The Greater Manchester section of the North West plc guide includes, Governance, Overview, Sectors and Knowledge - including the Greater Manchester top 10 companies, Property, Culture and Transport - including the top 10 attractions in Greater Manchester.
What did the Romans ever do for us?
Manchester’s moniker as the ‘first modern city’ tends to overlook the presence of Roman residents living in a sizeable and industrious settlement in the first century AD.
Splitting historical hairs? Maybe. Yet it’s certainly true to say that Manchester was not only the first city to recreate itself as a modern Victorian community, but has also continued this process of reinvention into the 21st century.
Over the past decade, Manchester has led the way nationally – and internationally – in urban regeneration, transforming itself from post-industrial bleakness to a sleek, chic metropolis of tall gleaming buildings and elegant post-modern architecture.
Complemented by the neo-gothic grandeur of the ‘first modern city’, the new-model Manchester is a cool and desirable place to live, work – and invest.
This isn’t to say the city has become a downtown utopia or that its swanky centre can tackle the social and economic problems across the whole city, still less the whole of Greater Manchester.
Nonetheless, the accomplishments of the last decade are impressive – from the glitzy neon of the Printworks and Canal Street’s bohemian swagger, to the crystalline splendour of Spinningfields and the graceful 47-storey Beetham tower with its distinctive roof structure.
Traditionally dwarfed by the economic power of Manchester, Salford is fast becoming a shining example of how a smaller city can maximise its opportunities to attract inward investment. While Salford owes much the massive investment in Manchester centre, Salford’s controlling bodies are determined to exploit their advantages.
Among the main priorities is the continuing development of Salford Quays via MediaCity:UK, an ambitious project being undertaken by the owners of the Trafford Centre and Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Peel. If all goes to plan, Salford will be the beneficiary of a media hub that will create 15,000 jobs, support 1,150 creative businesses and be home to a number of BBC departments at the 200-acre site.
The development will be based on 200 acres of former dockland at Salford Quays, next to two of the most iconic buildings in the UK – the Lowry and Imperial War Museum. It will contribute £200m per annum to the regional economy, while creating over 7 million sq ft of floorspace for business, retail and residential property.
It will complement a creative industries sector in Manchester that employs over 64,000 people and accounts for 5.2 per cent of all employment in the sub-region, according to Northwest Regional Development Agency figures. Over a third of those people are self-employed while over 10,000 are employed in new media/digital content, with nearly 6,500 in TV, film and radio and over 3,500 in the music industry.
Manchester’s reputation as a shop-till-you-drop magnet continues to draw customers to the plethora of retailers thronging the city centre. Although times have been rough for mid-market retailers, business at the top and lower ends insist they are performing well.
Among the high-grade retailers is Selfridges, whose general manager, Jane Sharrocks, believes shopping patterns now follow a figure-of-eight pattern with the middle squeezed, while the top and bottom ends are prospering. “You see people all the time now with Selfridges and Primark bags together,” says Sharrocks.
With the mass-market Arndale doing very nicely since its makeover was completed in September 2006 and the Spinningfields development providing another natural habitat for exclusive retailers, the city’s prospects as a shopping mecca are looking brighter.
Meanwhile, Manchester is one of six UK cities that have been awarded Science City status in a bid by the Treasury to stimulate growth in science and technology-based industries. The Science City project is being led by Manchester: Knowledge Capital, a partnership of Manchester’s ten local authorities, four universities, health sector partners and various public agencies.
Since June 2005 Central Park, the UK’s first urban business park, has established itself as a cornerstone of the knowledge economy. Not only is it home to Fujitsu’s 180,500 sq ft headquarters, but it also accommodates One Central Park, an award-winning 100,000 sq ft technology institute operated by MANCAT and Manchester Science & Enterprise Centre, that combines educational institutions and business incubator space.
As the largest commercial finance centre outside of London, Greater Manchester is thriving in terms of venture capital and corporate finance activity. Around 19 per cent of all Greater Manchester’s workforce is employed in financial services and around 44 per cent of the entire North West financial services workforce is based in the area. The majority of those employees are working in the banking and insurance sectors.
Manchester secured one of the most impressive inward investment success stories of recent times, with the Bank of New York moving into town. The oldest bank in the US and one of the largest groups in the world, the Bank of New York chose Manchester for a new operations centre. The bank leased 91,000 sq ft of office space at the prestigious One Piccadilly Gardens in the city centre. The investment is expected to create up to 750 jobs by the end of 2008.
Meanwhile, the city’s Spinningfields development is quickly becoming a hub of financial services. The Royal Bank of Scotland’s north of England headquarters have won recognition at the British Council for Offices awards, while large accountancy firms Deloitte and Grant Thornton, as well as Barclaycard, moved into the scheme in 2007.
Always a city on the move, Manchester has a logistics sector comprosing some 2,600 companies and is worth more than £2.54bn a year. Although Trafford Park is currently the principal logistics hub in the region, Kingsway near Rochdale will become a major rival. Kingsway is a 420-acre site on the M62, which is being jointly developed by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and Wilson Bowden. Heywood Distribution Park, where 300 acres host many high street retailers’ northern distribution hubs, is poised for further development.
Manchester’s thriving biotech, medical science and healthcare industries represent around 75 per cent of the regional total. Companies based in the Greater Manchester area include AstraZeneca, Avecia, Renovo and Intercytex, with key regional strengths including tissue repair, wound healing, clinical trials, neuroscience, bioinformatics, oncology, systems biology and genomics.
Manchester is also home to: the £27m Core Technology Facility incubator, set up to encourage the commercial exploitation of university research activities; the £60m UK BioBank, the largest project of its type in the world; the new Wolfson Centre for Molecular Imaging at the Christie Hospital, Europe’s leading centre for cancer care; and Nowgen, the centre for genetics in healthcare and home of the North West Genetics Knowledge Park.
North of Manchester, the traditional mill towns of Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham are successfully changing perceptions of industrial grime, cloth caps and clogs. Deals are being done and waves of new investment are flooding the north Manchester area.
Nor is this urban renaissance simply a residual by-product of the huge investments taking place in Manchester.
“The northern boroughs of Greater Manchester are certainly up and coming and the face of them is changing very quickly,” says Marilyn Steane, director of external relations at MIDAS, the agency charged with attracting investment to Greater Manchester. “They’ve gone beyond having a dependence on Manchester city centre and are striking out on their own by having key development sites, encouraging partnerships with the private sector and updating their town centre areas.” While the northern boroughs align themselves with Manchester, they have developed their own individual brand identity. “The areas are being promoted as being complementary to Manchester, rather than competing with it. They’re an addition to the qualities that Manchester has to offer,” adds Steane.
“This is a very astute move – some companies are initially attracted to the economic power of Manchester, but once they see the potential of areas like Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham, they can see the benefits of locating there. The areas already have great transport links by air, rail and road via the M6, M61, M62 and the M60, but they also have cheaper office space, access to green areas and attractive housing.”