It is 18 months since Andy Burnham waved goodbye to the Westminster bubble after 20 years - ready to be ushered into the rather less glamorous world of local government.

The role was an unknown quantity.

There had never been a mayor of Greater Manchester, nor indeed any modern English leader outside of London with a remit on such a scale. But the powers handed to him were technocratic, confusing and, to many observers, nowhere near enough.

They also required him to deftly balance a unique and delicate ecosystem of relationships with individual local councils, alongside a changeable dialogue with Westminster - at a time when Number 10 was, and remains, in a state of excruciating flux.

Against that backdrop, Burnham entered Churchgate House on the back of a manifesto packed with simple, eye-catching pledges on a range of deceptively complex issues: bus reform, homelessness, air quality, green belt development.

His supporters welcomed his move towards a more social policy-focused agenda for Greater Manchester, as well as the advantages of his pre-existing profile and a willingness to shake things up. As someone who needed no introduction to either the TV studio or lobby reporters, he could also put the conurbation in the national spotlight.

(Image: Getty Images)

Others, more dubious, questioned whether he had enough understanding or experience of the technicalities of local government, while suspecting a tendency to flip-flop and court the TV cameras.

Halfway through his first term, several of the trickiest decisions are now running over schedule, while Greater Manchester struggles to speak to a Brexit-paralysed Whitehall.

With a year to go before the 2020 mayoral campaign, we look at some of the toughest challenges standing between Burnham and the next election.

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework

The region’s long-term development plan was always going to be a major test of the mayor’s first term.

As a key component of 2014’s devolution deal, it defined the argument that Greater Manchester was better-placed than Whitehall to decide its own future, even if those decisions would be tough.

Prior to Burnham’s election, council leaders had already drawn up and consulted on a plan.

Signs that the mayor-to-be would oppose the draft were evident early on, however.

(Image: Sean Hansford)

In the Labour selection process during summer 2016, Burnham initially promised to allow only council housing on green belt - a pledge that caused some head-scratching among politicians and officials alike: firstly, because green belt land is so valuable, the finances of it wouldn’t stack up; and secondly, because overspill council estates stuck in the middle of nowhere don’t have the best record of success.

By the time of the mayoral campaign, this position had shifted to a ‘radical rewrite’ and an aspiration for ‘no net loss’ of green belt.

What followed has been 18 months of internal wrangling, resulting in five separate delays.

First council leaders couldn’t agree on how fast to get it rewritten: in the early days of the mayoralty, Trafford’s leader Sean Anstee and Manchester’s Sir Richard Leese were among those who argued for it to be done as quickly as possible - both to avoid uncertainty and to get the thing out of the way.

They were outvoted, however, and the intended publication date was set for June 2018, after the local elections.

That has since slipped repeatedly, largely because council leaders were still arguing with Burnham’s office.

As the mayor pushed hard for more green belt sites to be taken out, councils such as Oldham and Rochdale insisted it must be sacrificed in order for their own local economies to punch their weight.

(Image: M.E.N.)

The upshot? The M.E.N. understands that when the draft emerges next month, it will feature roughly half the original green belt sites included in the 2016 version.

Burnham’s office will argue this does indeed amount to a radical rewrite, as promised, while pointing out that negotiations with council leaders were always going to be tricky. Supporters will insist his ‘no net loss’ soundbite was merely an ‘aspiration’, rather than a concrete pledge.

His critics - and anybody with a field behind their house earmarked for an industrial estate - will point out that ‘no net loss’ will be the promise people remember, regardless of nuance.

Meanwhile more than one well-placed source tells the M.E.N. that Whitehall has been watching the spatial framework with particularly keen interest.

“The civil service has taken the view that Greater Manchester can’t deliver,” says one, “on the basis that they can’t deal with the spatial strategy.”

Burnham’s office will be at pains to dispel that criticism in the New Year, as they - and leaders - look to sell the new version of the framework as proof Greater Manchester can still get things done.

Bus reform

Reforming our disjointed bus network - to create a straightforward, effective London-style system - was another major pledge in Burnham’s mayoral campaign.

(Image: Mark Andrew)

In 2017 he promised a ‘radical overhaul’, declaring that Greater Manchester was not going to put up with the ‘complete and utter disaster’ of a deregulated system anymore.

That process is now running around a year behind, however.

While last December the mayor said - in this speech - that he expected a public consultation on proposals to be issued in the summer, ahead of a decision by the end of 2018, sign-off is still understood to be at least 12 months away.

Much of that delay comes from the fact bus reform law is far more complex and awkward than the mayoral pledge would suggest.

Almost from day one Greater Manchester ended up in a series of legal hearings after being challenged by bus operators unwilling to disclose any data, pushing proceedings back by up to six months.

The mayor’s office also discovered that under existing legislation, Burnham doesn’t have the power to put up his own precept - the part of council tax bills used for mayoral functions - to fund bus reform.

Ministers shrugged. Greater Manchester can use the existing pot paid into by individual councils for transport to fund the system, they said, or dig into reserves.

The trouble is, the ten councils had already - prior to Burnham taking power - decided that they would not pay in any extra for bus reform. And there’s not enough in reserves.

As a result, the mayor is waiting on the Brexit-mired government to sign off a bit of secondary legislation that allows him to put up council tax.

When Burnham does decide how to reform the network, presumably a few months out from the next election, there will be further choppy waters to navigate.

If the mayor chooses to go the whole hog and completely franchise the network - a move insiders have suggested could cost anything between £20m and £60m a year - an increase in council tax is likely to be considerable, a move that was again conspicuously absent from the 2017 manifesto.

If he decides to go down the road of a cheaper ‘partnership’ route - which would leave more powers in the hands of operators - those seeking a completely regulated system will say it does not go far enough.

Those critics are likely to include some of his own party colleagues.

In Manchester in particular, Labour councillors were largely won over to the devolution agenda - and particularly the unpalatable prospect of doing deals with George Osborne - due to the long-held desire to fully reverse Thatcher’s 1980s bus reforms.

Sir Richard Leese, the council’s leader and Burnham’s deputy, has already publicly made clear his position on that.

“As far as I’m concerned - and as far as the Labour group on the council are concerned - the ability to have a regulated, integrated public transport network was probably the single most important thing around the devolution deal and I certainly intend to make sure, as the representative on the combined authority, that’s exactly what we will get through franchising,” he said in July.

Air Quality

Pollution featured high on the agenda during 2017’s mayoral campaign, with Burnham highlighting the plight of the schools whose children are breathing in toxic fumes on a daily basis.

Tackling the crisis was never going to be straightforward, however, and plans to do so are running behind.

Government - having passed the buck for bringing pollution down to legal levels to councils - had ordered Greater Manchester to come up with a plan by the end of this month, an eye-watering task.

Currently plans have slipped to February as officials try to work out whether proposals privately tabled by the mayor and council leaders are sufficient.

At the heart of it all is another dilemma for the mayor.

Taxing private motorists in order to slash pollution would be likely to further infuriate commuters already angry about traffic gridlock.

But only charging commercial vehicles - which is currently the plan on the table - may not meet Greater Manchester’s legal obligations to slash nitrogen dioxide levels, opening up the conurbation to the risk of High Court challenge from environmentalists who have already beaten the government on the same grounds.

Some mutter, meanwhile, that there were already plans in the pipeline before the mayor was elected that could have helped resolve the problem.

(Image: PA)

The M.E.N. understands that in the months prior to the election, Greater Manchester had managed to negotiate a devolved road tax system with the Treasury, in discussions that had included the Prime Minister’s then right-hand man Nick Timothy.

Government had apparently agreed in principle to a move that would have seen all road tax and fuel duty devolved to Greater Manchester, which could have then used the money to pay for a far more sophisticated system - and a scrappage scheme.

“It was a concept at that stage, really, but it was based around road tax being devolved for Greater Manchester-registered cars, and then you’d price car journeys like you’d price getting on a tram or a bus,” says one insider familiar with the agreement.

“The principle would be that if you just tootled to work, in and out, it would be about the same price.

“But if you tax consumption rather than which ‘ring’ you drive through, you can encourage behaviour change around air quality.”

The idea was ultimately ‘kicked down the road’, several sources have claimed, never to surface again.

Sources close to Burnham said the idea had ‘never really been a runner’ by the time he took office, however, suggesting that it dated back to George Osborne’s days in the Treasury.

In 2019 the mayor will hope to persuade government to meet Greater Manchester halfway, by providing enough funding for a scrappage scheme and better public transport.

Homelessness

One issue almost above all others has dominated Burnham’s first term so far: homelessness.

The mayor made a very simple and eye-catching pledge during the campaign - to end rough sleeping by 2020.

Burnham's focus on the region’s homelessness crisis - one that is high in the minds of the public, even if it isn’t among ministers - since then has helped to galvanise action across the ten authorities and place it near the top of the region’s political agenda, as well as helping it gain national traction.

The mayor’s ‘bed for every night’ campaign aims to open shelters in every borough, seven days a week, throughout the months from November to March, a national first.

That means Greater Manchester now goes far beyond the legal expectations of government.

Meanwhile the mayor’s agenda has also attracted the attention of celebrities including City captain Vincent Kompany, who has promised to donate his entire testimonial to the project.

Ending rough sleeping in the next 12 months or so still looks a tough ask, however.

Last year’s estimates showed an increase in rough sleeping of more than 40pc across the conurbation.

Numbers in the city centre are understood to have risen again - by around 30pc - on the latest count in November, although multiple insiders said that since the winter shelters opened, figures have come down significantly and appear to be falling across Greater Manchester as a whole.

Nevertheless, that the crisis remains should perhaps come as no surprise: while major steps have been taken here, the national policies driving it remain in place.

With rough sleeping and begging now so entrenched, ending the visible signs of nearly a decade’s worth of austerity may simply be too tall an order, even with extra shelter beds available and far more buy-in from all parts of the public sector.

Burnham’s office may argue - as it has done over ‘no net loss’ to green belt - that ending rough sleeping was an aspiration rather than a concrete promise.

Meanwhile on a number of occasions the mayor has argued forcefully that the old adage of ‘under-promising and over-delivering’ is hardly inspirational.

(Image: Joel Goodman)

Should there still be piles of sleeping bags in the city’s doorways come 2020, however, the mayor is likely to be judged on that pledge regardless.

Relationships

There are two key relationships the mayor has to manage above all others, aside from with voters: council leaders, and the government.

It’s fair to say the dynamic between the mayor’s office and town hall chiefs has not, so far, all been plain sailing.

Tensions between the mayor and Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester council, have already been well documented.

But the biggest complaint emanating from other town halls across the region regards their inability to actually access the mayor.

During the battle between Mr Burnham and leaders over how much green belt to earmark for development, it was his long-standing advisor Kevin Lee that was dispatched to speak to council bosses and lay down the law.

The fact the mayor hadn’t bothered to have the conversation directly appeared to anger them more than anything else, with sources saying that of all the council leaders, only Sir Richard is easily able to get direct access.

(Outside of town halls, many key figures in other sectors also report the same frustration.)

(Image: Vince Cole)

This matters, of course: because the logjams listed above can only be cleared with the support - and compromise - of the ten council leaders on which the devolved system relies.

Meanwhile if Greater Manchester was once known for its close dialogue with government, times have changed.

With turmoil in Westminster and change at the top here, that was arguably inevitable - but it remains a key challenge either way.

The shifting landscape at national level - and the undoubted paralysis Brexit has inflicted - has meant the sort of pragmatic deal-making that defined 2014’s devolution deal is a thing of the past.

With George Osborne gone from the Treasury and Sir Howard Bernstein no longer in Manchester town hall, the personal relationships that helped usher in a wave of new powers are not in play either.

One senior Greater Manchester insider admitted it had been a ‘really difficult year’ for trying to speak to government, adding that with ministers distracted by Brexit, what had previously been constructive back-channel conversations now often entail the civil service repeating its position back over and over again.

Another suggests the Tories are scared of the monster they created.

(Image: Matt Ratcliffe)

“There’s an argument to say government has moved away from the construct as soon as it’s got more powerful,” they say.

Certainly two of the key ministers Greater Manchester has to deal with, transport secretary Chris Grayling and Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry, have been less than accommodating over the past year.

In the absence of a grown-up conversation in the background, those loyal to Burnham argue he has had no option but to deploy megaphone diplomacy on occasion.

They point to certain successes in that respect - including new home secretary Sajid Javid’s announcement that he would review asylum dispersal, as well as the row over retrieving the costs incurred by local services dealing with the arena attack.

Others are less sure, however.

Locally one senior figure points to the mayor’s handling of this summer’s rail crisis, complaining: “If you go around constantly saying Chris Grayling is betraying the north, you can’t expect him to sit down and have a cup of tea with you.

“Richard Leese wouldn’t do that, Howard Bernstein didn’t do that.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

A meeting with Grayling a few weeks ago - after months of invites from Burnham - was said to have been ‘frosty’, although some insiders suggested it did help to usher in a thaw in relations.

Nevertheless both Labour and Tory figures alike note government - which now has a pragmatic businessman it can do deals with instead of Greater Manchester, in the shape of Birmingham’s Andy Street - likes to be presented with a solution, rather than a string of complaints.

At this autumn’s political conference season, meanwhile, many MPs and council figures also fretted over a lack of imaginative asks from government.

“Where’s the next big idea?” asked one senior politician, noting that Whitehall is taking a close interest in Greater Manchester’s progress.

“There’s a wider implication for devolution. If you’re not prepared to take difficult decisions that would otherwise be made in Whitehall, what’s the point?”

With the clock ticking down to 2020’s mayoral campaign, arguably the biggest and trickiest choices are all due to be made in the next year.

Those will not only define the first Burnham mayoral term in the eyes of government, but - equally crucially - in the eyes of voters.

This article has now been updated to add in a link to the mayor's December 2017 transport speech, which has been re-posted to the GMCA website since the time of writing.