As Greater Manchester develops, how can it ensure all of its people share in the benefits? Researchers are Manchester are helping the city region see a path towards inclusive growth.
Greater Manchester is booming as a centre for finance, commerce and leisure. However, not everyone is benefiting. The city region has an economy bigger than that of Wales but more than 600,000 people living in relative poverty.
According to a group of Manchester researchers, ‘inclusive growth’ – the idea that economic prosperity should also create broad-based opportunities and benefits to all – could hold the solution.
It’s fundamentally about fairness.
Growth for all
Inclusive growth challenges economic models that have produced large rises in income and wealth for some, while sustaining high levels of poverty and inequality for others.
“It’s fundamentally about fairness,” says Alex Macdougall of the Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit (IGAU), part of the Manchester Urban Institute at The University of Manchester. “The approach to economic development in the region hasn’t been working for everyone and requires a different tack.”
In November 2019 the IGAU published a report, Inclusive Growth in Greater Manchester 2020 and beyond, detailing how to make practical and valuable contributions to improving the health, wealth and happiness of Greater Manchester, while also highlighting new approaches, strategies and policies that will be relevant to other cities.
The report marked the culmination of a four-year project supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which assessed policy progress on inclusive growth in Greater Manchester.
“This level of analysis is important in terms of connecting the vision of a city region,” says Alex. “Otherwise you’re creating policies that aren’t targeted in the right places or at the right people.”
The challenges
According to the government’s 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation, there has been an increase in the proportion of Greater Manchester neighbourhoods among the top 10% and 20% most deprived areas in England.
Inclusive growth provides a way of navigating Greater Manchester’s challenges of environmental, technological and demographic change as well as a response to current inequalities and their origins.
“It’s important because it gives a platform to start thinking about how it can be turned into something concrete,” says Dr Mat Johnson, part of the Just Work project in the Work and Equalities Institute at the Alliance Manchester Business School.
“It gives politicians and policymakers something they can get behind – they can leverage their political capital to say this is the positive agenda for the area. The idea that you would balance the economic upgrading with social inclusion is really important.”
It gives politicians and policymakers something they can get behind.
Difference at a local level
Central government action and investment are needed, but there is potential for action at the city-region level through the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA).
In 2017, Manchester was the first UK city to be given devolved powers and funding from central government in relation to employment, housing, transport and economic development. Since then, the IGAU has forged strong links with GMCA. Its research is already showing impact.
Both the IGAU and the Just Work project contributed to GMCA’s Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, a voluntary scheme that aims to raise employment standards for employers across the region which was launched in July 2019.
The IGAU has also created a group of key major employers in the region to encourage them to use their power to keep inclusive growth on the agenda while the next regional strategy is formulated. The IGAU’s head researcher, Professor Ruth Lupton, spoke at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Inclusive Growth, while Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham spoke at the IGAU’s Inclusive Growth conference in November 2019.
“We have a good understanding of how the whole system works and we’ve enabled the people who make the decisions to see what those issues are. We’ve brought them to the surface,” said IGAU researcher Hannah Goldwyn-Simpkins.
The unit has also brought together different stakeholders interested in, and already working on, aspects of inclusive growth in a network to ensure the concept shapes future development.
“Out of the ten Greater Manchester authorities, three of them have an explicit inclusive growth strategy now, and one of them has been put in place since this report has been published,” notes Hannah.
“We’re helping it to happen, analysing and tracking it as it does, and being part of the conversation.”
Clear recommendations
The IGAU report gives clear recommendations about the specific action the next Mayor of Greater Manchester needs to take to embed and develop inclusive growth strategies for the economy, places and people.
The report recommends that inclusive growth should be the central vision for the next Mayor, with a reduction in spatial equalities and inequalities between social groups as well as asking residents what kind of Greater Manchester they want before setting more ambitious long-term strategies for the city region.
“There’s very clear recommendations in this report,” says Hannah. “We understand where change can take place and we’re signposting what we’re asking for clearly.”
The ‘real-time’ research of the IGAU and Just Work project, which is still ongoing, are providing clear evidence on how balancing economic growth with social inclusion can create a fairer Greater Manchester.
“There is absolutely the appetite, the motivation, the will and the consensus that something needs to be done differently,” says Dr Johnson. “We can’t perpetuate the same economic models that we have for the last 30 to 40 years because they haven’t delivered a fair distribution of rewards or equal patterns of upgrading.
“It’s a long-term project. It’s not an easy solution. Having a stronger eye on social inclusion, equality, dignity and fairness at a political level is important to steer a new direction.”