Councils around Manchester have failed to spend money given to them to regenerate their highstreets, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

The Manchester Evening News report:

Town halls have been urged to stop ‘dithering’ over empty shops – after spending virtually NONE of an £800,000 fund designed to save the high street.

Manchester, Stockport, Oldham, Salford, Trafford, Tameside, Bolton and Wigan were each handed £100,000 by the government a year ago to help their struggling town and city centres.

But a Freedom of Information request revealed only two had spent ANY of the so-called High Street Innovation Fund money by the end of January.

You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.