Insider Media Limited

Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester City Council, has said the announcement last week of a development framework for East Manchester could be of greater long-term significance than the Olympics.

Speaking to Insider this morning at the MIPIM property conference in Cannes, Bernstein said: "Manchester is one of the few places outside London that major institutions will seriously contemplate and we've got to provide a framework that gives them confidence that this can work for them - they're not philanthropists.

"It will be proven in the next couple of years but 12 months of hard work has gone into this framework and I think we can create a really strong self-contained fund."

A formal joint venture has now been agreed between the city council and the super-rich Manchester City FC leading hopes that long-awaited regeneration projects can start to change the still-deprived East Manchester wards.

Bernstein said that Manchester has formulated a new approach to working with funders over long-term partnerships and that the priority is to lever in further external investment, to this and other parts of the city.

He said: "I think the vision that's been articulated is a very powerful one that will be hugely important not just for Manchester but the whole city region. If you compare it to the Olympics in East London it will be of comparable scale - in legacy terms it will be even more powerful."

Bernstein also said that MIPIM is proving more useful to Manchester in tougher times than it did before: "I think we questioned it at one point but in the last two years you've seen MIPIM at its best. The work we've been acclaimed for in developing new ideas for funding, on a place-centred form rather than scheme-based, arose out of conversations at MIPIM."

The city is today holding a Four Cities event with Barcelona, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Bernstein added: "That's one of the bigger benefits of MIPIM - you can learn so much if you're prepared to open your mind."