Aside from homelessness, it is probably the hottest political issue in Manchester today.

Affordable housing is fast becoming as contentious a topic here as it has long been in London - and in particular, the lack of it within the new developments shooting up in the city centre.

Of 15,000 recently-built Manchester city centre homes analysed in a new report for Greater Manchester Housing Action, not a single one was classed as ‘affordable’.

In order to afford the mortgage payments on the average new city centre flat, it found people would need to be earning £10,000 more than the average Manchester wage.

For many that will perhaps come as no huge surprise. But why is it happening?

To understand, it helps to look at how the situation has unfolded.

Sign up to receive Jennifer Williams' Manchester Memo newsletter to keep abreast of the major political issues of the week

Theoretically, the council’s policy says all Manchester’s new housing developments of more than 15 homes are supposed to consist of at least 20pc affordable units - or the developer has to provide a financial contribution in lieu of that.

Since Manchester and Salford’s post-crash development took off in earnest a few years ago, city centre developments have been allowed to duck the requirement, however.

Initially, developers simply said that their profit margins were too slim to be able to make any of the apartments affordable, or to make a contribution that could see cheaper homes built elsewhere to make up for it.

In Manchester nobody - apart from planning officers in the town hall - could disprove it, since the financial ‘viability’ assessments used to evidence it are kept private, even from most councillors.

(Other town halls, including Salford and several London boroughs, do publish theirs. But Manchester council says that its officers carry out robust assessments of the figures and cannot release them due to commercial confidentiality.)

(Image: Simpson Haugh architects)

As a result, planning report after planning report repeated a version of this sentence: ‘The developer has indicated that to provide any affordable housing would make the project unviable.’

Backbench councillors found themselves unable to challenge the claim, since they had no access to the financial assessments.

The issue was highlighted in a report by Shelter last year, which said Manchester had one of the worst outcomes in the country for getting affordable housing into its schemes. Every time viability assessments were used by developers in Manchester during 2015/16, it had resulted in no affordable housing being built at all, it pointed out, arguing they were simply being used a tool to duck requirements.

“What this research reveals is the scale at which developers are able to use legal loopholes to protect their profits and dramatically reduce the numbers of affordable homes available for people,” said the charity’s chief executive Polly Neate at the time, estimating that Manchester had lost nearly 500 potential affordable homes that year as a result of the tactic.

Around the start of 2017 - after increasingly irritable councillors started asking questions - there was something of a shift.

There’s still no affordable housing being included in city centre developments, but now planning reports are more likely to say the developer will negotiate a financial contribution - known as a Section 106 agreement - towards cheap housing in another part of Manchester instead, once planning permission has been secured.

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

This, too, has been a growing bugbear for councillors.

Planning committee member Councillor Basil Curley has repeatedly demanded to know how much money the council is expecting to get from developers before he can take a decision on whether to grant permission. That information hasn’t been forthcoming, however.

“I’m not happy or content to continue with this thing where you’re not prepared to talk about it, because we don’t know how much we are being short-changed - and that’s quite important to us,” he told planning officers at December’s meeting.

“There’s no reason, I think, that we can’t have ballpark figures given to us, because it will give us a feel. This is the only opportunity we have on the planning committee to argue for Section 106.”

Not knowing the amount of affordable housing cash being asked of the developer puts the panel ‘at a massive disadvantage’, he added.

After being told again by the council’s head of planning that the council was still in negotiations over the development in question - Talbot Mill on Ellsemere Street - and could not give councillors a figure, Coun Curley persisted.

“I fail to understand why there’s this secrecy,” he said.

“Council policy is 20pc affordable housing on new estates and development. When I’m asked by people out there why and I tell them what you say, it doesn’t really make any sense at all. I keep raising this because it’s really important to us.”

(Image: Eddie Garvey)

Interested to know what actually happens once planning permission is granted to high-profile developments - and whether those negotiations lead to anything fruitful in terms of new affordable housing - the M.E.N. entered a Freedom of Information request to the council, asking about some of the biggest residential schemes to have had approval in the last year.

Had any of them, in the end, coughed up?

In most cases, the answer was yes - but the money won’t be spent on providing affordable housing, either in the city centre or anywhere else.

The huge Owen Street skyscrapers currently being built off Deansgate, for example, have provided a financial contribution, but that is being spent on providing new public space around the tower blocks. The same applies to Circle Square, the huge £750m development on Oxford Road’s former BBC site, as well as Manchester New Square, on the corner of Princess Street, and most of the apartments being built around the old Granada Studios site at St John’s.

In other words, some of the really big housing developments in the city centre - many of which have been propelled forward by public loans from the Greater Manchester combined authority - are now agreeing to pay up through Section 106, unlike a couple of years earlier. But the town hall is choosing to prioritise the cash from many of them for new paving and public space rather than affordable housing.

That strategy is laid out in many of the town hall’s overarching planning blueprints for specific areas, including Circle Square, St John’s and New Cross, one of the next big areas to be redeveloped in the city centre, where the council’s new framework specifically states all contributions should go on improving the surrounding public space, not on affordable housing.

Some of the recent big developments we asked about ultimately signed no 106 agreement at all.

Angel Gardens, the £128m skyscraper going up on the corner of Rochdale Road at NOMA, did not provide any kind of payment.

Murrays Mills, which the council redeveloped itself into new housing with its investment partners Abu Dhabi United, did not provide one either, because - according to the town hall - of the higher costs associated with overhauling a listed building.

The lack of affordability in Manchester’s booming city centre and its border in Salford are scrutinised in a new report commissioned by Greater Manchester Housing Action from Dr Jonathan Silver, a housing academic at Sheffield university.

He analysed a sample of 25,000 new homes built in the city centre and its border in Salford in recent years to see how many could be classed as affordable.

In the case of Manchester, the answer was none, while in Salford he could pinpoint five. Had all those new developments actually comprised 20pc affordable homes, as per the theoretical town hall policy, they would have created more than 5,000 new cheap units.

At the same time, just eight per cent of those in Manchester had resulted in a Section 106 contribution, while in Salford the figure was 35pc.

In Salford alone, that meant developers had avoiding paying around £18m in Section 106 fees, he says - but it’s impossible to know how big that figure would be in Manchester, because they don’t publish their financial assessments.

(Image: Mark Waugh)

Either way, concludes Silver, the resulting lack of affordable housing in the city centre boom is not by accident but a direct result of several years of policy designed to encourage development after the crash.

“This represents an extraordinary situation in which affordable housing is being purposefully excluded from central Manchester, central Salford and Salford Quays, despite thousands of new units being constructed,” he writes.

Meanwhile, the lack of bank lending in the UK has seen the city tap into ‘staggering’ levels of global investment, adds the report, attracted by soaring rental returns that vastly outstrip London. Roughly half of the new Manchester homes analysed by Silver had been funded by international wealth, including big players from Singapore, Germany, China and the Middle East, some of which operate through off-shore vehicles with limited financial transparency.

The overall effects of such a model are clear, he believes: the apartments are primarily assets for investors, not homes.

“The lack of contributions provided through Section 106 agreements or the delivery of affordable housing means that many of the benefits of housing have been taken away from local residents and communities to provide millions in profits for developers and the new financial actors using this housing as an asset in multi-billion pound portfolios,” he concludes, adding that it leaves local authorities ‘open to the charge’ that they are failing to create balanced communities.

Anyone looking to buy an average new city centre apartment would probably need to be on around £36,000 a year in order to cover the mortgage payments, according to his analysis, nearly £10,000 more than the average Manchester salary.

While criticising both councils, Silver notes Salford council does collect around five times more than Manchester in affordable housing contributions.

“Political will can be an important factor in how much money is collected,” he adds.

Manchester council is unapologetic about its approach to housing in the city centre, however, arguing it isn’t the right place for affordable units.

Planning reports describe areas such as Great Jackson Street, one of its next big city centre regeneration targets, as ‘inappropriate’ for affordable or social housing. In other cases, such as New Cross, they argue there is enough nearby already in areas such as Miles Platting.

The town hall largely views the boom in city centre developments as a way to meet growing demand for market-rate rental flats - a demand which is, at the moment, undeniable - while putting new affordable homes in areas such as Hulme, Ardwick and the regenerated West Gorton. Were it to target affordable housing in the city centre instead, it argues, the cost would result in fewer units than if it puts them somewhere else a little further afield where land values are lower.

Fundamentally, the council also wants to increase the proportion of higher-value housing in the city. Currently, a third of Manchester’s housing is social housing, while three quarters of its homes are in the cheapest council tax bands.

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

Manchester council also points out it has raised £1.6m in Section 106 contributions over the last two years, which has been placed into a new affordable housing pot.

It gets all the money it can from developers, it insists.

“Section 106 negotiations are robust with every development using expert analysis of the market-place, but high and ever growing development costs in Manchester can make creating genuinely affordable homes in the city centre – that Manchester people can afford – very challenging without significant subsidies,” says Councillor Bernard Priest, deputy leader.

“In the last two years, we have secured more than £1.6m for affordable housing in the city with further and significant contributions in the pipeline.

“However, 106 contributions aren’t only for affordable housing and they are sometimes used to provide high-quality public realm, infrastructure or highways improvements – representing a huge investment in the city by developers. As a result, the development standards in Manchester are among the best in the UK.

“Manchester is not geographically a large place, and importantly there are swathes of affordable housing very close to the city centre and employment opportunities, either within walking distance or a short journey on public transport.

“This is where our affordable homes investment is being targeted, creating new high-quality affordable homes in the heart of existing communities, close to jobs – and crucially, where council investment can help build more affordable homes for more Manchester people.”

Not everyone is satisfied Manchester council is doing enough to get affordable housing contributions out of developers, however, while others disagree that the city centre is ‘inappropriate’ for cheaper homes.

In echoes of the recent row in Haringey, north London, there is growing discontent within the city’s Labour party about the town hall’s strategy, some of which, as happened at December’s planning meeting, is spilling out into the public arena.

Meanwhile, Greater Manchester Housing Action believe the findings of Dr Silver’s report are damning.

Isaac Rose, GMHA’s spokesman and a Labour party member, says it presents a ‘mountain of evidence’ that shows Manchester’s housing boom has been to the benefit of developers and wealth investors, rather than residents.

“Through massive influx of foreign investment, housing units in the city have become assets for the rich rather than affordable homes for the majority of us,” he says.

“This hasn’t happened by accident, but by active-enabling by local government through cheap access to public land and favourable deals for developers. In this context, the failure of the council to adequately enforce Section 106 and build affordable and social housing is especially damning.”

Salford council also comes in for a beating in the GMHA report.

Much of Manchester city centre’s current boom has of late spilled over into the city next door, through major redevelopments in areas such as Middlewood Locks and the quays. But while Salford does appear to have a significantly more substantial track record on squeezing payments out of developers - which it says it does partly by clawing back the cost later if their schemes turn out to be more profitable than originally claimed - the schemes themselves have still provided virtually no affordable units.

Unlike Manchester town hall, however, the council says it isn’t happy about the situation.

Salford mayor Paul Dennett believes the part of the problem is that government sees housebuilding as primarily the responsibility of the market, including global capital, meaning councils have far less ability to influence strategy or build than they should.

“A mixed housing market should accommodate a role for public investment, whilst regulating markets to ensure we build truly affordable housing that genuinely helps us meet need," he says, but stresses the council is also updating its own approach to respond to the lack of affordability around the border with Manchester.

“Salford’s locality plan is being updated in June to take into account the fact there’s increasing values near to the city centre, which has changed. Last time we did the plan, affordability wasn’t necessarily such an issue, and we want to address that.”

Dennett says he is actively seeking to avoid the kind of ghettoisation parts of London are often said to suffer.

“It’s definitely really important to try and get some affordable units into the areas seeing huge amounts of development,” he says.

“One of our big things is about gentrification and protecting existing communities. The slogan underpinning our housing strategy is ‘no ghetto, rich or poor’.”

In the meantime, anxiety around the lack of affordable homes in the centre of the conurbation is likely to keep growing, particularly when the ongoing development is so visible.

Tensions within the local Labour party are not going away either, not only over how to address it, but whether it needs addressing at all.

Greater Manchester Housing Action are in no doubt it does. They believe, like Silver, that the current situation is unfolding by design, not accident, and it now wants Manchester council in particular to change its approach - enforcing section 106 far more strictly, ploughing all the money back into housing and publishing its viability assessments.

“Finally we want genuine democratic control over planning policy, and a planning framework and housing strategy that puts truly affordable homes at its heart,” says Rose.

“We believe that with this new evidence, it is high time the council leadership change tack to address this growing crisis.”