Bev Craig launched a £20 million Good Growth High Streets Fund on Monday 10 August, announcing it on a visit to Middleton in Rochdale borough1. Local businesses and community groups will bid for high street projects when applications open later in 2026, and a taskforce sits alongside the money. She had been Mayor of Greater Manchester for nine days.
The speed comes from the plumbing rather than from urgency. Routing the money through the combined authority's existing growth programmes avoids creating a new statutory vehicle, which is what would otherwise push an announcement past a budget cycle. Craig also arrived without a manifesto event to spend, having won a mid-term contest triggered when her predecessor became prime minister, and mayors in that position buy visibility with capital allocations.
The mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) directs transport spending, sets up Mayoral Development Corporations to fund large regeneration sites, holds the Fire and Rescue budget, and exercises the police and crime commissioner powers over Greater Manchester Police, including appointing its Chief Constable2. Roughly a quarter of the electorate turned out to fill that job on 30 July, with the result declared the next day on second preferences under the restored Supplementary Vote.
Putting the first money into the outer districts rather than the city centre is a choice about which Greater Manchester the mayoralty is seen to serve. Middleton sits in Rochdale, one of the ten boroughs whose leaders sit on the combined authority alongside her, and the bidding process puts her first political test in the hands of applicants from those districts rather than of officers at the centre.
