City Region
 
City Region

City Region

Statutory City Region Pilot
In April 2009 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the Manchester and Leeds City Regions had been selected as the two pilot statutory city regions. 

The aim of the pilot is to see how Central Government giving groups of local authorities additional freedoms and flexibilities can help them better drive economic growth and contribute to sustainable development.  It will help us to tailor programmes at a local level to meet our own economic, social and environmental needs and to have a direct and more dynamic hand in the future of our city region.

After a period of intensive negotiations, the first phase of proposals was agreed at a meeting in July 2009 between Ministers and the leadership of AGMA.  These proposals centre on reforming public services so that they are better able to support long term economic growth and citizens’ life chances.  The agreement includes that Greater Manchester will pilot a number of projects, including on children's services, skills, young people, housing, science and research. It was also agreed to explore how Greater Manchester could assume increased responsibility and influence on transport.

The key priorities for the city region pilot are based around the strategic priorities identified in the Greater Manchester Strategy.

They are:

  1. Radically improve the early years experience for hard to reach to groups particularly in the most deprived areas.
  2. Increase the proportion of highly skilled people in the city region.
  3. Attract, retain and nurture the best talent.
  4. Improve life chances in the most deprived areas by investing in lifelong skills development and other forms of support so that people can compete in the modern labour market, and by incentivising integration across agencies.
  5. Significantly improve transport connectivity into and within the city region.
  6. Improve the housing market, creating quality places to meet the needs of a competitive city region.
  7. Rapid transition to a low carbon economy.
  8. Increase the international connectivity of Manchester’s firms, especially to the newly-emerging economies.
  9. Expand and diversify the City Region’s economic base by creating the best conditions for innovation accelerated by next generation digital infrastructure.
  10. Total Place.