From: Leon Friend,
Managing Director, Hueck UK

In early May 2017 six city regions in the UK elected metro mayors, or ‘combined authority mayors’. This election had the potential to dramatically alter the political structure of the UK and decision-making powers are already being devolved to different regions.

Amongst the most high-profile people to be elected as a metro mayor was former Labour leader candidate Andy Burnham, for the Greater Manchester region.

With cities such as Bristol and Manchester already growing at an incredibly fast rate, the structure of the new combined authority – comprising of local councillors and chaired by each region’s metro mayor – is designed to continue this expansion. Importantly, this new structure provides local authorities with a bigger say in the decisions which affect their constituents and themselves.

We’ve already seen works beginning on the HS2 project and other major infrastructure projects this year and, with sizeable investments being put aside for the development of city regions, we are likely to see new buildings and transport links appearing all over the country. Many of these schemes will require quality aluminium products for their construction and this opens up a wealth of opportunities for those of us who are in the industry.

Indeed, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority is already promising to build 1,184 new housing units across 9 different sites in their region, the West Midlands is working to will become home to a new arena by 2020.

The devolution bill, which allows the creation of these metro mayors, is also very flexible and could facilitate the devolution of even more issues from the national government to local authorities in the future. This means that even more opportunities are likely to arise for aluminium suppliers and manufacturers as local authorities are given more and more power to invest their grants where they see fit.

At Hueck, we have already supplied our systems to many projects in central London and Manchester this year. These projects include London’s Parliament House residential tower, the ‘mini-Manhattan’ development, and the Stratford Plaza.

We look forward to seeing what new opportunities the city regions and their combined authorities will offer the aluminium and construction industries.