City’s new boss pledges boom will benefit all
MANCHESTER council’s new chief executive has promised to review both affordable housing and homelessness as she takes up the reins from Sir Howard Bernstein – and she is glad soccer star turned property developer Gary Neville is having a ‘rethink’ about his controversial St Michael’s plans.
Birmingham-born Joanne Roney starts the post at the town hall on April 1 and says she will spend the first few months getting to know the city, having initially rented a flat in Castlefield.
Currently chief executive at Wakefield, she said Manchester council was looking to ‘re-prioritise’ its top job away from the huge regeneration projects that have made Sir Howard so famous in order to look more towards frontline services. “Manchester city council’s credibility – and I said this in the interview – comes from its core services being good and we know what they are,” she said.
“My background is in homelessness and I’m excited to see what we can do about that.
“And obviously your basic services, your neighbourhood services.
“Transport clearly is a big issue – huge investment going into transport, massive disruption as a consequence.
“How do you square that off with genuine dialogue with the public that says ‘this is the pay-off’?” She said it would also be a priority to get children’s services ‘right’ ahead of their next full Ofsted inspection after being found inadequate in 2014, while affordable housing was also high on her list, having trained in housing and overseen that service in a string of councils across the north, as well as working with the housing charity Shelter. Joanne Roney
Ms Roney said she would look to see whether everyone in the city was benefiting from its boom.
“I want to see whether the average wage gap is closing, I want to see what our affordable housing policy is looking like,” she said.
Homelessness would be a particularly high priority. In Wakefield the council runs a partnership with the local college that has seen homeless people sign up for various volunteering activities to help them gain confidence and skills.
But first she said she wanted to understand the problem here.
“I want to know how extensive our outreach is with the actual people who are in Manchester and what are we doing about understanding root causes - and what’s in place,” she added.
She also said she would be willing to listen to the public concerns about city centre regeneration – such as Gary Neville’s controversial St Michael’s project – but insisted the city could not shy away from development entirely.
“Of course I will listen, but that goes two ways as well. I was glad to see Gary Neville paused his proposals to have a rethink about it.
“I often think the answer to this is in design. The answer to what scheme should progress where in what circumstances is often through ‘let’s look again at the designs, let’s see if we can’t compromise somewhere.’ But you can’t leave a city like Manchester and just say ‘that’s it’ on the development front, we’re not going do anything else.”
Describing Sir Howard as a ‘legend’ and Manchester as the ‘go-to’ for innovation throughout her career, she stressed she would still be carrying on his regeneration legacy as well as focusing on frontline services.
“If something has fired me up – very much so – it’s this view that somehow I’m not going to be dealing with developers or the economic growth agenda,” she added.
“Why would I not? Why would any chief executive not?”