Exclusive: Why did a property developer donate to Andy Burnham's re-election campaign?
'There have been no meetings between Mr Gross, Citybranch and the Mayor'
Dear Millers — welcome to our Thursday edition, which focuses on a donation made to Andy Burnham’s election campaign in 2021, when he was running again to be Mayor of Greater Manchester. The donor was a property developer called Citybranch and it hasn’t been reported before. We only spotted it because the black pen used to redact a list of donors at Manchester Town Hall didn’t do a good job of covering up the names.
There’s no suggestion that Burnham has done anything wrong by accepting the donation, or that anything Citybranch has acted improperly. But given the “fury” expressed by councillors last month when they were told that the developer would be unable to make a £1.9 million Section 106 payment in relation to a scheme in Altrincham, we thought it was worth reporting.
Burnham’s top aide tells us that the mayor has never met the man behind Citybranch, and that “There has been no direct contact with him.” The aide also insists that a £12.9 million loan offered to Citybranch by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority went through the usual rigorous processes. Scroll down to find out more.
As always, today’s story is a members-only affair so if you’re not a paying member yet, join up now to read it and get access to all of our premium stories. We’re putting our prices up in a few weeks, so if you buy an annual subscription now, you can benefit from the bargain price of £70.
From painted rickshaws to South Asian Daytimers raves
After its major reopening last year, Manchester Museum’s South Asia Gallery won headlines around the world. The New York Times noted that it was “the first permanent museum gallery in Britain to spotlight the South Asian diaspora,” in a new space that “focuses on the community’s lived experience: on what it means to be British and South Asian at the same time.” That gallery features everything from ancient Sri Lankan musical instruments to displays about the secret South Asian Daytimers raves of the 80s and 90s, as well as exploring garment manufacture and South Asian working lives in Manchester. Plan your visit now — and you can see the stunning Golden Mummies of Egypt show (ending in April) and Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex at the same time.
Your Mill briefing
🏗 Rochdale Boroughwide Housing — the disgraced housing association who ran the mouldy flat that killed two-year-old Awaab Ishak — say they need more money to renovate College Bank, the set of 1960s housing blocks better known as Seven Sisters. RBH originally wanted to knock the buildings down, and hundreds of tenants moved out after the announcement, but it now wants to refurbish them.
👮♂️ GMP are still using PoliceWorks, the dodgy IT system that contributed to 80,000 crimes going unrecorded, despite chief constable Stephen Watson saying the force would have switched to a better system by March 2022. At a recent meeting, Watson said there had been improvements made to the system but it remained “suboptimal”, and the force were still working on getting a new one in place.
🍊 The Heaton Park Orangery is set to be refurbished and reopened after being closed to the public for 12 years. The Orangery is part of the Grade I listed Heaton Hall, and the plans to reopen it are part of a £2.1 million investment from Historic England to renovate the broader site.
🎻 From today’s sponsor: On Friday 29th March, you can enjoy a stirring performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Manchester Cathedral. The oratorio — regarded as one of the greatest pieces of classical music ever composed — will be performed by Manchester Baroque, who play on beautiful historic instruments. It’s organised by a longtime Mill member, who has offered a special 20% discount on tickets for Millers (meaning they start at £12) which you can redeem by clicking this special link.
Exclusive: Why did a property developer donate to Andy Burnham's re-election campaign?
By Mollie Simpson
A few weeks ago, the Manchester Evening News reported on “fury” from councillors in Trafford at a local planning committee. Their anger stemmed from being asked to write off £1.9 million they had hoped would be paid by a developer building homes and a multi-storey car park in Altrincham town centre. The scheme is on Regent Road and it includes 70 homes and a 300-space car park. The story explained:
Applicant Citybranch Healthcare was granted planning permission for the project in 2019 conditional on the payment of £1.9 million — known as a Section 106 agreement — but Trafford’s planning and development management committee was told ‘the money does not exist’.
The report wasn’t quite right on the details. The £1.9 million wasn’t a condition of the planning permission but was to come from an “overage clause”, meaning that the money was only due if the development made a profit, which the developer claims it did not. Still, Trafford councillors demanded an explanation. What had gone wrong?
A report from council officers explained that “extreme economic turbulence and cost inflation in part caused by the Covid pandemic and other UK and global factors,” had changed what the developer could afford.
The council’s head of planning and development Rebecca Coley told the committee: “The money is not there — it’s not going to be magicked up.” Coley also admitted that there had been some “mismanagement” on the project.
Trafford’s Conservative leader Nathan Evans said that a separate report on the council’s website contradicted what councillors at the meeting were being told and added:
I don’t believe we’ve got the capacity to write off £1.9 million and I don’t think we’ve got the capacity to scrutinise it. There is a lot to take in. My proposition is that this should be deferred for some serious consideration.
Eventually, the issue was deferred to another meeting by the committee’s chair, but not before Liberal Democrat councillor Meena Minnis said she was “quite disturbed” about the request to write off the £1.9 million. Referring to the developer Citybranch Healthcare, she told the meeting:
If they are a big enough company they will have other projects that have made money. You can’t just do away with your obligations. I don’t think it’s acceptable that we’ve lost large amounts of public money. I think it’s wrong.
A redacted donation
The story didn’t make a huge splash — a few tweets and some angry shares in local Facebook groups. But the name Citybranch reminded us of something we had seen months ago.
When we were looking into local political donations last year, we visited Manchester Town Hall and reviewed a list of donations to Andy Burnham’s 2021 mayoral election campaign. Most donations came from the Labour Party or trade unions like the Communication Workers Union and Unite.
Bad redactions: But then there were a handful of donations that had been redacted on the list — covered over with black marker pen. At the time, Electoral Commission rules stated that cash donations over £1,500 in value had to be declared and published, but one of the donations came in just under that figure.
It was made on April 4 2021, around a month before polling day in that year’s mayoral election.
We couldn’t help noticing that the thick black ink hadn’t properly covered the name of the donor: Citybranch.
The donation hasn’t been reported in the press before, but Burnham’s team have confirmed that they received it. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on behalf of Citybranch or Burnham’s campaign — any individual or company is perfectly entitled to make a political donation. But we wanted to find out more.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Mill to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.