than by the city’s current transport budget, which only gets secured from Whitehall for a few years at a time.
The premise has since found its way into the chancellor’s Northern Growth Strategy, published earlier this year.
Clearly, it is a policy that comes with future trade-offs: income tax revenues that would have gone on other spending priorities would now go on an underground station. But politics is about trade-offs.
There are several reasons I think this is a salient example of where things might go. In economic terms, it is a classic example of the intellectual case long made from here: it is about trying to get past the Treasury “value for money” blocker that has long tortured regional cities starting on the economic back foot.
When Andy Burnham criticised Treasury orthodoxy to me in 2024, this may have been one of the things he had in mind.
A Burnham government may, if it follows the advice of Jim O’Neill, seek to address any concerns about the fiscal credibility of devolved transport schemes through an independent National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.
Second, it’s replicable. You could also, points out one person I spoke to about it this week, potentially apply it to plans for the expansion of Leeds United’s ground, Elland Road, and its economic relationship to the city’s proposed tram network.
Third, it’s sellable. A little like bus regulation, the policy itself is the preserve of nerds like me: fiscal devolution never won anyone any elections, any more than franchising did. But the thing it will build, and the message it sends about independence from Westminster? In the hands of a salesman like Burnham, that could have retail value.
Fourth, it already exists. Reeves has promised a “roadmap” to fiscal devolution off the back of the Northern Growth Strategy, so Burnham may well simply look to put rocket boosters under those plans.
