When Andy Burnham was elected mayor in 2017, the role was brand new - so it was up to him how to define it.

To some extent, as always in politics, uncontrollable things also helped to do so for him, such as the Manchester Arena attack within the first few days of him taking office, or the meltdown of Northern trains last year.

But for the large part, it is up to the mayor and his circle, most notably his political adviser Kevin Lee, to decide how best to spend his time.

So, out of curiosity, we used Freedom of Information laws to request the day-to-day diaries of both men to see what they could show us.

What we received covers the time from May 8, 2017, the day after his election, up until the end of the first week in 2019.

We spent hours trawling through those spreadsheets to see who he had met and who he hadn’t, where he had gone and what sort of issues crop up most often.

Some of the things we spotted are serious or politically notable, some of them not so much - but still intriguing.

So here’s our rundown of how Andy Burnham spent his first 20 months.

(Image: BBC)

Doing media

In total there were 226 interviews and press opportunities in the mayor’s first 484 days - so roughly one every other day.

They included a broad sweep of everything from local TV and radio, through to the Manchester Evening News, Radio 4’s Today programme, Sky News, national newspapers, trade publications and even The Cricketer magazine, for an article called ‘Why I Love Cricket’.

Alongside that there were around 70 other communications slots in his diary, for announcements, filming for the combined authority’s social media channels or other communications.

We don’t have figures for other mayors such as London’s Sadiq Khan or West Midlands mayor Andy Street, so it’s hard to say whether this is more media than his counterparts.

But we do know his office uses a ‘grid’ system, something first invented under the New Labour government of which he was once part, which is essentially a spreadsheet mapping out policy announcements weeks into the future.

Sources said it was part of a ‘deliberate’ strategy when he was elected, given many people knew little about the Greater Manchester mayoral role when it emerged and feared it was a ‘white elephant’.

“We deliberately tried to address that,” said one insider, “saying we were trying to deliver on the key priorities people had asked us to.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

Meeting council leaders...some more than others

A common private grumble among some town hall bosses has been how little face-to-face time they have with the mayor.

That has included the sense that their handling had been delegated to phone calls with Kevin Lee, his political adviser - leading some to feel they did not warrant any of the mayor’s own time.

To some extent that pattern is borne out in the diaries.

Sir Richard Leese, veteran leader of Manchester council and one of Mr Burnham’s deputy mayors, regularly features - more than 20 times - for one-on-one meetings and the odd dinner or City match.

And up until he stepped down as leader of Wigan council, Lord Peter Smith also had regular slots in private, including going to watch the rugby - perhaps not unsurprising as Mr Burnham had known him well for years as MP for Leigh.

There is then a kind of sliding scale. He saw Salford’s mayor Paul Dennett - who leads for him on housing - seven times one-to-one, although on quite a few other occasions too for meetings about specific housing-related issues.

(Image: Tameside Council)

Stockport, Oldham and Trafford’s leaders, who have all changed over the course of the mayoralty, managed to see him around four or five times apiece.

Rochdale and Bury’s leaders saw him one-on-one only twice, while the late Tameside leader Kieran Quinn saw him once one-on-one before he passed away in December 2017.

Since then, his successor Brenda Warrington has had no meetings with the mayor at all.

By contrast regular phone calls were scheduled in Kevin Lee’s diary, however, to ring the leaders ahead of group meetings, appearing to suggest the task had largely been delegated.

A source close to the mayor’s office conceded that in the early days of the mayoralty, his team had adopted a similar approach to that as taken when Mr Burnham was a shadow minister in Westminster, using adviser Kevin Lee to deal with with various bits of the department.

“That approach was adopted here, but some of the leaders were coming at it from a local government place and felt they would rather do it face-to-face,” they said.

“I think we’re all learning.”

Pondering the Droylsden smell

People living in Tameside may remember this story from 2017 and 2018 all too clearly.

A stench sweeping Droylsden and the surrounding area was so bad residents said they couldn’t open their windows.

They pleaded with the authorities to sort it out, warning it smelt like ‘open sewers’ and could be traced back to a nearby farm.

At the end of 2017, the Environment Agency swooped, testing the ground and finding no reason other than landfill emissions.

But the smell persisted into the following year.

Residents may therefore be reassured to know that the ‘Droylsden smell’ was escalated right to the top of the political tree in Greater Manchester.

An entry in the mayor’s diary on February 20, 2018, scheduled for Dukinfield town hall, reads simply ‘follow-up meeting about the Droylsden smell’, suggesting there had already been at least one previously.

The EA did eventually issue a notice ordering the owners of Gartside Farm to clear dumped waste, although in June 2018 we were still reporting that residents were being made ‘unwell’ as a result of the stench.

(Image: Getty Images)

Speaking to the Department for Transport

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what happened to the rail network in May last year, a lot of the mayor’s direct contacts with government have been about transport.

Mr Burnham had around a dozen meetings with the Department for Transport in the first year-and-a-half or so of his mayoralty, including six meetings with then-transport secretary Chris Grayling, either in person or over the phone - including one four days after the rail situation started melting down and again the following week.

He also met with then-transport minister Jo Johnson twice and also his colleague Andrew Jones, including in a spate of appointments last November and December, as local leaders increasingly aired their frustration that services did not seem to be improving.

The Home Office also features more than most government departments, largely due to the security situation and terror investigation after the Manchester Arena attack.

Michael Gove, then in charge of the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs and crucially the minister overseeing air quality plans nationally - a contentious subject in Greater Manchester - features just once.

David Davis, at the time Brexit secretary, also only features once, perhaps notably given that Mr Burnham and other local leaders have repeatedly aired frustrations at being unable to get a seat around the table for discussions about our withdrawal from the EU.

He also met once with Theresa May once at his office in Manchester, in October 2017, a week after Conservative Party Conference had been held here, and amid growing fury over government’s failure to reimburse the city’s emergency services for their response to the arena attack.

Her low-key visit also featured discussions about government plans to give the region cash towards ending rough sleeping, as well as the announcement of a ‘housing deal’ - funding to sort out industrial land so more homes can be built, a deal that subsequently fell through earlier this year amid some acrimony.

The mayor had also met with the then-Chancellor, Philip Hammond, at Churchgate the month before for a ‘round table’ discussion with northern mayors, and had one phone call with health secretary Jeremy Hunt in May 2018.

Of all individual ministers, Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry crops up the most often, meeting the mayor eight times.

...but not so much to Jeremy Corbyn...

By contrast the Labour leadership features in his diary very little.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

There was just one scheduled meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, a brief joint media opportunity with the Labour leader at Victoria Station about the state of Northern rail services.

He had one phone call with shadow Chancellor John McDonnell last October ahead of the Budget, as well as one face-to-face with shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald at Churchgate House in November 2017.

There was also one sit-down catch up with shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer in the mayor’s office in July 2017.

Other than that, the shadow cabinet are absent - although insiders pointed out Mr Burnham does on occasion have phone calls or unscheduled catch-ups with senior figures that won’t be in his diary.

It arguably reflects the way Mr Burnham’s Labour operation often appears almost independent of the national operation, not necessarily an accident.

“The links are there as we need them,” stressed one source, adding that there had been no antagonism or criticism from the Labour leadership, “but the national party is not dealing with us on a weekly or daily basis.”

...or grassroots councillors

Hardly any backbench councillors - of which there are more than 500 in Greater Manchester - crop up in the mayoral schedule.

This, echoing the grumbling among leaders, has been a bugbear among some for a while, with councillors in more than one town hall feeling they have no real line into the mayor and that the mayor has little sense of their local concerns as a result.

Six appointments with Labour council groups are mentioned in the diary, two of them with Manchester’s group, two in Bury, one in Trafford and one in Wigan.

Three meetings with Liberal Democrat group leaders across Greater Manchester are also mentioned, along with a couple with individual councillors, albeit usually with another hat on - as a trade union representative, for example, or in their professional capacity outside of their council role.

A source close to the mayor’s office insisted Mr Burnham did meet with councillors when requested, but admitted he ‘probably could have been more proactive’ in meeting backbench groups.

Having a portrait done

An entry in October 2017 mysteriously refers to a meeting about a ’portrait’.

The following February an entry says the mayor was being presented with a portrait.

We wondered what exactly this portrait was and where it had come from.

It turns out the mayor was approached by artist Peter Davis, who asked that he pose for the above artwork, so Mr Burnham obliged.

Called the ‘the Bs of Manchester’, it was subsequently displayed as part of a Manchester Academy of Fine Arts exhibition, with the bees representing Manchester itself, the honeycomb the ‘boroughs’ and the mayor himself a ‘beekeeper’, representing its workers and residents.

A high-quality print of the portrait was given to the mayor’s office.

Ordering a new desk

A diary entry in the middle of August 2018, a few months after the mayor was elected, reads: “Andy’s new desk being delivered today.”

If that immediately conjures up images of a fancy mahogany bureau, the truth is actually more dull.

This very boring looking meeting table cost £446 and was apparently ordered because the original wasn’t big enough, with its replacement wired up with various IT connections.

Going on six foreign trips - plus one to the Brit Awards

Andy Burnham hasn’t been on that many trips abroad or to glitzy dinners, but there’s a smattering.

In October 2017 he flew to Paris with other mayors for a ‘CityLab’ event, designed to share knowledge with other urban leaders internationally.

The following January he visited Barcelona with strategy director John Holden to meet the city’s new mayor, staying at the 4* Hotel Negresco Princess, while in the March he went to Brussels with Kevin Lee for an event on ‘industrial transition’.

While there they stayed at the 4* NH Brussels Louise and met with EU Commissioner Corina Cretu, as well as having dinner with the Norweigan ambassador to Belgium, Ingrid Schulerud, and Oslo’s governing mayor Raymond Johansen.

From there the mayor flew straight to Texas for the South by Southwest film and media conference, where he led a delegation promoting Manchester’s digital industries.

In June last year he went to Paris with a transport official for a summit with other mayors on the environment and air pollution, while in September last year he flew to Beijing for a trade mission in China, where he travelled around meeting civic and business leaders to promote Greater Manchester commercial links with the economic giant.

In this country, the mayor attended the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain awards in Marble Arch in 2017 and 2018, with accommodation at the Montcalme Marble Arch, costing £252 - although most London stays in his diary were at more modest hotels, such as Travelodges and Premier Inns.

Last year the mayor and Kevin Lee attended the Brit Awards with UK Music boss Michael Dugher, a former Labour minister who served in government at the same time as Andy Burnham, travelling by boat from Embankment to the O2 arena after a meeting in Westminster with the then Treasury minister Robert Jenrick, now secretary of state for local government.

In December 2017 he also attended the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards in Liverpool, with his friend, Liverpool city region mayor Steve Rotherham.

Hiring a driver

The mayor appointed a driver just over a year after being elected.

It’s understood that initially, he used taxis to get around to various appointments, but later a driver was thought better value.

In summer 2018, his diary shows a driver was appointed officially, although that official also has a desk in Churchgate House and also provides administrative back-up.

He has ferried the mayor to various places since then, sometimes picking him up from home and on other occasions taking him from his Churchgate House office on Oxford Street to appointments, including at Bury town hall, Warrington, Salford University, Liverpool and to Greater Manchester Police’s headquarters in Newton Heath and back again.

A GMCA spokesman said the driver was in a salary band between £21,962 and £24,964 and confirmed that he was appointed in August 2018.

“The GMCA employs an executive support officer and driver who, in addition to their duties within the Mayor’s office, also drives the Mayor to some appointments when required,” he added.

“This allows the mayor to undertake work while travelling; ensuring that the Mayor’s time is used as effectively as possible.”

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

Giving speeches and discussing policy

The mayor gave more than 100 speeches in his first 20 months in office, on a whole host of different topics.

Many were about devolution and cities in general, while transport was also a common theme.

There were also quite a few addresses about health, perhaps unsurprising given that the mayor used to be secretary of state for health, including at conferences, vigils and dinners.

Here and there he also made speeches on Spice, homelessness, Brexit, housing, community cohesion, music, higher education and employment, while the mayor also made an appearance onstage at Parklife.

Meanwhile the very first meeting in the mayor’s diary on taking office, at 11am on Monday, May 8, 2017, was about a flagship election pledge - free bus passes for 16-18-year-olds.

The Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, which has been delayed several times since the mayor took over, but went through a particularly tricky round of negotiations with leaders a year ago, started cropping up in his diary far more last summer.

(Image: PA)

Only three or four meetings appear to have taken place specifically to discuss the implications of Brexit in the region, along with around a dozen meetings or scheduled phone calls to discuss policing with the chief constable, Ian Hopkins, some of which related to the aftermath of the arena attack.

Meeting Amazon, BT and Huawei

The mayor didn’t meet with that many private sector figures during his first 20 months in office, or at least not one-on-one, but a few big corporate beasts did pass though his office door.

Among them were some bus company executives, clearly with an interest in the mayor’s direction of travel where bus regulation was concerned.

Stagecoach impresario Sir Brian Souter met with him twice, although not until March 2018, nearly a year after his election, along with a follow-up six months later.

The mayor also met twice with Northern Rail’s managing director David Brown.

Steve Mogford, chief executive of United Utilities, met with the mayor in January 2018 to discuss what the diary enigmatically calls ‘a very important Manchester infrastructure project’.

(Image: AP)

He also met with BT’s chief executive, Gavin Patterson, to discuss the firm’s plans for digital and broadband investment, as well as with the managing director of International Motor Sports Ltd, for reasons unclear in the diary.

In the property sector there were meetings with Bruntwood’s Chris Oglesby, Downtown in Business’s Frank McKenna and a coffee with Urban Splash founder Tom Bloxham, as well as a sit-down with Robert Hough from Peel Airports Group, to discuss ‘thoughts on third runway’, presumably a reference to Heathrow.

On the health side he met Nikki Yates, UK general manager of the global pharmaceutical firm GSK (GlaxoSmithKline).

The managing director of Amazon UK, Doug Curr, met with him to discuss ‘further investment opportunities in Manchester’ in November 2017, while there were also several meetings with music mogul Dave Pichilingi, who at one time helped Tony Wilson run In The City and this summer held a one-day music summit during Manchester International Festival, at which the mayor spoke.

Last December he also met with the CEO of Huawei - the controversial Chinese tech giant hoping to run Britain’s 5G network - immediately before a meeting with the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, part of a wider delegation.

Discussing Opera for the North, again...ten years on

One appointment, on 29 August last year, shows Harry Brunjes and Stuart Murphy, respectively board member and chief executive of the English National Opera, met with the mayor ‘re moving ENO to Manchester’.

Since then the ENO has not moved to Manchester and insiders suggested the institution was meeting with leaders in various parts of the country.

There are echoes of plans a decade ago that suggested the Royal Opera - London’s other major opera company - could set up a northern outpost at the Palace Theatre.

That ambitious £100m plan, drawn up jointly by the opera company and the council, was welcomed by then-culture secretary - Andy Burnham.

However there was opposition from local arts institutions and after the Conservatives were elected in 2010, the idea was axed in the cuts.

The ENO, meanwhile, has been at the Colliseum in London’s West End for half a century, but the diary entry suggests it has been casting around further afield.

But although Manchester is currently developing a world-class new arts venue at the Factory in St John’s, council insiders said there were no plans for the ENO to set up there.