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How business went mad for Manchester
As ad giant WPP heads to the booming city, Laith Al-Khalaf finds a pro-business scene fuelled by the mayor’s independent powers
A150-year-old former soap factory on the Salford Quays may seem like an odd headquarters for one of Britain’s largest internet service providers. The red-brick Soapworks still sits beneath a disused cooling tower built during its days as a factory making Colgate-Palmolive’s detergents, but is now home of TalkTalk.
Tristia Harrison, the company’s chief executive, sits in an office on the fourth floor, overlooking the placid waters of the old shipping basins within a stone’s throw of the city’s tram network — which can be heard whirring past from the offices on a quiet day. But despite the serene aquatic surroundings, Harrison notices, the Quays are starting to pack out with other businesses moving north.
Where in the 1990s the nation’s music lovers flocked to “Madchester” to revel in music scene headed by Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, now firms are making the pilgrimage — and staying for good.
“You get all sorts coming up here, something is really happening. You can feel it,” Harrison said. On the other side of the quay, just past a bungee-jumping centre where children bounce over the waters, are the BBC’s Media City and the set of Coronation Street, part of ITV Studios.
It is a far cry from the bustle of Finsbury Square in the City of London, where TalkTalk’s head offices were until 2019, when Harrison spearheaded an ambitious move up north. Despite being founded in the North West, TalkTalk had drifted to London, where many of its competitors and service companies were based. The move was a gamble.
“It was brave,” said Harrison. No longer. Manchester is increasingly being seen as the obvious option, she said. That boosts the vibrancy of the city as a place to live and do business, but has downsides: “There was a time when we were swimming in a labour pool on our own. That’s changed now and it’s quite a competitive market to recruit in,” she said.
And it’s not just the Quays. Over the past decade, much of Greater Manchester has seen companies rushing to move their operations in from the South.
WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, announced this month it would be joining TalkTalk, opening a major base in the former Granada Studios buildings in central Manchester. It will be its first major site outside London, with 550 staff in an eight-storey campus.
A key factor in the city’s success, businesses said, was its status as a “devolved” authority, meaning it had independence from Westminster over key decisions to make itself more business-friendly.
Recent inward investment data from the Department for Business and Trade showed that Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, which also has devolved powers, attracted the highest number of jobs from local enterprise partnerships of any region outside London. The success of devolved authorities has been noticed by other cities, who are also jostling for their own devolution deals.
Manchester’s devolution was born out of tragedy. In 1996, an IRA bomb in the city’s centre caused widespread damage, but it also launched a regeneration of the city. Chris Oglesby, chief executive of Bruntwood, a property group that has built much of Manchester’s commercial skyline, said that the blast catalysed a building programme that reignited the city. “Sometimes you are given devolution and sometimes you have to take it. After that tragedy the city decided to take its future into its own hands and rebuild,” he said.
The desire to rebuild and regenerate fostered a spirit of collaboration between investors, businesses and local politicians that was a precursor to devolution. By 2011, the ten local councils that made up Greater Manchester were united in a combined authority. But it was not until 2014, when George Osborne, as chancellor of the exchequer, announced the first devolution deal with the city that it was granted autonomy over key areas such as skills, planning, transport, housing investment and business support.
It would be the city’s Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, who would ultimately inherit the new powers, which he relished. “The construction in Manchester’s skyline tells the visible story of devolution. We are getting things built with our new powers- it feels amazing to be here,” he said. Burnham said his role as Mayor allowed him to “escape the siloes of Whitehall” and use a range of policies to attract companies.
One tool that Burnham has tried to wield since his election in 2017 has been transport, pledging to integrate the city’s tram and bus networks together in a London-style system that joins up the city’s districts. Carl Ennis, the chief executive of Siemens’ UK operations, which manufacture trains and track for the UK’s rail infastructure, said devolved regions have improved their transport links at a faster rate than the country at large. “There really has been a gap between devolved progress and national progress… I think what we need is a clearer national plan but delivered locally.”
Burnham has also tried to develop a skills strategy which gives technical training to pupils who leave school but do not want to go to university. The city has recently gone further, launching the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate or MBacc, a practical qualification for youngsters to gain the technical skills needed for high-demand jobs within the region.
TalkTalk is one of the businesses consulting with the mayor’s office about how to design the MBacc qualification, in the hopes of training locals into becoming technicians or call centre workers. Chief executive Harrison said: “That helps a company commercially because you have easier access to that pipeline of talent that you don’t have to go hunting for.” In 2021, TalkTalk also piloted a scheme to provide free wi-fi for those on universal credit in Salford, which was eventually rolled out nationally with the Department for Work and Pensions.
It should be noted that not everyone is such a fan. Others argue that the qualification highlights a downside of devolution — the risk of making the city too insular or inward looking. “Why is he calling it MBacc? it sounds like it’s not transferable,” said an executive at one company advising on the scheme.
When mayors have greater power to affect policy in their regions, local firms who often struggle to make headway with policymakers in London, find it easier to influence change that will help them grow and encourage them to invest. Burnham said: “We are big enough to matter and have power but small enough that we don’t become unyielding.”
It’s a collaborative relationship that another Andy, a hundred miles south, knows a lot about. Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor said: “The relationship between business and the authority is totally different when power is devolved. We can decide which sectors we are best in and which we should invest in.” He pointed to the region’s investment agency, which sees the private and public sector collaborate to determine where investment should be targeted.
The agency recently struck an investment partnership with India, he said. Street added: “This hasn’t just fallen out of the sky for us, it is about us using the powers practically and effectively.” Street, former managing director of the John Lewis Partnership, said that the agency could not have been set up without devolved powers. “I’m sure civil servants in London could work out what investment we needed from a piece of analysis. But we collaborate to make the investment planned and strategic.”
In Manchester, WPP has struck up a partnership with the city’s ScaleUp Institute, a local enterprise partnership that provides services to help young local businesses in the digital, technology and life sciences fields. Under the contract, WPP mentor these firms by providing marketing and advertising services. WPP will not charge for services but hopes to foster lucrative relationships with fast growing businesses.
But collaborative local government relationships between the private and public sectors have also been a cause for concern. Tees Valley’s mayor, Ben Houchen, used his devolved powers to nationalise the local airport and win freeport status for his area. But critics have charged him with overstepping the mark by his deals with business interests, primarily local developers. The Financial Times has reported on concerns about “secrecy and value for money” in his deals. An independent review is now investigating allegations of “corruption wrongdoing and illegality” surrounding the Teesside redevelopment project known as Teesworks.
Houchen says he welcomes the inquiry. He said that since he was elected in 2017 he has kept election promises and delivered for Tees Valley. He said: “I make no apologies for using my voice and position to bang the drum for more investment, more jobs and more delivery”
A charge often thrown at the devolvers is that local politics is easier to be bought than Westminster. Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of Manchester city council for 19 years until 2017, was criticised for the close ties he fostered with the UAE’s Sheikh Mansour, owner of Manchester City FC since 2008. Mansour worked with Bernstein’s council to form Manchester Life, a joint venture that bought up huge swathes of land east of the city centre for redevelopment. While the area has been made more pleasant, the council has been criticised for allegedly selling the city’s land on the cheap in opaque circumstances.
Separately, Liverpool’s former mayor Joe Anderson was arrested two years ago amid a corruption investigation before being cleared last year.
Regional mayors appear far from satiated with their new powers. From the Tyne to Cornwall, local politicians are seeking more autonomy, and those with devolved powers want more. The government’s Trailblazer devolution deals, announced in March, will give Burnham and Street greater financial discretion; giving them a pot of money to spend as they wish, rather than having it siloed off into different departments. Both welcomed it but also said they wanted more powers to raise money, with the pair both mooting the possibility of a tourist tax to the Sunday Times.
Back at TalkTalk’s soap factory base, Tristia Harrison hopes more devolved powers are on their way.“Devolution has worked but is nowhere near completing its journey. You could argue we are just at the start of it.”
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