Greens pledge to give empty shops back to the community in Greater Manchester to bring high streets back to life
Green candidate Geraldine Coggins: “40 years of neoliberalism has blighted the places we call home. I will make our high streets once again the beating heart of our communities.”
The Green Party’s candidate for mayor Geraldine Coggins announces today she will revitalise high streets by bringing empty spaces back into use for the community, to support local economies and to fix the failure of Labour’s developer and profit first model which has concentrated growth in Manchester city centre with unaffordable luxury flats.
Today’s high street announcement follows Geraldine’s pledge on Friday to deliver 20,000 genuinely affordable and publicly owned homes.
High streets in towns across Greater Manchester are struggling as growth and investment is piled into the city centre.
Centre for Cities (2025) analysed the high streets of the UK’s 62 largest cities and towns. Wigan was ranked 8th highest in terms of proportion of empty high street shops, with 16.3% of shopfronts lying empty.
Geraldine will set up an Empty Shops Team to enable the boroughs to make best use of the powers they have, including Compulsory Purchase Orders, to take over empty properties and this will be co-ordinated through Town Centre Partnership Agreements.
The Greens will also set up a Community Development Fund to help councils and community groups buy vacant properties.
Geraldine Coggins said, “40 years of neoliberalism has blighted the places we call home.
“As mayor, I will make our high streets once again the beating heart of our communities. I will create a new task force to give the boroughs the expertise and co-ordination they need to use their powers to take over empty shops and to end the scandal of land banking. The mayor’s investment fund will be used to help communities buy empty spaces to make all of our high streets the economic, social and cultural hearts of our towns.
“No more empty shops. People over profit. I will end the failed Labour model which puts developers profits above people and communities.”
Geraldine will launch her full manifesto for Greater Manchester Mayor on Thursday.