Use the below search options at the bottom of the page to find information regarding recent decisions that have been taken by the council’s decision making bodies.
Alternatively you can visit the Officer and Mayoral decisions page for information on officer delegated decisions that have been taken by council officers.
As part of the second phase of the
mayor’s IsThisOK? Campaign, a preliminary campaign phase will
be delivered to supplement the existing contract and campaign
raising awareness of coercive and controlling behaviour before
delivering the rest of a pre-agreed contract, awarded to Agent
Marketing previously.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 12/05/2025
Effective from: 08/05/2025
Decision:
GMCA is seeking to award Agent Marketing
£26,832 to provide an additional, preliminary phase to the
gender-based violence public campaign. This would be delivered via
a contract variation, varying an existing contract already in place
with Agent Marketing.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The reasons for the decision are:
Chambers of Commerce:
At the most recent GM Contest Board, it was reported that there had
been a 70% increase in Prevent referrals of which most were
‘violence fixated’ rather than being led by a
particular ideology.
This was further discussed at the May 2025 Police and Crime Leads
meeting where Community Safety Leads supported the idea of a Round
Table event, in order to better understand the issues locally, the
National policy direction and intervention, provision and resource
implications. To this end, the Deputy Mayor has agreed to
facilitate and chair an in person Round Table on the issue,
attended by senior LA Prevent, Channel and CSP leads, and senior
representatives of partner organisations, such as GMP, CTPNW,
Probation and others.
The Round Table will cover:
a. Volume of referral and cohort profiles
b. National policy direction
d. Governance
e. Support and interventions for individuals.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 12/05/2025
Effective from: 08/05/2025
Decision:
The Safer Stronger Communities team will make
the following payment to GM Chambers of Commerce:
Chambers of Commerce:
A payment to be made of £480.00 to book a room at GM Chambers
of Commerce, Manchester for 45 attendees to host the June 2025 GM
Prevent & Serious Violence roundtable chaired by the Deputy
Mayor. This booking is for all morning. No space within GMCA is
available on this date to accommodate meeting attendees.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
Advanced manufacturing originating in Oldham
with environmental benefits and export potential. The company
recycles industrial waste that would otherwise end up in land-fill
sites. The adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques will help
the business to increase product output and the amount of PVC it
recycles.
The Combined Authority gave approval on 28 March 2025 to give
delegated authority to the Combined Authority Chief Executive and
the Combined Authority Treasurer, in consultation with the
Portfolio Lead Leader for Investment and Resources, to approve
funding requests for projects in the absence of a Combined
Authority meeting at the end of April 2025 and approve any urgent
variations on amounts and terms for already approved loans.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Executive
Decision published: 08/05/2025
Effective from: 16/05/2025
Decision:
Approve a £500,000 loan to Heyside
Plastics Limited, in order toto support the business in its
transition to implementing more advanced manufacturing
processes.
Lead officer: Nicola Ward
In line with the GM Complex Safeguarding
Strategy 2024-2027 (Priority 1 – Implementation of the
Tackling Child Exploitation Principles) and the interim conclusions
provided by HMICFRS during Part 4 of the GM CSE assurance review, a
new peer review programme has been piloted with Manchester and
Wigan, and has started to be rolled out across GM.
To embed the voices of survivors within the feedback, and ensure it
is at the heart of proposed systemic changes, we are commissioning
the Reign Collective to be part of our Peer Review Panel. Through
the lens of their lived experience, they will support local
authorities to finetune their action plan and secure better
outcomes for young people.
This initial payment will cover the self-assessment of the two
pilot areas. Further payment will be made at a later date for the
following 8 areas
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 07/05/2025
Effective from: 01/05/2025
Decision:
GMCA Complex Safeguarding wishes to pay
£600 from the Complex Safeguarding Budget for The Reign
Collective to take part in our revised GM Peer Review
Programme.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The Deputy Mayor has committed to provide an
agreed amount of financial support to both Adult and
Children’s Safeguarding boards in 2025/26
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 07/05/2025
Effective from: 06/05/2025
Decision:
The ten Local Safeguarding Boards for Children
and the ten local Safeguarding Boards for Adults will receive a
payment as set out in the schedule below. Total value
£351,635. This increased allocation includes an inflationary
uplift of 2.6%.
The work of the Safeguarding Boards will support GMP through the
Strategic Vulnerability Board and at a local level in the areas
of:
• Support the delivery of the GMP Child Centred Policing
Strategy
• Shared Data Insights - MFH data for children and young
people /care homes. We currently don’t have the specific
details for children and young people's homes between 16 and 18 and
would value more data from partners.
• Shared Training through safeguarding boards with local
practitioners. This will upskill police officers and neighbourhood
teams at a place level.
• SCR reviews - learning and continual improvement.
In view of this the Deputy Mayor has agreed to make a 12-month
payment to Safeguarding Boards for the period April 2025–
March 2026.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The GM Schools Competition encourages young
people to creatively explore how to raise awareness of and prevent
child exploitation amongst their peers, utilising
technology/digital tools. The aim of this project is to amplify
young voices, to support them to present innovative ideas, and to
work jointly with them to shape real-world solutions inspired by
those directly affected by child exploitation.
The final event on Thursday 8th May will be an opportunity for the
selected finalist teams to pitch their project ideas
“dragon-den style”. The students will face a panel of
judges, composed of the Deputy Mayor, the Co-director of the
Institute for Children’s Futures, the Co-Director of the
Reign Collective, a lived experience-led organisation, and 2 young
leaders from Unity Radio who have recently been involved in a youth
voice project in partnership with children open to Manchester
Complex Safeguarding Team.
By involving young people in the Panel, but also in the audience
and as team finalists, we are ensuring that this event is truly
youth-led.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 07/05/2025
Effective from: 06/05/2025
Decision:
GMCA Complex Safeguarding wishes to pay
£100 to Unity Radio for them to support two young people to
be involved in our GM Schools’ Competition Final event, as
judges on our panel.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
Community Safety Partnerships are in the final
year of a three-year agreement. The Deputy Mayor has agreed a 2.6%
uplift to the grants in recognition of inflationary pressures and
the governments safer streets mission.
The decision and conditions covering the three-year agreement,
remains in place. This decision covers the change to the
allocations in 2025-26.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 07/05/2025
Effective from: 01/05/2025
Decision:
In the final year of the current three-year
grant agreement, the 2025-26 allocations will be increased by 2.6%.
This represents an increase of £102,800 to the Deputy Mayor.
Details of each allocation are included int he Background
papers.
The new amounts are set out below, paid as an advance
payment:
• Community Safety Grant
• Voluntary and Community Sector Grant
• Hate Crime Grant
These payments, are dependent upon:
• Receipt of financial monitoring reports in each year with no
unallocated underspends exceeding £15,000 in total.
• District Community Safety Partnership approval of the grant
agreement in each year.
• Confirmation of the approval of the spending proposals by
the district Community Safety Partnership as part of the local
governance process, with quarterly updates, thereafter, shared with
the GMCA and a financial report be provided to GMCA in February of
each year with actual spend to January and projected spend to March
of that financial year.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
STEER provides one to one mentoring for young
people aged 10-17 at risk of serious youth violence and child
criminal exploitation across Salford, Bolton, Wigan, Trafford,
Tameside & Manchester. Utilising specifically designed
interventions and positive activities, it aims to
“steer” young people down a legitimate path helping to
improve resilience, motivation and reduce risk taking behaviours.
Mentors support each young person to create their own plan and set
goals. They also help young people to improve pro-social skills and
develop coping mechanisms.
STEER transitioned from a pilot study to an efficacy study in 2023,
a positive progression through the defined stages of YEF that all
YEF commissions are subject to. Progression is not guaranteed and
was a marker of the project’s success. However, almost all
YEF programmes are subject to a cessation of funding for a period
of 12 months or longer at the end of the efficacy study before
transition to an effectiveness stage is approved. The STEER
programme reached the end of its efficacy stage on 31st March 2025,
and despite engagement between the Deputy Mayor and YEF to
highlight the dangers of ceasing funding for any period, YEF will
cease funding until they confirm the effectiveness stage can begin.
YEF ceases funding for programmes at the conclusion of the efficacy
study to allow for results to be collated and assessed to inform
and influence the effectiveness stage. Therefore, this
£84,000 grant funding seeks to match fund contributions from
Salford Foundation’s own reserves to continue the STEER
programme in all 6 districts in which it currently operates until
the effectiveness stage can begin. The VRU’s contribution
includes £7,000 from the devolved funding budgets of each of
the 6 districts in which STEER operates.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 07/05/2025
Effective from: 06/05/2025
Decision:
GMCA (Violence Reduction Unit) wish to award
Salford Foundation £84,000 via a grant funding agreement to
fund a continuation of delivery for the STEER programme delivered
across 6 districts of Greater Manchester in financial year 2025/26
following cessation of funding from the Youth Endowment Fund
(YEF).
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The Programme Challenger Board is the
executive function of the Programme Challenger partnership in
Greater Manchester. Membership of the Challenger Board comprises
senior managers from key partners from the public and third
sectors. The Challenger Board scrutinises partnership progress
against the implementation of the Greater Manchester Serious and
Organised Crime strategy and provides strategic assistance to the
Programme Challenger partnership in respect of delivery of the
Challenger action plan.
The Board directs the activity of its working groups and monitors
activity of other governance groups that report into the Board.
Members commit to ensuring that the work of Challenger features on
other strategic and executive partnership boards across Greater
Manchester, including safeguarding boards and community safety
partnerships across the ten districts.
In 2023, the board underwent a review and one of the
recommendations arising was to recruit a dedicated independent
chair to drive its agenda. A competitive tender process was run,
and Elizabeth Jenkins was recruited into the role for a fixed term
period of 2 years. Elizabeth is a senior solicitor with a wealth of
experience, and the Programme Challenger team- and wider board-
wish to retain Elizabeth for a further 2 years
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 30/04/2025
Decision:
GMCA Safer & Stronger Communities
(Programme Challenger team) wish to recommission Elizabeth Jenkins
as independent chair of the Programme Challenger Executive Board
for a further 2 years from June 2025 to June 2027. This
recommission would be via a new 2 year contract to commence upon
expiry of the current 2 year contract. Costs for the 2 year
contract will be the same as the previous contract;
£20,400.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The reasons for the decision are:
Stronger Without aims to help Greater Manchester schools, colleges,
and other education and youth providers create pathways within
their curriculum and activities that remove any need for young
people to consider carrying a knife. This aligns with the Home
Office’s ambition to reduce knife crime by 50% over the next
decade.
The first stage of work in the Summer term focuses on engaging
stakeholders with the ‘Stronger Without’ concept. At
its core, ‘Stronger Without’ means stronger without
knives – and ultimately, without the need for knife arches
and wands.
When this initial phase is complete, the next stage would involve
commissioning a pilot, which would require training, meetings with
staff, and engagement with local authority officers.
‘Stronger Without’ starts with a blank canvas to
develop the influence, persuasion, relationships, and networks to
drive change in the education system led by the VRU.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 03/04/2025
Decision:
The Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit
are seeking to make a payment of £3000.00 to Glynn Potts
(former headteacher of Newman College, a high school in Oldham) to
co-lead stakeholder engagement for the VRU’s 2025
‘Stronger Without’ programme.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The Programme Challenger Board is the
executive function of the
Programme Challenger partnership in Greater Manchester. Membership
of the Challenger Board comprises senior managers from key partners
from the public and third sectors. The Challenger Board scrutinises
partnership progress against the implementation of the Greater
Manchester Serious and Organised Crime strategy and provides
strategic assistance to the Programme Challenger partnership in
respect of delivery of the Challenger action plan.
The Board directs the activity of its working groups and monitors
activity of other governance groups that report into the Board.
Members commit to ensuring that the work of Challenger features on
other strategic and executive partnership boards across Greater
Manchester, including safeguarding boards and community safety
partnerships across the ten districts. The board is chaired by an
independent chair. This meeting serves as the second quarterly
meeting of the board in 2025 and will also function as an away day
for board members to workshop priorities and actionable outcomes
for the next 12 months of board delivery.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 03/04/2025
Decision:
The Safer Stronger Communities team are
seeking to make the following payment to GM Chambers of
Commerce:
Chambers of Commerce:
A payment to be made of £835.00 to book a room at GM Chambers
of Commerce, Manchester to host the June 2025 quarterly meeting of
the Programme Challenger Exec Board. This booking is for all day,
including lunch, as board members will participate in an away day
during the afternoon to workshop priorities for the following 12
months with an external facilitator. No space within GMCA is
available on this date to accommodate meeting attendees.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The GM Schools Competition encourages young
people to creatively explore how to raise awareness of and prevent
child exploitation amongst their peers, utilising
technology/digital tools. The aim of this project is to amplify
young voices, to support them with presenting innovative ideas, and
to work jointly with them to shape real-world solutions inspired by
those directly affected by child exploitation.
The Deputy Mayor will host the finals event on Thursday, May 8th at
Manchester Metropolitan University so the winning team can be
selected. This winning team will receive a grant of £2000 for
the implementation of their idea and will meet with Andy Burnham in
person to discuss taking the next steps forward.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 28/04/2025
Decision:
Programme Challenger would like to allocate a
maximum of £2000 to make purchases to support the delivery of
the Greater Manchester Schools Competition Finals event on 8th May
2025.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
In October 2024, the Deputy Mayor approved
that The Big Life Group be awarded £72,157 as the lead
provider for the provision of the ‘Pick Up at The Gate’
Wellbeing pilot for a 12-month period from the 1 September 2024 to
31 August 2025.
As the lead provider, The Big Life Group agreed to provide in-house
triage support for referrals from pre-release Probation
Practitioners before transferring transport facilitation to On the
Out, a local Community Interest Company (nonprofit) helping former
prisoners overcome barriers and challenges on release.
On the Out actively recruit and employ ex-prisoners to support
other ex – prisoners ensuring they occupy positions of
leadership and influence using a thorough recruitment process to
manage risk. They require evidence of positive behaviour, avoid
hiring individuals with sexual, hate, or vulnerable person
offenses, and do not employ those actively in addiction. References
and Probation Practitioner permission are required for those on the
licence. Enhanced DBS checks and risk assessments are conducted,
with no lone work allowed until checks are complete. New employees
undergo induction and shadowing to ensure competency.
The vetting procedure for all providers working with HM Prison and
Probation Service (HMPPS) involves several key steps to ensure
security and suitability. However, some of the On the Out support
workers identified to facilitate transport on the day of release
have not cleared vetting to enable the access and security
required. As a result, The Big Life Group will provide extra
support and resilience to cover staff holidays and sickness.
This has increased the cost of the service from £72,157 to
£91,912.97 and additional funding of £19,655.97 is
required and has been agreed between Big Life and GM HMPPS.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 28/04/2025
Decision:
The Big Life Group be awarded an additional
£19,655.97 as the lead provider for the provision of the
‘Pick Up at The Gate’ Wellbeing pilot.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The key focus of the VRU’s Community Led
Programmes is ensuring that young people and stakeholders in a
specific locality or place come together, focussing on a
strength-based approach in the pilot sites to identify what work is
already taking place, what gaps may exist and what the
opportunities might be to address these gaps. Key to this approach
is harnessing and building on existing strengths and capacity from
within the community to develop projects and activities.
The programme is co-ordinated by a VCSE Sector Strategic Lead
(Michael Phipps) who is working with Public Sector and VCSE sector
partners to deliver the programme and is based within the GM
VRU.
This programme is about working with communities to find solutions
to problems that exist in their area. Investment is important and
there is funding available to develop and deliver solutions that
communities define and collectively agree on. The key priority is
about building trust with communities and acting upon their
challenges and ideas through prioritising a range of shared
actions. To date, the CLP is operating in all 10 areas of GM.
As part of the recently approved implementation plan for the
Greater Than Violence strategy, a new, quarterly, in person
‘action network’ is being scoped. The network will
transform the VRU’s approach to working with and for
communities. Given the objectives of the Greater Than Violence
Strategy, broad representation is a pre-requisite, including
substantial VCFSE voices. This would be known as the VRU Action
Network. The learning from this will be fed into the governance
board and back into the programme as a whole. The recommendations
from the 2023 'Experts by Experience' programme are ultimately
achieved via this project.
The extra payment of £5,984.00 has arisen due to the fact
that this work was originally intended to run for 10 weeks but has
instead continued to run at half a day a week between 16/10/2024
and 31/03/2025. This is owing to the complexity of setting up a new
GM Action Network that fits the terms of reference envisaged by the
VRU’s strategy implementation plan and sufficiently embeds
the voice of lived experience into the work of the network.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 28/04/2025
Decision:
The GM VRU are seeking to fund Bolton
Community Voluntary Sector (CVS) the amount of £5,984 for
continued support in development of a VRU Action Network provided
by x2 colleagues at Bolton CVS to be paid via standard GMCA
purchase order procedure (not grant funding).
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
The reasons for the decision are:
GMCA has seen success in their criminal justice and offender
management approach, including high desistance rates in the IOM
cohort. However, there is still high demand from those already in
the criminal justice system. GMCA aims to act quickly for this
cohort through a whole system approach, including a single front
door for services, a peer support delivery model, and the potential
to become a centre of excellence for other regions.
To achieve this, GMCA needs to understand the cost impact of the
revolving door cohort (prolific, often acquisitive crime low-level
offenders with high unmet needs) on their criminal justice
services: police, courts, prisons, and probation. This
understanding will help GMCA articulate a business case for
interventions that divert people away from or out of the criminal
justice system. This needs to be completed by the end of May to be
included in the GMCA Spending Review submission to
Government.
Newton and Xantura have partnered with the criminal justice reform
charity Revolving Doors to highlight the impact and costs of
failing to meet the needs of the ‘revolving door’
cohort—people who have frequent contact with the criminal
justice system. This work has already revealed the extent of unmet
needs among this cohort and the potential benefits of earlier or
more flexible interventions.
Newton and Xantura have delivered a range of criminal justice
assessments and programmes, working alongside HMPPS and MoJ senior
leaders. They also collaborate across the public sector, including
local authorities and health systems in Greater Manchester.
The scope of this project involves utilising existing GMCA-held and
open-source data to develop an indicative assessment of the cost
impact of the prolific offender cohort. This will be supplemented
by Newton/Xantura held data and insights about the characteristics
of the revolving door cohort to enhance GMCA’s existing
perspective.
Additionally, the project will outline the potential benefits of
various interventions for this cohort. The allocated budget for
this initiative is £49,999, with a completion deadline set
for the end of May.
The total anticipated costs are expected to exceed £250,000,
with Newton and Xantura committed to covering any additional
expenses beyond the initial budget. Further details regarding costs
and investment will be provided as scoping and contracting
discussions progress.
A key outcome of this project is for other HMPPS regions to learn
from GMCA's success and implement similar strategies to reduce the
cost impact of the revolving door cohort. This will inform
decisions on the effectiveness and scalability of interventions,
promoting best practices across regions.
Decision Maker: Director for Safer and Stronger Communities
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 17/04/2025
Decision:
Newton and Xantura will conduct a cost impact
analysis on the revolving door cohort by combining their held data
and insights about the characteristics of this cohort to supplement
GMCA’s existing view, at a cost of £49,999.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees
Operation Soteria was developed in response to
national concern around the investigation of rape and sexual
assault offences and the increasing epidemic that is violence
against women and girls.
Its aim is to increase the number of adult rape and serious sexual
assault cases reaching charge, and, in addition, deliver sustained
improvement in the criminal justice whole system response.
The programme combines practitioner knowledge with that of academic
experts, along with research insight and transformational change
support to forces. This has led to the development of the first
National Operating Model for the investigation of rape and serious
sexual offences.
Investigating rape is complex. It is one of the few crimes where a
life sentence can be given. It is recognised that GMP investigators
often lack the knowledge, skills, and experience to effectively
deal with such complex, trauma-based crime.
Decision Maker: Group Chief Finance Officer
Decision published: 30/04/2025
Effective from: 22/04/2025
Decision:
The decision is that:
The Deputy Mayor has agreed an envelope of funding to the value of
£1.1M to support the delivery of Operation Soteria within
GMP, with the purpose of:
• To improve investigative outcomes for Victims in Rape and
Serious Sexual Offences
• Develop an environment for change to enable the future
implementation of the National Operating Model
Operation Soteria - High level allocation of funding to end of
March 2025:
Deputy Mayor Allocation - £1100000
TOTAL expenditure and agreed allocation, 2023/24, 2024/25, 2025/26
= £355,067
Funding to be agreed, £744,933
£744,933 – The allocation of the remaining funding to
be agreed through a separate decision notice and business cases to
the Deputy Mayor.
Lead officer: Lisa Lees