Tim Heatley says here is a strong demand for suburban living in Greater Manchester boroughs
A regeneration boss has set out a vision for town centre living in ‘overlooked and under invested’ areas of Greater Manchester.
Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric has hailed its Farnworth Green development as an example of regeneration in of ‘less fashionable, less thought of’ towns.
His company have recently signed a partnership with Homes England to invest £860M into similar projects which would equate to around 2,500 homes over the next 10 years.
Farnworth Green is the town centre’s flagship development of 97 homes, completed earlier this year. It is fully-let to residential tenants.
Earlier this year, the new central neighbourhood was held up ‘as an example for others to follow’ in Greater Manchester. Farnworth was put centre stage at the official launch of the new Greater Manchester Strategy, with the town’s regeneration and ‘homes on the high street’ hailed as a way forward for the region’s district centres.
Mr Heatley said Tameside, Rochdale and Bury were areas his company was seeking to invest but ‘every one of the 10 GM boroughs has got huge areas that would benefit from this approach to regeneration’.
He said: “Our gut feeling is we can all see the city centre of Manchester growing at a rapid rate of knots.
“The height and scale of the towers is like a visual dam for the amount of people moving into the place, they’re just getting higher and taller.
“Ultimately a lot of the people living there want to be in a suburb because they want better access to services like healthcare, schools and early education and access to green spaces. “They also want cheaper accommodation.”
He added: “We’ve got outrageously expensive apartments in the city centre, horrendously high rents, but that’s where the market is. At Farnworth Green we’ve got residents who have wanted to move out to the suburbs, somewhere more affordable and also we’ve got other residents here who might work in the city or nearby, a lot work at the hospital.
“In Farnworth they haven’t had access to high quality homes at a rent that’s affordable. I’m not saying it’s cheap, I’m saying that it’s a rent that can be afforded if you’re working.”
Mr Heatley said the future of Greater Manchester regeneration would see people living in the less fashionable, the less thought of, the more overlooked parts of the region.
“It’s those areas where you can create public spaces, at Farnworth Green we’ve handed back private land in the shape of a public square,” he said.
Areas where Capital & Centric are looking to invest include ‘under invested and overlooked’ areas in Tameside, Rochdale and Bury.
“These areas now need to see the benefit of the growth of the city centre,” Mr Heatley said.
“In order to make any town successful you need to attract more customers to it in addition to housing. What we’ve done at Farnworth Green is a combination.
“There’s lots of locals living here but also others who aren’t from the area, some aren’t necessarily from Greater Manchester or even the UK.
“It’s an international city region that we live in and that should be celebrated and encouraged because people coming to live here have high earning potential
“We want them to stay here and create wealth here and help regenerate towns like Farnworth from the inside out.”
