Greater Manchester's mayor says Burnham's new powers will change lives

Greater Manchester’s new mayor Bev Craig has said Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s move to give the regions more power could “change our lives”.

The Labour candidate claimed victory in Thursday’s by-election after securing 309,525 votes over Reform’s Sian Astley, who won 157,178.

The 41-year-old will succeed Burnham as mayor, after he stood down to run in the Makerfield by-election in June. The pair appeared together at a Labour rally in Manchester after Craig’s election win.

Craig said: “For a prime minister two weeks in, to start giving powers out of Whitehall and putting it in the places that can make a difference – that can change our lives.”

She added: “I will rise to his challenge about taking the power and control that he is offering mayors like me to make our regions better.

“Because that is what it is all about.”

She said she was “excited” about the challenge and would not “stop at the levels of growth that we have achieved”.

Craig said she wanted to make “every kid” in Greater Manchester “feel they can succeed”.

The prime minister said Manchesterism was about “devolution” and “taking control of things that affect people’s daily lives, such as housing, building more homes that people can truly afford and the buses”.

“We want everyone in Greater Manchester facing the same way, pulling in the same way,” he said.

“It is a different way of doing things.”

More than two million people across Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs were eligible to vote in the mayoral contest but turnout was just under 25%.

Craig grew up on a council estate in Belfast, but moved to Manchester in 2003 at the age of 18 to study politics and modern history at the University of Manchester.

After she was announced as Labour’s candidate to succeed Westminster-bound Burnham, Craig said she was ready to “deliver the next chapter for the region”.

Her headline campaign pledges have been to freeze Metrolink and bus fares on the Bee Network and extend free bus travel to 11 to 18-year-olds.

Currently, only 16 to 18-year-olds benefit from the scheme.

She said she was committed to delivering 50,000 new homes in a mix of council properties and genuinely affordable housing over the next 15 years.

Craig said she would also launch a new £20m high street scheme, promising it would support small businesses, revitalise empty units and invest in town-centre regeneration.

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