Report of the Strategic Director (Growth and Development).

This report provides information on how the Oxford Road Corridor facilitates and promotes innovation, commercialisation and employment growth in Manchester.

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director (Growth and Development) which provided information on how the Oxford Road Corridor facilitated and promoted innovation, commercialisation and employment growth in Manchester.

Key points and themes within the report included:

• Policy context;
• Planning and delivery;
• Investment, impact and key schemes; and
• Future development and opportunities.

Key points and queries that arose from the Committee’s discussions included:

• To welcome the contribution of the Oxford Road Corridor to the city’s economy and plans for the future, while emphasising the importance of inclusive growth and making the city fairer;
• The impact of the cancellation of the HS2 line to Manchester on this work;
• Engaging with local residents, mitigating negative impacts for residents and ensuring that they could benefit;
• The pathways for local residents to the higher-paying jobs that were being created and ensuring that under-represented communities were not only able to access lower-paid jobs;
• Requesting that future reports included information on engagement with and inclusion of local communities;
• What were the constraints on economic growth and how would they be mitigated; and
• Making the partnership more inclusive including opportunities to collaborate with ethnic minority-led organisations and stakeholders, for example, Curry Mile traders.

The Leader explained that the Oxford Road Corridor was a partnership of organisations and that the individual organisations also had their own programmes of work, which the Committee might be interested in considering at a future meeting.  She reported that the decision about HS2 would affect the ability of the UK to have a more balanced economy but that the level of ambition for the Oxford Road Corridor was longstanding and would remain the same, despite the challenges presented in relation to connections and rail capacity, and she highlighted some of the opportunities of the Oxford Road Corridor, in relation to research, innovation and the growth of the science sector.  She commented that the points relating to local residents accessing better paid jobs were addressed within the Economic Strategy, which was the next item on the agenda.

Steven Cochrane, Partnership Director, Oxford Road Corridor reported that the Corridor was a great example of setting a strategic vision for an area and remaining committed to it over an extended period of time, during a turbulent period for the UK, which had included the economic crash, Brexit and the pandemic.  He highlighted that the types of jobs that had been created included ones which previously people would have had to leave Manchester to pursue.  He outlined how partners, including the universities, NHS and private sector had worked together to deliver strategic schemes and attract investment and highlighted the use of evidence-based policy development.  He advised Members that the research taking place on the Corridor was bringing economic benefit but also societal benefit, for example, research in life sciences.  He recognised comments about the impact of growth on local communities while stating that the universities had tried to use the public realm to make the area more welcoming with recent developments.  He stated that the universities and NHS recognised the importance of engaging effectively with local communities.  He reported that earlier in the year the partnership had mapped out all the widening participation activity which partners were undertaking, providing a number of examples of this activity and offering to share the report with Members.  He recognised a Member’s comments about social mobility and moving people from entry level jobs to higher paid roles, stating that this was a challenge but that partners were committed to improving this.

In response to a Member’s comments, the Strategic Director (Growth and Development) clarified that the reference to Upper Brook Street within the report related to the wider ambitions for the area as set out in the Strategic Regeneration Framework and that the specific details of any development would be subject to the planning process. 

The Executive Member for Skills, Employment and Leisure reported that significant opportunities were being created and that enabling residents to access these opportunities was a key priority for the Council.  He highlighted the work taking place in relation to the Work and Skills Strategy and suggested that the Committee receive a more detailed report on the skills and employment programmes which were operating in the city.  Steven Cochrane reported that he would be happy to contribute to a future report on this.  In response to a Member’s comments about working with diverse stakeholders, including traders on the Curry Mile, he offered to speak to the Member outside of the meeting about how to better engage with these groups.  

The Director of Inclusive Growth reported that, while there was still more that could be done, there was a lot more engagement between the universities and local residents than there had been when the Corridor started, including university staff on school governing bodies, Manchester Metropolitan University’s first generation programme aimed at families which did not have a history of family members attending university and degree apprenticeships, as well as employment-led programmes in each of the big institutions on the Corridor.  She also informed Members about the role of the Civic University Partnership across the five Greater Manchester universities.

The Strategic Director (Growth and Development) acknowledged the challenges raised by a Member, including in relation to the electricity grid and the lack of investment in Oxford Road Station.  She informed Members that the Corridor enabled the Council to work with partners to bring together a more cohesive plan for the area and reported that there was a longstanding, constructive relationship with Electricity North West to plan for electricity requirements across the city.  She also reported that they were working closely with Network Rail to look at investment in Oxford Road Station. 

Decisions:

1.            To request that the Widening Participation report be circulated to Committee Members.

2.            To request that more information on the Work and Skills interventions be submitted to the Committee’s March meeting, when it will be considering a report on the Work and Skills Strategy.

[Councillor Johns declared a personal interest as his partner was employed by the Royal Northern College of Music.]