Manchester cleans up with airport investment

Manchester City Council will receive the second part of a special dividend from Manchester Airport in two weeks time. The authority has already been paid £11m of the dividend, which relates to the airport’s purchase of Stanstead Airport earlier this year. Another £7m will be paid in October.

And the council is drawing up plans to spend the entire amount on a “cleaner and greener” city. Richard Paver, city treasurer, said that the investment aimed to improve the environment without generating ongoing costs. Some work will be done on changing behaviour. For example new litter bins will be installed, but a programme will also run to encourage people to use them, said Paver.

“The economic benefit is in making the city a nicer place,” he explained. “We’re the second most visited city outside London (we were swamped last night with a Manchester United game and someone stopped me asking where he’d be able to find a hotel tonight and the answer is don’t bother looking) – so there is economic benefit in changing the whole environment of the city to make it cleaner and greener so that even more people will come and visit it.”

Manchester’s investment in the airport is long-held. “It became an aerodrome after the war so I imagine the council became involved in the 50s or something like that,” said Paver. The clean and green programme will be Manchester-wide, he added. “There isn’t just a city centre focus to this though, in the last few years with the cuts we’ve had to make we haven’t managed to maintain the environment to the standard we would have wanted to, so it is about a step change, it needs to be a self-sustaining greener and cleaner city.”

Nine other local authorities form the shareholders of Manchester Airports Group. One of them, Wigan, has seen some pressure to sell its stake to bolster services, but the council has pointed out that the investment generates a £1m per annum return. Other UK airports including Luton and Newcastle, are owned by their local authorities: in Newcastle’s case seven local authorities hold 51% of the airport.