This week marks 100 days since Greater Manchester made political history.

On May 5, Andy Burnham swapped the ancient corridors of Westminster for the Victorian surroundings of Oxford Street to become the region’s first elected mayor.

Here, social affairs editor Jennifer Williams looks at his first 100 days - and how he's doing.

Homelessness

This was the big, headline pledge from Andy Burnham’s manifesto - end rough sleeping by 2020.

Some colleagues chatter privately that such a monumental promise may have been unwise, but for many people working to curb homelessness, quibbling about targets is neither here nor there. The point is that this is now not only on the agenda, but at the top.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

This is a crisis Burnham genuinely wants to solve and as such, he has put his money where his mouth is.

Immediately after his election the new mayor put £15,000 into a pot to help the homeless, a donation he will repeat annually. That then rose to £50,000 with initial external donations.

All of it has now all been handed out, including £20,000 for a new shelter in Cheetham Hill and to the Bolton branch of Emmaus, a community in which former homeless people learn skills and readjust to life off the streets.

For anyone wanting to help replenish the pot, donations can be made here .

Other work in progress includes negotiations with major donors for new city centre shelters, as well as the securing of nearly £5m from the government for three new emergency hubs.

The flip-side to this, of course, is that 100 days on, rough sleeping is as visible as ever.

“If I’m honest the problem is as bad, if not slightly worse,” Burnham says after his latest walkabout in the city centre.

(Image: PA)

“And I can understand people might be thinking ‘he said he’d do something about it, well where is it?’ I can get that.”

Over time his language has morphed from 'ending' rough sleeping in less than three years to 'trying' to end it, note observers, but nevertheless the political willpower remains.

A huge Burnham-led summit held in Salford last month - attended by around 200 charity workers, local authority officials and people with experience of homeless - appears to have forged a further galvanising effect among charities and has received positive reviews from a sector hardened to the apathy of both local and national government.

As a result there is now passionate and co-ordinated activity on this front in a way there wasn’t a year ago.

Housing and green belt

These are two of the most contentious areas in public policy right now - and were both at the heart of Andy Burnham’s manifesto.

Greater Manchester’s spatial framework, the fiendishly tricky masterplan aimed at sketching out enough land for housing and employment over the next 20 years, currently includes highly controversial proposals to build on green belt.

Burnham promised in the election to ‘radically’ rewrite the plan - and that is now set to happen.

Discussions between the mayor and leaders (more of which below) have seen its publication pushed back to Spring 2020 - well over a year after it was originally slated - so officials can go back to the drawing board.

That delay did not have the support of all council leaders, but the rewrite has an electoral mandate thanks to Burnham’s manifesto.

Meanwhile the mayor also made a number of pledges around the region’s £300m housebuilding loan fund during the campaign, including a halt on the stream of major loans to upmarket city centre apartment projects so the cash could be used for affordable projects instead.

Nevertheless another major loan for three big - linked - city centre projects is still in the pipeline for sign-off in the coming months.

Why?

“It’s a really good question and I understand. If I were you I would be asking it,” says Burnham, adding that the government set up the fund to initially ‘favour larger private sector entities building a certain type of property’.

Lending out the cash to big developments first means the repayments come back faster and in larger quantities, he says, and those can then be lent out to other projects.

“The quicker we allocate it the more we can reallocate to our priorities - and they will be, as I’ve said, council housing, social housing, working with not-for-profit housing providers in all ten boroughs.”

Did he know all this during the campaign? He says he had an ‘outline understanding’ of how the fund worked at the start of his mayoral bid, adding: “When I got in I asked for a briefing on it and said ‘explain to me directly why it’s not better to stop it’. And the truth is we get more money to allocate to affordable housing. That’s the bottom line.”

Whether or not that constitutes a broken promise is up for debate. But the arrival of Burnham has shifted the emphasis of political discussion - and civil service activity - within the authority onto affordable housing, including his appointment of Salford’s pro-social housing mayor Paul Dennett to oversee the issue.

The arrival of a mayor has potentially begun to change the rules of the game, even if the scoreline hasn’t altered overnight.

Extremism

(Image: PA)

In one sense the aftermath of May 22’s arena bombing demonstrated within a fortnight the value of having a new figurehead to act as lightning rod for national and international attention, as well being accountable for the region’s blue-light response.

Burnham’s immediate handling of the Manchester Arena catastrophe was well-received - but the tough political task lies in what follows.

As shadow home secretary, the mayor was deeply critical of the government’s anti-terror Prevent strategy, an approach to extremism and radicalisation that has been deemed discriminatory and heavy-handed by some Muslims.

A year ago he branded Prevent ‘so toxic now that I think it’s got to go’, a view he reiterated in an interview with the Times five days after the arena attack. That led to a stinging editorial from the paper that accused him of being ‘short sighted’ by ignoring the thousands of people it says Prevent has drawn away from radicalisation.

He also suggested to the M.E.N. that the programme could be renamed in Greater Manchester .

Since then the mayor has set up a new commission to look at extremism and social cohesion, headed up by Bury and Oldham’s council leaders.

Its terms of reference do not talk about replacing or re-naming Prevent, however - neither of which, stress senior insiders, is going to happen since it is a legal duty for local services.

It will look instead at how it is put into practice, acknowledging that so far it has led to a sense of ‘alienation’ in parts of the Muslim community.

Around seven or eight commissioners, yet to be named, will - from September - review how a Greater Manchester strategy can ‘capture the togetherness’ and sense of common values felt following the arena attack, while reviewing how effective Prevent and its sister strategy Channel have actually been in the region. It will look not only at Islamic extremism but at the far right.

This will be a big, ‘very serious piece of work’, that ‘will require everyone to be open to that difficult conversation’, says Burnham.

So is Prevent being scrapped? No. But is Greater Manchester looking to doing it better? Yes.

Transport

(Image: M.E.N.)

There have been a number of key announcements on transport since Burnham took over.

One of his major manifesto pledges, the provision of free bus passes for 16-18-year-olds, is already taking shape.

From September fares for that age group will be cut in half, after the mayor’s office squeezed concessions out of the region’s bus companies. (Some both inside and outside the authority question what the industry is expecting in return, but Burnham insists this is a ‘no strings’ agreement.)

It is unclear how long it will take for the free passes to come into effect. But the mayor says they will happen, although it may not be until his - hoped-for - second term, thanks to the pace of new bus legislation.

In the background a tram fare rise looms, one that was planned before Burnham’s tenure but which was agreed after he took up post. Transport bosses are consulting on whether people want two smaller fare rises a year apart or one bigger one in 2018, a bit like asking whether you’d rather be hit in the face twice or just once, but really hard. Not being hit in the face at all isn’t on the questionnaire.

Asked how he can justify those rises at the same time as the major meltdowns that have recently ground the network to a halt, Burnham skips the fare rise issue but acknowledges the recent failures should be a ‘never event’.

Transport for Greater Manchester have been told to investigate where the blame lies for the outages, he says, adding: “We’re going to stop it happening again.”

It isn’t all trams and buses, however.

Cycling legend Chris Boardman has been appointed to lead a bike and walking strategy for the region, an appointment Burnham has described as a ‘real coup’. He will oversee plans for a massive new cycling network across Greater Manchester, part of a health service-backed plan to get three quarters of people active by 2025.

And word reaches us of a major congestion strategy planned for September, potentially looking at improving traffic signalling systems in order to keep traffic moving, although the combined authority says there’s nothing to announce as yet.

Watch this space.

Mental health

This was another headline element of Burnham’s campaign, one that resonated with an electorate unused to seeing the crisis in mental health services placed firmly at the top of the agenda.

And since May, there has been progress.

Last month £134m was announced for a major four-year upgrade in the region’s mental health services, described as being the ‘biggest and most ambitious of its kind in the country’.

It is aimed at finally putting physical and mental health on an equal footing, a priority not only for Burnham but for Jon Rouse, the region’s chief health officer.

That means clawing together cash from commissioners, councils and one-off pots for a proper Greater Manchester-wide mental health plan.

More than half the pot - £80m or so - will go into boosting support for children and teenagers, including in schools, with the aim of ensuring ‘no child who needs mental health support is turned away’.

There is currently no 24/7 crisis care for children or teens in the region, a situation the plan intends to put right.

Ultimately it aims to ensure 4,000 more kids access mental health treatment over the next four years.

There will also be money targeted to help more than 1,600 new mums suffering mental health problems, provided both in hospital and the community, as well as people with eating disorders, alongside a push to make sure people are no longer sent outside of Greater Manchester for treatment.

Up to £77m will go on improving access to psychological therapies, an area highlighted as a major problem when the M.E.N. surveyed thousands of readers in February .

At the same time there will be an added investment in suicide prevention - aiming to cut figures by 10pc - and crisis support for adults, an area long short-changed, as bosses try to keep people in crisis out of police cells and other dangerously unsuitable places.

It is a major strategy that pre-dates Burnham. But again, political willpower is now behind attempts to change the region’s impossibly complex health services.

More devolution

Like the architects of the existing ‘Devo Manc’ system, Burnham stressed in his manifesto the need to keep pushing for more powers from government.

It takes two to tango, though, and at the moment it feels as though there’s not much government to dance with.

All the signs have been for some time that momentum from Whitehall has slowed significantly and gone are the days when Sir Howard Bernstein zipped up and down to London for meetings with George Osborne, meaning Manchester is no longer teacher’s pet for major government prizes such as the Commonwealth Games or Channel 4.

Post-general election there has been even less talk of further devolution from a government crippled by internal battles and a squandered majority.

(Image: Joel Goodman)

It is understood council leaders - each with their own policy portfolio for the region - wrote to their respective ministers in the wake of the election welcoming them to their roles and seeking discussions on further powers.

In certain cases there hasn’t even been a reply.

Relations with the Department for Work and Pensions, from which Burnham is looking for more powers over benefits, are apparently improving. With the Department for Education, a target for more control over schools and adult learning, not so much.

(One senior source says miserably that there has been ‘f*** all’ coming out of the ministry.)

On transport the government has yet to be convinced of Greater Manchester’s argument for control over local train stations.

But ultimately the elephant in the room is Brexit.

Multiple accounts of conversations with civil servants suggest many Whitehall officials are expecting little in the way of a domestic agenda from the government over the next year or two.

Greater Manchester now has a battle to find and keep friends in government, especially friends with the time to pay attention.

Transparency and accountability

This was another key strand of Burnham’s campaign.

Since taking up office the mayor has launched, as promised, a monthly series of question-and-answer sessions with the public, streamed live.

The first - hosted by the M.E.N - took place in Manchester city centre last month and covered topics from homelessness to the voluntary sector to policing.

After a break in August there will be another in Trafford in September, followed by more in each borough each month afterwards.

Burnham has been nothing if not visible, clocking up more than two dozen announcements and publicly speaking out on major crises and developments including the arena attack, the Grenfell tower tragedy - which saw him set up a taskforce to look at fire safety - and the government’s Transpennine electrification shambles. He has also attended public meetings on everything from Spice to LGBT rights to homelessness.

Nevertheless the combined authority itself continues to meet - and take formal decisions - privately each month, in a kind of ‘shadow’ version of its public forum.

It’s an issue first highlighted by the M.E.N. two years ago , but one that still persists.

Most recently the delay of over a year to the region’s housing masterplan was officially agreed at July’s private meeting.

The combined authority’s argument is that this was merely a minor ‘logistical’ question, so it was fine for it to be agreed in private. But given the level of public and business interest in it - and the split among leaders over whether there should be a delay - it carries some significance.

Either way, whether you care about the region’s green belt strategy or not, formal decisions are still being taken in private, with no real explanation as to why.

Political relationships

The view across the board since Burnham’s election appears to be that a good balance between attacking the government - where necessary - and working with it has so far been struck.

His angry TV intervention on the Transpennine debacle was met with fury by transport secretary Chris Grayling, but there will likely be few in Greater Manchester who take the minister’s side and Grayling has not exactly covered himself in glory this summer.

Whether ‘back channel’ relationships with friendlier ministers are being established by the mayor’s office remains unclear.

But tensions with the Labour party’s leadership were apparent from the moment Burnham won, the new mayor swerving Jeremy Corbyn’s last-minute congratulatory stop outside the election count.

That strained relationship surfaced again in the wake of the arena attack. It is understood Burnham’s office initially tried to block Corbyn from attending the vigil in St Ann’s Square on the grounds that the event was not, essentially, about him.

Things were smoothed over - apparently with the help of Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell - and Corbyn did ultimately appear, alongside home secretary Amber Rudd.

But Corbyn’s speech a few days after the attack, in which he pointed the finger squarely at foreign policy, fuelled rage both within the mayor’s office and elsewhere within the senior echelons of the region’s Labour party.

Since the general election both senior figures appear to be getting on with their own thing, albeit separately.

Within Greater Manchester, it remains early days.

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Tensions bubble in the background between the mayor’s office and Manchester council’s leadership, particularly over differing approaches to affordable housing and homelessness.

Word reaches us of a private leader’s meeting on the spatial framework in which Sir Richard Leese refused to allow the mayor a casting vote, citing constitutional rules. Manchester has also specifically refused to allow the Greater Manchester plan to dictate its approach to affordable housing. And Burnham’s immediate push on city centre homelessness did not please everyone within a town hall unused to being dictated to on matters usually within its own scope.

But it’s early days. And in comparison to Liverpool, Greater Manchester has so far - as usual - managed to paper over any cracks and push ahead.

'We’ve got a chance here to rewrite the whole script'

From his office at Churchgate House, a hive of officials covering transport, investment, fire, policing, health and planning buzzing around building a brand new £1bn mini-government, Burnham has been learning and creating a system at the same time.

It is a big job, but one he believes ‘100pc and more’ was the right one for him.

“More than anything it’s the people,” he says.

“It’s like when I was an MP for Leigh - people were challenging, they’d stop you and talk to you about things.

“But you get the feeling people are wanting you to succeed and it’s great. It just feels so different to Westminster.

(Image: PA)

“It’s that feeling in here - but even outside - that people aren’t waiting to trip you up.

“They want you to do what you said you would do and if you do, they’ll support you. It’s kind of refreshing really.”

Burnham’s first 100 days has been nothing if not busy, making progress on a string of pledges, building and navigating delicate political relationships and appointing a series of figures to oversee everything from policing to housing to the region’s new approach to extremism.

The last was borne out of an event no leader wants to face, but which those with any sense are always prepared for - a major terror attack.

Burnham had been playing five-a-side football, a newly rediscovered Monday night pleasure since leaving Westminster, on the night the Manchester Arena bombing happened.

It was a fortnight to the day he started as mayor.

Watching Newsnight, he initially ignored a call from a friend, thinking they would catch up the following day.

Then the friend rang a third time to say his daughter was caught up in the attack. And then Burnham saw chief constable Ian Hopkins was on the other line.

“It was the hardest thing on every level,” he says.

“I’ll never forget that phone call. Up all night, driving in here 4.30am or 5am, feeling sick to the pit of my stomach. What I was going through was what everyone was going through.”

His response to the bombing was helped by his experience at the higher levels of Westminster, he believes.

“That’s what your brain does when you’re a cabinet minister: ‘what do I have to be ready for?’ That’s what I learned to do,” he says.

“Sitting in this very room I said to Ian Hopkins on the first day of the job - are we ready if there’s an attack? Because I was thinking what are the big things that could happen that I need to be ready for.

“So it was quite eerie really when two weeks later.”

In the midst of seemingly endless problems that need tackling, Burnham’s big passion, tackling homelessness, remains.

While he admits rough sleeping has not vanished since May 5, he says his mayoral fund is now starting to take effect - and issues a renewed plea to the public to help.

“Stuff is happening,” he says.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“We’re on with it and have lots of offers of help. If I’m honest it’s more challenging and complex than I realised. It relates to housing policy, mental health. But I’d make two pleas.

“Firstly if people can give me time, I’m totally committed to it.

“Secondly, if people can continue to help - because we’ve cleaned out the fund.”

While he admits that some areas, particularly housing and homelessness, required him to learn on the job, Burnham says overall life as mayor has been as expected, terror attack aside.

He says the ability to speak more directly to people as mayor, to be closer to the ground, is a major benefit of being away from Westminster.

“I’ve always found from my political career that that’s the best way to work, because you just pick up straws in the wind, don’t you,” he says.

“If two or three people have come up and mentioned something you think ‘hmm, I need to have a think about that’. It’s an early warning system and I like that.

“Also, taking it a stage further: it’s about new politics isn’t it. We’ve got a chance here to rewrite the whole script.”