Andy Burnham is a man on a mission to make housing a top priority for Greater Manchester and the next Labour government.

He believes the tragic death of Awaab Ishak should be a ‘Cathy Come Home’ moment for the region and the country and that the standard of housing in both the social and private rented sectors has been ignored for too long.

In this wide-ranging interview with HQM, Manchester’s Mayor discusses the potential impact of the trailblazer deal he has signed with government, the issues he has with some social landlords, his ‘friend’ Michael Gove and whether his beloved Everton will stay in the Premier League. Jon Land asks the questions.

Jon Land: You’ve just signed the trailblazer deal with government for Greater Manchester. What are the implications for housing in the region? Does this mean you’re a fan of Michael Gove’s Levelling Up agenda?

Andy Burnham (AB): I think it has reasonably significant implications for housing, both in terms of new build, but also improvements to the existing housing stock. On the first part of that, it does give Greater Manchester greater flexibility over the Affordable Homes Programme and, in particular, gives all 10 of our boroughs access to funding for social housing, which they don’t currently have. So, it’s quite a step forward in that respect.

JL: Are we talking about genuine social rented housing here or the affordable rent regime?

AB: A bit of both is the truth, Jon. I set an ambition for the city region of building 30,000 net-zero homes for social rent over the next 15 years, and we’re in the very early stages of that. What we’re trying to do at the moment is just understand the policy barriers to building net-zero socially rented homes, and they are quite significant. We’ve got a few flagship schemes around the city region. We’re having to find a bit of cross subsidy through public land or other things to get things moving.

The trailblazer only adds power to our elbow on the existing stock. This is becoming, I would say, a kind of top order national issue, isn’t it? Housing standards in both private rented and the social rented sector. We made a case to Michael Gove that we wanted measures to underpin the forthcoming Greater Manchester Good Landlord Charter because we think this issue needs a local focus.

“To the five missions that the Labour Party has set out, I’d like to add a sixth. And in some ways, it’s almost the foundation mission, which is housing as a human right in UK law. And not just housing, good housing, safe housing”

It’s all very well passing big pieces of legislation at a national level, but it still needs to be meaningful to our residents. Our residents need a way of knowing – which they don’t at the moment – who’s a decent landlord and who isn’t. And to be honest with you, that’s probably in the interest of landlords as well, or certainly the good ones, because they all get tarred with the same brush. There’s a lot of good landlords out there and they’ve no way of getting that recognition, whereas this charter will give them that.

In the trailblazer, there are new flexibilities around selective licensing giving us the ability to bring in licensing without recourse to ministerial decision. And there’s a very early stage proposal to consider linkage of housing standards with the question of local housing allowance paid through universal credit.

Is it ethical that landlords are, if you like, indirectly receiving public funds via tenants for rent when the landlord isn’t maintaining that home to a decent acceptable standard? It’s important to start to link those two issues because housing benefit expenditure could be quite a big driver of housing improvement if used cleverly and carefully.

Does this mean I’m a fan of Levelling Up? As I grow older, I would say I’m becoming more of a fan. Michael Gove and I have worked together a lot in the past, to be fair. We get on well. I recognise someone who actually is a doer. He gets things done, he seeks to resolve issues, he seeks to take on board legitimate issues and then tries to find solutions. He’s an effective minister and he’s good to work with. I think in terms of a process, this devolution trailblazer process was one of the most constructive processes that I’ve been involved in with any government, to be honest.

JL: I think that probably reflects the views of the social housing sector. We’ve been through so many housing ministers in the last 10 years but, actually, as a secretary of state, Michael Gove has made quite a significant difference. That’s not to say there aren’t still issues.

AB: I don’t know whether the number of housing ministers is a reflection of the sector or the government, but anyway!

JL: The tragic case of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale obviously caused shockwaves around the country and has shone a light on the poor quality of our social housing stock. A few months on from the inquest, have you had time to reflect on the case and the subsequent fallout?

AB: I can certainly say without fear of contradiction that the shockwaves are still reverberating around Greater Manchester. But when I look at what’s going on in the national media, particularly ITV’s pretty determined focus on this issue of housing standards in the social and private rented sectors, it feels finally that it’s become a national political issue, which is great, I think, and not before time.

I kind of feel that what happened with the death of Awaab is almost our ‘Cathy Come Home’ moment. I think it’s deeply sad and tragic that it took this to catapult housing standards to the top of the political agenda. But now that it has done that, I think it’s incumbent on everybody to feel the shockwaves and then turn the concern into action.

Certainly in Greater Manchester, we’re determined to do that. And the Good Landlord Charter is our vehicle to do that. The GM housing providers have made a commitment to a social rented part of the charter, if indeed we decide to have a separate set of standards for social landlords.

I think this is a challenging point, but I’m going to make it. When people hear about social landlords, they just think they’ll all be ethical and they’ll all be working to very high standards. Some of the learning for everybody through this process has been that there’s a lot of variation, if I can put it that way? Within how [social landlords] work, how they treat their residents, how they treat elected officials and councillors. Sadly, I don’t think you can make an assumption that a social landlord is a good landlord.

JL: This leads on to my next question, because I know you have a good relationship with many social housing providers. Do you feel the sector’s reputation has been justifiably dragged through the mud nationally in recent times, or do you feel that there are other factors in play here?

AB: Let me start by saying many social landlords are good landlords. I’m almost rephrasing the last thing I said there, but some are not. Has their reputation been unfairly dragged through the mud? Well, in some senses, the country hasn’t focused enough on the issue, has it? It hasn’t put enough funding into the whole question of housing standards, maintaining decent homes for everybody.

When I was a minister in the Labour government, we had a focus on housing reform, which some would say, rightly or wrongly, led to more stock transfers and ALMOs. But if I remember, it did often come with funding to maintain homes to the decency standard. That certainly was true in Wigan, where I was an MP. But that was done more than 20 years ago now. And there hasn’t been the focus on that issue of homes being maintained at a decent standard.

On Michael Gove: “We get on well…He gets things done, he seeks to resolve issues. He’s an effective minister and he’s good to work with. I think in terms of a process, this devolution trailblazer process was one of the most constructive processes that I’ve been involved in with any government, to be honest”

I’ve got a lot of time for a lot of social landlords but there’s something about culture here, and there’s something about ways of working that haven’t gone in the right direction. It can be the case when you see sectors set up arm’s length organisations or academy schools or foundation trusts: you can sometimes see an emergence of a sort of management culture. That’s not what you would want.

I think there’s an issue of excessive pay. Just let me be honest about that. There’s also an issue of excluding elected representatives and a pushing away of the scrutiny and accountability that comes with that. That’s not a healthy thing at all.

I wouldn’t want to tar everyone with the same brush, but I think to some extent or another, all organisations have got elements of these issues that they need to address, maybe some less than others.

And the risk is you get an organisation that’s in a bit of a silo, it has a lot of – let’s say – middle income professional people and can develop quite a derogatory attitude to some of the people who are their residents. And at its worst, it’s not just derogatory, it can be discriminatory.

We saw that, I think, with the Ombudsman’s findings [into the Awaab Ishak case]. I’m never somebody who wants to have a downer on a whole sector or whole group of people. However, is there poor practice within the social landlord sector? Definitely. Is there excessive pay within the social landlord sector? Definitely. Is there an unhealthy culture in parts of it? Well, yes to that as well. So there’s no point in sugar coating that. These are issues that now need to be put on the table and discussed.

JL: Presumably there’s no quick fix because there’s a number of issues at play here that are not easily resolved? I suppose trust with residents ultimately is at the heart of it all and that seems to have broken down in many cases.

AB: We do need to be proportionate and careful and balanced. And I’m trying to be but I’m also not going to hold back from things that need to be said. But absolutely, I do want to come back to the point that it is complex, it is linked to our failure as a country to prioritise housing and to the extent that where there’s been a housing debate in the last 20 years, it’s been endlessly obsessed with how many new homes are we going to build. It’s always about quantity and new-build as opposed to our existing stock.

That’s meant that social landlords have been working in a challenging environment where the policy focus often hasn’t been favourable to them. So, no easy fix but actually there are quick ways to start the process of improvement.

“The bill that a lot of people are waiting for in Greater Manchester is the Renters’ Reform Bill and that’s been promised more times than a new striker for Everton”

I can’t see any justification anywhere in the country for a social landlord to exclude the involvement of elected representatives from their work. Because councillors often are the people who know what’s going on in homes in their ward better than anybody else.

That feedback should be valued and appreciated, not greeted with a roll of the eyes or a shrug of the shoulders. Councillors are in a position on the ground, talking to people, where they can give feedback and it should be seen as helpful, rather than unhelpful. I do think social landlords need to recognise that they are operating in and around the public sphere and be open to appropriate levels of scrutiny and accountability.

JL: Do you feel the government’s getting it right with the Social Housing White Paper, the Regulation Bill and Building Safety Act? In June, we’ll be six years on from the Grenfell disaster and the pace of change, certainly from the sector’s point of view has been almost glacial.

AB: Belatedly and it’s back to my friend Michael. I think he’s given a massive impetus to these issues and I think often it takes the personal intervention of a minister to show to the world that this isn’t business as usual anymore – this is being treated differently and I think he’s done that.

It pains me to see how slowly the debate and the issues falling out of Grenfell have moved, to be honest with you. But I think laterally now there’s some energy around all of this and a sense of priority and emergency even. The regulation bill is making its way through [parliament] and I think there’s been some welcome amendments already to strengthen it. That said, the bill that a lot of people are waiting for in Greater Manchester is the Renters’ Reform Bill and that’s been promised more times than a new striker for Everton.

“Is there poor practice within the social landlord sector? Definitely. Is there excessive pay within the social landlord sector? Definitely. Is there an unhealthy culture in parts of it? Well, yes to that as well”

I was out in Moss Side at the invitation of the Great Manchester Tenants Union. I was looking at some private rented properties in the Moss Side area. What some of our poorest landlords are getting away with is just not acceptable – leaving residents in homes that are risking their lives and their health, taking large amounts of money and not being accountable, not dealing with routine issues, not being contactable. It’s an unregulated wild west.

In the private rented sector there are many good landlords trying to do the right thing, but at the moment it’s just impossible for people to differentiate. And some are really unscrupulous, handing out no-fault evictions like confetti.

JL: Would you like to be more radical with housing reform? And are there any ideas on what you would like to do if you could start again with housing policy, perhaps under a Labour government?

AB: To the five missions that the Labour Party has set out, I would like to add a sixth. And in some ways, it’s almost the foundation mission, which is housing as a human right in UK law. And not just housing – good housing, safe housing.

I’d like to develop our version of the Finnish housing first, because housing first is a philosophy rather than a project in Finland. People cannot have a good life without good housing. So, if you want people in this country to have a good life, good health, kids to have a good education and a good start in life, everyone has to have a decent home, don’t they? It’s the foundation for everything.

How do you build a healthier nation in a situation where millions of people are living in homes that are physically unsuitable or tenancies that are way too insecure, or where there’s a dysfunctional relationship with the landlord and the landlord is bullying them or doing something else to damage people’s mental health?

“I kind of feel that what happened with the death of Awaab is almost our ‘Cathy Come Home’ moment. I think it’s deeply sad and tragic that it took this to catapult housing standards to the top of the political agenda. But now that it has done that, I think it’s incumbent on everybody to feel the shockwaves and then turn the concern into action”

I’d say good housing should be enshrined in UK law, and actually, if it was enshrined in UK law that everybody has a safe home on a reasonably secure basis, I think we’d save so much public money in so many other ways. Other investments we make in the health service, in education or the benefits system will be better spent rather than constantly dealing with crisis situations.

Housing shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold that some people have and some people don’t. It’s got to be seen differently from that, especially when you’re talking about the lowest third of the housing market.

When I was in Westminster, I didn’t see it like this, I’ll be honest. But when you come at it with different eyes from the ground up, rather than looking from the top down, you just see the central importance of housing in everything that we’re trying to do as a city region.

We saw how the pandemic hit us harder than other parts of the country. And that was linked to people’s employment and people’s housing and the poor nature of both. And if you’re going to do something serious about inequality coming out of that and coming out of the cost-of-living crisis, you have to do something utterly radical about housing if you are to change things. In the queue of prioritisation for public spending, it has to be first alongside health – almost equal priority.

The thing that I would say that I’ve seen in my time in politics, under all governments of all colours, is this kind of mantra around election times that ‘we’ll protect the NHS’ or ‘we’ll prioritise the NHS for investment’. I’m not going to argue against that. But people should talk about housing in the same breath. If you’re damaging health in people’s homes, which is what’s happening in millions of homes across our country, what hope is there for the health service?

JL: Do you have any ambitions to return to Westminster?

AB: Well, I’m definitely going to stand to be mayor of Greater Manchester for a third time. I’ve got every intention of serving a full term, a third term, because myself and Steve Rotherham, Mayor of Liverpool City region, we left Westminster together to try and build something different for the north of England. The idea of returning to Westminster means going back to the status quo that I believe didn’t work for the north.

With the trailblazer, we’re now entrenching English devolution, which will actually allow us to do more about the issues that we’ve been talking about. It will allow the north of England to get more of a focus on issues that matter to us here that have never really been adequately prioritised by the Westminster system.

Steve is going to do a third term as well. We’re both in the kind of position that we’ve done good work so far, but we’ve not yet fully accomplished what we set out to do when we left Westminster.

To answer your question, would I return? Well, yes, I wouldn’t rule out a return, but it would be in that mindset, if you like, that I wouldn’t go back to a status quo Westminster. It’s got to be one that works to carry on the process of change.

I personally think if you’re going to solve the housing crisis in this country, you’ve got to rewire the country, you’ve got to give more funds and power to local authorities, combined authorities. You have to change the way our money flows around the country, because the way we’re currently set up, it’s given us the housing crisis. The Westminster system created this situation and therefore building up these new structures that Steve and I are leading are the way we solve it, rather than just heading straight back down there to carry on what we used to do years ago.

JL: Andy, final question. Will Everton stay up this season?

AB: Touch and go. If you’d asked me that a month ago, I’d have said no. You asked me that today, I say touch and go. If you look at Sean and his track record, his experience of relegation battles, maybe you think it’s more likely than unlikely, but I think it’s very tight and it’s the lack of forward options that are the worry. So, I don’t know is the honest answer.