These intriguing results show there’s a north-south divide in our region...

ALL large cities are collections of different communities and places, bringing people together with different lives, skills, opinions and needs.

In a sense that is both the economic and social purpose of a city and it is important every now and again to pause and listen to what the people think and say about it.

The M.E.N.’s Greater Manchester Survey allows us to do just that and it shows a series of contrasting opinions about how well this city region is working.

The way that residents view the quality of life and work on offer vary significantly across Greater Manchester. In Manchester 52.7 per cent feel that the quality of life has increased over the last five years while 25.5pc think it’s getting worse. In Trafford and Salford 55.9pc and 56.5pc believe their lives are improving and in Bury and Stockport 57.1pc agree. But in Rochdale it’s more than 10 percentage points lower at 45.3pc and in Wigan (44.5pc), Oldham (43.4pc) and Bolton (42.9pc) it’s even worse. In Bolton and Rochdale around a third of respondents (33.7pc and 32.2pc) think their quality of life is getting worse.

This trend continues in the perceptions residents have of the types of jobs available to them today – compared to ten years ago before the financial crash. In Rochdale 49.6pc think they are getting worse, in Oldham it’s 47pc and in Bolton 45.4pc. In Trafford and Salford it’s much lower 33pc and 32pc respectively.

In fact you are twice as likely to think that job opportunities have improved in the last ten years if you live in Manchester or Salford (both 24.1pc) than if you live in Rochdale (12.1pc).

Such a stark set of differences across the city shouldn’t really be surprising. According to recent research from the University of Manchester, we discovered that in the southern boroughs - Salford, Tameside, Manchester, Stockport and Trafford – there has been jobs growth of some 60,000 between 2011 and 2014. In the same period the northern boroughs of Bolton, Wigan, Oldham, Rochdale and Bury had no net jobs growth at all.

Many commentators have pointed to this economic divide as part of a broader dissatisfaction with the labour market that at least partly explained the vote to leave the European Union in each of these places. Certainly the referendum result revealed significant differences across Greater Manchester with seven boroughs where a majority wanted to leave and only three (Manchester, Stockport and Trafford where a majority voted to remain. .

So what should be the priorities in the UK in the next few years? Improving the NHS and social care comes out as the number one priority, the economy a close second, followed by education, pay and then immigration. Within Greater Manchester itself the priority is still the NHS and social care but followed by affordable housing, homelessness and mental health. Next comes investment and job creation and then transport.