Social Homes for Manchester are launching a powerful film short today created by women community leaders in Moss Side and Wythenshawe together with On Our Radar.

Watch: What is the City but the People?

The documentary begins with archive footage of a promotional film released by Manchester Corporation in 1946 about plans for the redevelopment of Manchester in the post-war era. The resonance with the present day is striking as the clipped-voiced narrator discusses the relationship between health and housing and plans for the redevelopment of Hulme and Wythenshawe.

Community leaders across the city have been bringing residents and community groups together since 2018 to discuss the impacts of the developer-led model for housing and regeneration on local communities. People negotiating challenging circumstances of their own have found the time, capacity, and courage to organise for better outcomes for their local areas, and to join forces to talk about how private capture of public land, housing, and community assets is compounding poverty and inequality, breaking up families, and pushing lower-income households out of the city.

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 later this week 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.

Get involved!

Community representatives on the Manchester Social Housing Commission will be organising monthly film screenings and briefings on what you can do in your own local neighbourhood to support this growing movement for more social rent housing and a stronger say for communities over what happens to their local area.

If you would like to work with us to organise an event in your neck of the woods please sign up here.