A liveable and zero-carbon city
Ensuring Manchester is a great place to live with sustainable, safe, resilient and cohesive neighbourhoods is crucial to us fulfilling our 2025 ambitions. This will be achieved by providing a range of high-quality housing options in clean, safe, attractive neighbourhoods, and by maintaining widespread access to high-quality cultural, sporting and leisure facilities. Pursuing a zero-carbon future with cleaner air will also help to create attractive neighbourhoods where people are happy.
Housing
Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, Manchester continues to try and meet the varied housing needs of all its residents by developing a diverse supply of good-quality housing available to rent and buy that is well designed, energy-efficient and affordable. During the pandemic, homes continued to be delivered at scale, with more new homes built in 2020/21 than in any year since 2008. The demand for housing from our most vulnerable residents has not diminished and has become more acute, with growing numbers on the housing register and in temporary housing.
Zero-carbon
Manchester is committed to becoming a zero-carbon city by 2038 at the latest and has set a carbon budget for its direct carbon emissions, setting out how much CO2 can be used between 2018 and 2100. Over the past year, a range of projects and initiatives has been delivered to progress our zero-carbon ambitions. Our direct carbon emissions have significantly reduced in recent years, but the city is not yet decarbonising at the required pace, and collective and urgent action is now required.
Recycling and waste
We continue to be committed to recycling more of the city’s waste, but it's anticipated that the recycling rate in 2020/21 will fall, as residents have spent - and continue to spend - more time at home, therefore producing more waste. Fly-tipping also increased during the pandemic as household waste increased. We continue to work closely with communities and partner agencies to address littering and fly-tipping through a process of enforcement and education, together with a programme of direct action in partnership with the local community.
Our parks, libraries and galleries
Manchester’s parks saw a significant increase in visitors as they became more important than ever during the lockdown. Many cultural organisations - including libraries and galleries - curated diverse, high-quality and popular online programmes during the pandemic, and in many cases reached higher visitor figures than face-to-face events. Libraries also set up two initiatives to support digitally excluded residents to become confident online users in their own homes.
The voluntary sector
Volunteers and voluntary-sector organisations became more important than ever during the pandemic, supporting vulnerable residents and helping the city to recover. The Voluntary and Community Sector delivered the COVID-19 Impact Fund and distributed £745,000 to support the mental health and wellbeing of priority resident groups and £50,000 to support victims of domestic violence and abuse.