'We may be the smallest Greater Manchester borough, but we won't be ignored - I've already kicked off'

A Greater Manchester council leader says he ‘kicked off’ with chiefs over what he claims is a ‘deficit in support and investment’ for some boroughs by the region’s combined authority.

The comments by leader councillor Ged Cooney came as members of Tameside’s executive cabinet on Wednesday (September 27) formally agreed to establish a Mayoral Development Zone which encompasses Ashton town centre, Ashton St Petersfield and Ashton Moss. The move follows in the footsteps of neighbouring borough Stockport, which has already established a Mayoral Development Corporation and used it to drive various regeneration projects in the town.

The Ashton development zone is included as one of six ‘growth locations’ in Greater Manchester, according to the cabinet report, as part of a strategy which seeks to ‘rebalance’ the region’s economy by ‘accelerating the economic growth and competitiveness across the northern areas of GM’. “A number of GM local authority areas, including Tameside, perform significantly worse overall than the regional centre and southern areas and this is forecast to continue to worsen unless there are co-ordinated interventions to address this,” the report to cabinet states.

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Coun Cooney, who has led the town hall since May 2022, told the meeting he had ‘kicked off’ at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) over what he said was a lack of investment in Tameside compared to other areas of the region.

“When we got the trailblazer [deal] what I was saying was, I want levelling up in Greater Manchester,” he said. “This is a