Later this week we launch a new three-year strategy for the Community Savers-CLASS alliance. First, we kick the new year off with a look back at our achievements in 2024...
Women leading social change
Community Savers is a women-led poverty action movement: people of all gender identities are actively welcomed to participate while we follow a principle of majority women leadership. This is because women living on low incomes are the worst affected by multiple disadvantage, they are usually at the heart of community life weaving the social fabric, yet their voices often have the least influence in local decisions.
Throughout 2024, Community Savers and Women of Wythenshawe leaders engaged in ongoing skills development from the basics for running local groups like financial management and accounting; health and safety; first aid; and building an inclusive approach for people with diverse needs; to safeguarding, mental health and neurodiversity; and understanding incorporation.

Wythenshawe SEND mums developed a new partnership with The Grange specialist school and learning centre, becoming certified trainers able to deliver SEND awareness training within Wythenshawe schools to improve the learning environment for neurodivergent children. WOW groups worked in partnership with Safespots and Survivors to create a lived experience-led specialist training portal for public sector workers raising awareness about ten different forms of abuse and the support diverse women need (and often don’t receive).
Neighbourhood organising
Arbourthorne
Women in Community Action Arbourthorne (WICAA) took their community action to the next stage by bringing local residents together to analyse strengths and challenges in the neighbourhood and start creating an action plan for the work ahead. Starting out as three motivated mums wanting to clean up the area, Annie, Amanda and Georgie took to the streets with litter pickers every Thursday, knocking on doors where people seemed as if they might need help with their front garden. They listened to stories of damp, mould and overcrowding; gangs and anti-social behaviour, and decided to bring residents together to talk about what needed to change. CLASS will be working with WICAA to support local groups to explore formation of a new Arbourthorne Community Network in 2025.
Hulme
Ageing Well in Place in Hulme went from strength to strength, expanding work with older and vulnerable tower block tenants into a second block in partnership with Turn2Us through ‘Meredith Matters’. Tenants gave powerful testimonies about the particular experience of living in a one bedroom flat in a high rise inner city block at our September showcase; sharing how their adaptation of a “naturally occurring retirement community model” from New York is transforming social relations in Aquarius. Community partners have now developed a three-year strategy for mobilising five blocks working with housing providers, health and social care services, Manchester City Council, and the universities to achieve their goal of older tower block tenants “living well and with dignity in the place they call home”.
Miles Platting and Collyhurst South
Members of Miles Platting Community and Age-friendly Network (MPCAN) have been transforming the local landscape through their GM Green Spaces-funded wildlife corridor project which has included planting over 100 trees, saving 9 mature trees from development-related felling, creating a new pocket park, and reinvigorating a network of community gardens.

Working together with Manchester City Council and Jigsaw Homes they have also successfully secured a commitment for at least 100 new homes for social rent across three sites in Miles Platting.
In partnership with St Cuthberts C of E Parochial Church Council, they have successfully registered a new CIO called St Cuthberts Communities Together which has a new board comprising a mix of PCC members and local community leaders. The trustees are working with project managers from Participate and Locality to take the project beyond feasibility to develop a new business plan aimed at attracting investment partners in 2025. The concept plans prioritise a long-term worship space combined with a multi-purpose social centre, health and wellbeing services, community laundrette, and hopefully also some housing for social rent.
Watch: Rev Ellie Trimble explain how the St Cuthberts development will put right historical wrongs
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe Central Network is a new resident-led network that brings together tenants, residents, community groups and projects in the “Wythenshawe Central” area bordered by the M56 and the airport. This joins together members from three council wards Northenden, Sharston, and Benchill, to identify priorities for the local area and develop partnerships for achieving improvements to local facilities and services. It was catalysed by the Women of Wythenshawe housing action group after the network prioritised increased homes for social rent including for women fleeing domestic abuse, and women with disabilities in their collective consultation work throughout 2023. First step for 2025: establish a participatory development panel for the Wythenshawe Town Centre redevelopment!
The Manchester Local Plan
The Local Plan is one of the most important new policies under development in the city of Manchester yet ask most residents what they think about it and they will look at you in bewilderment! Planning can be technical, complex, and often (shhh…) a bit boring!
Four amazing and motivated community teams have overcome these barriers to begin to learn about this process and have a voice to ensure their local area priorities are heard. Collectively, they are working together through the Manchester Social Housing Commission to represent the needs of communities across the city whose interests have historically not been put centre stage by the planning department.

Residents and community leaders from Hulme, Miles Platting, Moss Side, and Wythenshawe have drawn on several years of local organising as well as more recent community workshops September – December 2024 to draw together local priorities for housing and local development. They presented these priorities to the Manchester Social Housing Commission in December and will be meeting with senior planning officers at Manchester City Council in January to discuss their proposals.

Working in partnership with the Commission, these local area teams are also advocating for neighbourhood plan pilots in at least two of these four areas (something Manchester has historically resisted); and for the introduction of ‘special planning areas’ in places where local communities have been decimated by particular types of development (student housing, university expansion, demolitions followed by developments for private rent and sale) and need restrictions to be introduced.
A new timetable for publication of the draft local plan has just been announced with an 8-week consultation due to commence in summer 2025.
This policy will determine what can be built where across the city for (approximately) the next ten years – you might want to take a look!
Increasing delivery of sustainable social rent homes
Community Savers and CLASS are founding members of the Social Homes for Manchester coalition which launched the Manchester Social Housing Commission in July 2024. The Commission had to organise fast and effectively to keep pace with events including a new national government and consultations on both the national planning policy framework and the right to buy launched by the end of the year.
Download the Commission’s policy brief: Why We Need Sustainable Homes for Social Rent
Thirza Asanga Rae of GM Tenants Union and Zoe Marlow of Wythenshawe Central and Dandelion Savers gave powerful testimonies in the House of Lords in November to launch the Commission’s five urgent national policy asks.
Listen again to Thirza and Zoe here (From 04:32)

Without national action on these policy areas now, cities like Manchester will not be able to make any significant impact to reduce the housing emergency at a local level. There are now 18,000 households on the waiting list for a social rented home in the city of Manchester alone, yet between 2012-2022 only 2% of new build homes in Manchester were for social rent.
Please join the campaign here: there is lots more work to do in 2025!