As devolution advances across England, Greater Manchester’s experience of Mayoral Development Zones offers valuable lessons for combined and local authorities considering how this regeneration tool could support their own growth ambitions.

Mayoral Development Zones (MDZs) have become an increasingly important part of the regeneration toolkit available to combined and local authorities.

Greater Manchester has been an early adopter, with several MDZs already established and others emerging following early successes. As devolution continues to advance across England, Greater Manchester’s experience offers valuable lessons for combined and local authorities considering how similar models could support their own growth ambitions.

If you’re a combined authority considering establishing an MDZ, or a local authority that’s been asked to develop one, what does the designation actually achieve? And what needs to happen to turn it into a useful vehicle for regeneration and delivery?

What’s the point of a Mayoral Development Zone?

Strip away the terminology and an MDZ is fundamentally about bringing things together.

Regeneration areas often boast several programmes, strategies, projects or funding streams. Plans for housing, transport, infrastructure and town centre renewal can sit alongside a multitude of individual development opportunities in the pipeline.

The challenge is getting them to all pull in the same direction and turning those moving parts into one coherent regeneration programme.

While MDZs don’t have the same statutory status as Mayoral Development Corporations (which come with additional powers including land acquisition, construction and in some cases, planning decision making), they still provide a valuable framework for defining and directing the many organisations, projects and investment decisions involved in regeneration.

An MDZ therefore occupies a useful space. It can provide focus, profile and coordination without requiring the more formal structure of an MDC. Having been closely involved in helping to set them up and seeing them work in practice, we’re sharing three ways in which MDZs can help propel regeneration ambitions forward.

Bringing focus and impetus

Your starting point might be a struggling town centre where there is no up-to-date strategy for regeneration. Conversely, there may be plenty happening, but not the strategic oversight needed to bring it all together.

For places with several regeneration priorities already in play, one of the biggest benefits of an MDZ is its ability to consolidate them. We’re supporting Wigan Council to establish Leigh MDZ for exactly that purpose: to bring various existing regeneration activities together under one common direction so that all efforts pull in the same direction.

An MDZ provides a framework around a defined place, giving the mayor, combined authority, local authority and other public and private sector partners a shared vision, priorities and programme around which they can coordinate investment and delivery. That sends an important signal both to Homes England and the market. A place with a clearly articulated vision, political backing and a credible route to delivery is an attractive prospect to funders and developers.

Our role in Wigan has included helping to define the vision for the zone, which was established in March 2026. Now, we’re helping the local authority team move the programme from concept to operation, advising on setting up a governance structure, and laying out the route map for next steps.

Bringing people together

Regeneration is a team sport.

A well-structured MDZ creates a forum where organisations that don’t routinely align, such as the combined and local authorities, transport bodies, health and education partners, Homes England and the private sector, can be drawn together. Each brings different responsibilities, priorities and expertise.

But effective collaboration needs structure. Who needs to be involved? What belongs at board level and which issues need working groups? And who is ultimately responsible for making decisions and moving individual projects forward? These are some of the important practical questions we help authorities answer.

Our work can include stakeholder mapping, establishing boards and working groups, developing detailed governance models and terms of reference, and defining the steps needed to take an MDZ from designation into operation.

Ashton’s MDZ demonstrates that approach in practice, drawing organisations together around a common regeneration programme. That structure provided a setting for partners to collectively address issues such as risk, viability and determining early intervention priorities.

Creating momentum to build upon

For some places, a MDZ may be all that’s required to kick start confidence and momentum. But for others, it can be the beginning of something bigger.

Because the model is non-statutory, it provides flexibility to establish a coordinated approach relatively quickly. But, it can also help partners ascertain whether stronger intervention or additional statutory powers may be needed, functioning as a stepping stone to an MDC.

Hive is supporting Tameside through this transition by advising on the MDC’s emerging governance, powers, resources and funding arrangements. We’re helping the existing MDZ Board evolve into a Shadow MDC Board, and progressing priority sites, market engagement and delivery workstreams across Ashton and Stalybridge.

MDZs create valuable momentum, too. By creating the conditions needed to attract public-sector funding, a MDZ helps build confidence in an area’s prospects. Seeing visible progress on the ground through early MDZ-backed interventions encourages further private sector investment in areas that may have been previously overlooked. And, as well as the grant funding needed to deliver projects, MDZs can also attract essential capacity funding for consultant support.

Learning from Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester has been the poster child for devolution for more than a decade and MDZs form part of the delivery infrastructure that has developed alongside it.

As combined authorities elsewhere in England consider how similar approaches might work in their own regions, the MDZ model offers a brilliant first step. Its non-statutory status means it can be set up without the statutory processes an MDC requires, while still providing a vehicle for building a vision and establishing important processes and partnerships.

MDZs work best when they combine pace with credibility. That means getting the fundamentals right early: the vision, governance, programme, stakeholder alignment and investor proposition.

We’ve supported local authorities to establish and operate MDZs in Greater Manchester, from initial visioning and stakeholder mapping through to governance, business planning, market engagement, funding strategy and delivery. That means we understand both the strategic case for creating a zone, and the practical work required to make one function.

Do you need a route map to get your Mayoral Development Zone up and running? Get in touch and we’ll help you chart a credible plan for delivery.