The Good Growth Test: Is Greater Manchester’s Good Growth Plan a Blueprint for Local Growth?

It is easy for sceptics to view Greater Manchester Combined Authority's (GMCA) Good Growth Plan as just another piece of regional boosterism. But since late 2025, GMCA has built a more serious proposition than that: a single investment pipeline linking housing, regeneration, transport and employment sites across all 10 boroughs¹, backed by a UK-first Good Growth Fund² and framed around a decade of “good growth” rather than growth for its own sake. From our Place–Based Business Case (PBBC) perspective, that matters because it starts with place and portfolio logic, not a loosely connected list of projects. It seems that growth locations, the Bee Network³ and regeneration sites are being presented as parts of one economic system⁴, not as separate bids fighting for funding.

This is therefore an opportune time to stop and consider what is working, and what is not yet proven, through a Place-Based Business Case lens.

What’s working well so far

There are real strengths in its design. GMCA’s objective is to make sure “every person and every place feels the benefits”⁵, and the delivery model reflects that ambition. It uses the Good Growth Contract to require recipients to commit to apprenticeships, local suppliers, good employment standards, and environmental performance⁶. In PBBC terms, those are the right ingredients: integration, devolved governance, social value and financial structuring are not side notes here. They are at the heart of the plan.

The funding model is innovative, and blends the integrated settlement, pension capital, borrowing against retained business rates, government support⁷, and National Wealth Fund backing⁸. The Fund pools multiple finance streams under local control, largely using recyclable capital, and has been scaled to a fund that enables GMCA to invest at a pace and scale not seen in decades.

GMCA has also moved quickly from strategy to allocation. In November 2025, leaders approved the first £400 million investment wave of17 projects⁹, ranging from town-centre regeneration in Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, Wigan and Stockport to housing and commercial schemes such as Victoria North, Wingates and the Kendals redevelopment¹⁰. GMCA said those first-wave schemes were projected to deliver nearly 3,000 homes, more than 22,000 jobs and 2 million square feet of employment space, with projects expected to start in 2026¹¹. A second wave followed in March 2026, with a strong tilt towards transport and enabling infrastructure, alongside affordable housing, Oldham SportsTown, and support for low-carbon and innovation projects such as Carrington and Atom Valley¹². If the question is whether the plan has become operational, the answer is yes. Money has been allocated and a delivery pipeline is clearly in motion.

The pipeline of projects is integrated, enabling closer co-ordination of investments across housing, transport, innovation, low carbon infrastructure, and regeneration, rather than delivering improvements in silos. This whole system approach reflects PBBC principle of holistic place-based planning and recognises how these previously disparate elements mutually reinforce each other in delivering growth. The integrated pipeline approach allows GMCA to prioritise “shovel-ready” projects across sectors and districts, ensuring quick starts and early wins while coordinating them under a 10-year strategic umbrella. By providing just enough public finance to make projects viable, the fund “pump-primes” development and unlocks substantially larger private investments (targeting £10 billion in private and co-investment over the next decade). This bridges viability gaps in regeneration schemes that might otherwise stall – a key challenge the Good Growth Plan explicitly set out to overcome.

Governance arrangements are clear. Governance rests with the GMCA’s leadership. Involvement of the Mayor and ten council leaders, and dedicated portfolio roles, enables benefits and outcomes to be delivered across all ten boroughs. All major fund allocations are approved through GMCA meetings, and oversight is built into the funding agreements.

Questions still to be answered

The Good Growth Plan is still in its early stages, with GMCA proving enthusiastic intention, effective collaboration, and allocation so far, rather than outcomes. By mid-2026, most funded projects are still in planning or early build phases, and every headline on homes, jobs and leverage remains a projection rather than an independently verified result¹³. That distinction matters. Local growth policy is littered with programmes that are strong on gross outputs and weak on independent evaluation - the National Audit Office found in 2022 that government “does not know whether the billions of pounds of public funding it has awarded … have had the impact intended”¹⁴, because the impacts of past interventions were not consistently evaluated¹⁵ - and the Good Growth Plan does not yet have independent evidence of delivery¹⁶. Greater Manchester “continues to be heralded as a benchmark¹⁷”, although it remains early to judge the likely long-term impacts.

The most important question for any value-for-money assessment is how much of the headline sum is genuinely new, additional public money. On GMCA’s own description, the “almost £2bn” is assembled from several distinct sources, most of which are not new grant funding. Instead, it brings together funds from financial instruments with very different meanings, including consolidated settlement funding, local borrowing, pension capital, and at least £500 million of National Wealth Fund investment described as part of a five-year strategic partnership¹⁸. The clearest genuinely new element appears to be much smaller than the slogan suggests – approximately £175m of of additional central-government grant¹⁹. But that does not mean the model is weak. In some ways it is stronger because it relies on recyclable capital rather than a simple grant pot. It does mean the rhetoric of the £2bn fund does not refer to completely new public money.

Our PBBC²⁰ lens sharpens the focus further. First, additionality is unresolved. If public capital is concentrated in lower-risk, near-term schemes, how much development is genuinely being caused, rather than accelerated? Several projects funded in the first wave were previously stuck due to funding shortfalls and it is not yet clear how much benefit from those schemes is attributable to the new funding (e.g. the long-idle redevelopment of Manchester’s landmark Kendals building, which is now moving ahead with a £44 million commitment from the Good Growth Fund)²¹. Second, accountability remains underpowered. Local scrutiny and approval structures matter, but they are not a substitute for independent value-for-money evaluation²², and no such published assessment exists yet. A National Audit Office study is expected in Summer 2026, which may address this point as well as resolving the additionality question²³. Third, capability is still a challenge. Local Growth Planning only works if authorities can continue to deliver integrated, evidence-led, business case-driven portfolios, not just launch a plan convincingly. Skills, analytical capacity and programme capability remain live constraints²⁴ for place-based investment at scale.  

And then there is continuity in leadership. While no-one can doubt the enthusiasm and co-operation that has been demonstrated by the GMCA, there is real political leadership risk after Andy Burnham’s departure from the mayoralty in June 2026, just as the programme is moving from approvals into execution. This has to a large extent been mitigated by the election of Bev Craig OBE, who previously held the role of Deputy Mayor for Economy, Business, and Inclusive Growth in the GMCA, and who has openly stated that she is ready to ‘deliver the next chapter for the region’.

So, the real test will be whether the progress made to date on the Good Growth Plan is strong enough to survive these challenges in the medium to long term.

In summary

Greater Manchester’s Good Growth Plan is one of the most credible local growth vehicles now in play in England. It is integrated, devolved, explicit about social value and materially more sophisticated than the usual cycle of fragmented funding announcements. But it is too early to treat it as a proven success. The honest conclusion at this point is narrower: GMCA has built a serious machine for pursuing good growth. Whether it becomes evidence of good growth, rather than a promise of it, will depend on what comes next: completions, additionality, leadership, transparency and independent evaluation. That is exactly the standard our PBBC approach would demand²⁵.

¹Greater Manchester, Integrated pipeline & growth locations

²Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund

³Greater Manchester’s joined up transport network Bee Network | Powered by TfGM

⁴Greater Manchester, Integrated pipeline & growth locations

⁵Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund

⁶Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund

⁷Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund

⁸National Wealth Fund, National Wealth Fund backs Greater Manchester in £500m partnership with Good Growth Fund, 18 March 2026

⁹Greater Manchester Combined Authority decision record, 28 November 2025; Manchester City Council Executive minutes, 10 December 2025. 

¹⁰Place North West, GM unveils projects to get share of £1bn good growth fund, 20 November 2025

¹¹Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Leaders sign off first £400m investment in new homes, jobs and infrastructure, as Government backs city region’s Good Growth plan

¹²National Wealth Fund, National Wealth Fund backs Greater Manchester in £500m partnership with Good Growth Fund, 18 March 2026

¹³Place North West, GMCA pumps £314m into transport schemes as Good Growth Fund grows to £2bn, 18 March 2026; cf. Greater Manchester Combined Authority press release, 18 March 2026.

¹⁴National Audit Office, Supporting local economic growth, 2 February 2022

¹⁵National Audit Office, Supporting local economic growth, 2 February 2022

¹⁶National Audit Office, Devolution in England (study in progress, scheduled summer 2026). As at the time of writing, no published independent value-for-money assessment of the integrated settlement or the fund exists.

¹⁷IPPR North, State of the North and written evidence to Parliament (PDE0023), ippr.org.

¹⁸Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund; National Wealth Fund, National Wealth Fund backs Greater Manchester in £500m partnership with Good Growth Fund, 18 March 2026

¹⁹Place North West, “GMCA pumps £314m into transport schemes as Good Growth Fund grows to £2bn”, 18 March 2026; cf. Greater Manchester Combined Authority press release, 18 March 2026.

²⁰Unlocking regional investment: The role of local growth plans and place based business cases, BearingPoint

²¹https://togetherwearegm.co.uk/our-vision/integrated-pipeline-and-growth-locations/; https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/gm-unveils-projects-to-get-share-of-1bn-good-growth-fund/

²²HM Government, English Devolution Accountability Framework and Scrutiny Protocol; National Audit Office, written evidence on devolution (PDE0024)

²³National Audit Office, Devolution in England (study in progress, scheduled summer 2026). As at the time of writing, no published independent value-for-money assessment of the integrated settlement or the fund exists.

²⁴HM Treasury, Green Book Review (2025)

²⁵Unlocking regional investment: The role of local growth plans and place based business cases, BearingPoint