Andy Burnham pledges crackdown on poor-quality PRS homes

Reply to the comment left by David at 11/10/2026 – 20:20
Ok…I found the link on the Telegraph but it wouldn’t let me log in. I found this elsewhere:

https://www.edgenews.net/8746

This says “Andy Burnham oversaw a £55m taxpayer loan to United Arab Emirates-owned businesses while he was the mayor of Greater Manchester, The Telegraph can disclose….The money was awarded to three Jersey-based property companies ultimately controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, the owner of Manchester City FC…..He is also a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and vice president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab emirates. The decisions to issue the loans were taken in two meetings in 2017, both of which Mr Burnham chaired as mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). They are the first pieces of evidence that the Prime Minister was directly involved in decisions that favoured Abu Dhabi. Last month Mr Burnham became embroiled in a row over Manchester City after the Premier League found the club guilty of financial irregularities. The Prime Minister initially said he would be “really concerned” if the UAE decided to sell Manchester City, before rowing back on the comments, with Downing Street insisting that no one was above the rules. The UAE is appealing against the decision and has threatened to pull out of major UK investment projects in retaliation against the Premier League’s verdict. The financing for the property companies came from the Greater Manchester Housing Investment Loan Fund (GMHILF), a pot of taxpayers’ money lent to the region by central government on the basis that it would be used to tackle the housing crisis. The £300m fund was supposed to be lent to private developers to “kickstart housing projects that would otherwise be difficult to fund from elsewhere”, according to a GMCA press release in which Mr Burnham was quoted.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 12/10/2026 – 10:19
Seems to be either you lend money to the Sheikh and his mates and overlook financial misconduct or he withdraws investment from Manchester City FC .Also seems a big question about corporation tax paid on rent collection here.

Reply to the comment left by David at 12/10/2026 – 13:13
I don’t know the details of what’s going on at Manchester City and I’m not following it because I don’t follow football.

However, I do know that both regions like Greater Manchester and countries like the United Kingdom, or any of its individual nations, all depend upon investment for economic growth and prosperity. If you don’t get that economic growth then people don’t have jobs, or places to live, and the tax-take goes down so that you cannot afford to spend whatever you aspire to spend on benefits for your citizens.

However, if you take money FROM TAXPAYERS and you lend that TO OVERSEAS INVESTORS to invest in your country or your region then you aren’t genuinely encouraging investment and instead you are using a kind of off-balance-sheet financing that you would probably be prosecuted for if you were a director or an officer of a listed public company (because doing this kind of smoke-and mirrors jiggery-pokery is misleading the investors about the assets and the liabilities): Rather than ‘investing’ you are instead just creating a liability by contributing to the country’s enormous pile of debt. One day the country is punished for doing that when interest rates rise…..just as the country is punished for allowing public sector pensions to rise faster than inflation…you are mortgaging the future of your citizens.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 12/10/2026 – 13:44
I don’t follow football either, but once you take investment from other countries and allow them to take over your institutions, businesses and infrastructure you are at their mercy .This is happening particularly with China all over the world and has now happened with Manchester FC. These UAE businessmen appear to be asking the UK government to turn a blind eye.

Reply to the comment left by David at 12/10/2026 – 14:02
I don’t know anything about that….but if this quote is correct ‘The £300m fund was supposed to be lent to private developers to “kickstart housing projects that would otherwise be difficult to fund from elsewhere”, according to a GMCA press release in which Mr Burnham was quoted..’ then of course the reason why they would be difficult to fund from elsewhere is almost certainly because they wouldn’t attract much rental income or might be housing ‘risky’ tenants thereby creating a liability for the taxpayer. And so, what this would do is dump a liability on the taxpayer that would be hard to service when interest rates went up and the chickens came home to roost to s*it all over your so-called ‘investment’ (the off-balance-sheet liability you dumped on somebody else).

But if you HAD been involved in this kind of jiggery-pokery then what this shows is that you KNOW you need investment in the housing market. And if you KNOW this, then why would you be penalising small investors investing in the housing market?….why would you do this if not even 4% of the houses being built were council houses…and finally, why would you pretend that you were going to fix the housing problem by building council houses?

Reply to the comment left by David100 at 30/09/2026 – 19:32
That is the plan, though it will be combined with corporate landlords taking over the PRS.

Reply to the comment left by Jesus Diaz at 01/10/2026 – 09:09
That is the plan, though it will be combined with corporate landlords taking over the PRS.

Reply to the comment left by Bristol Landlord at 18/10/2026 – 02:46
But will this corporate takeover take place as I have heard some have withdrawn. Also if they are interested it will be in large manageable blocks not lots of properties dotted all over the country. Could be the idea is a Soviet Union styled state takeover. You will be happy and own nothing.

Reply to the comment left by Bristol Landlord at 18/10/2026 – 02:46
Even government figures indicate that corporate landlords are progressively taking over the PRS. And market research published by Property118 elsewhere on this site indicate that larger landlords are more likely to raise rents.

Reply to the comment left by David at 18/10/2026 – 11:24
I believe the first shot fired in the WoL was by George Osborne in his April 2015 Budget. Since then the economic climate has changed, the country has become poorer and the government has passed more and more anti landlord regulations. I agree that even if corporations prefer new and more manageable blocks rather than random maintenance heavy Victorian properties they will still appreciate the corrupt UK government destroying the competition. Also I would not put it past a UK government to empower the Local Authorities to confiscate landlord properties, who knows what laws they will pass after the appalling RRA. So yes we could see a Soviet style takeover of independent landlord properties, or possibly regulations forcing landlords to take on social benefits recipients as tenants while the corporate landlords get to pick the cream of the crop of more affluent renters, I really wouldn’t put anything past our incompetent and corrupt UK government, whatever their stated political position.