Why is your cash-strapped local council buying your failing local shopping centre?

We asked an acquisitive former council leader to explain

Dear members — welcome, welcome. How are you going to spend your morning — perhaps picking up some bits and pieces down at Spindles shopping centre in Oldham? Gathering your weekly supplies at the Merseyway in Stockport? Getting some retail therapy at the Longfield in Prestwich? Recklessly spending the windfall you’ve made from Andy Burnham’s decision to freeze the mayoral general precept at the luxurious shopping precincts of Wythenshawe or Eccles?

All of those proud shopping centres — and more in Greater Manchester — are in the hands, or are soon to be in the hands, of local councils. Yes, that’s right — the local councils who are supposed to be deep in financial trouble and whose leaders are regularly quoted in these pages droning on about how little money they now get from the government. So how does that work? Why do our local authorities keep stumping up millions of pounds to buy malls that private investors have clearly given up on?

To answer that question, we asked Sean Fieldi…