Stockport Isn’t Shit: But housing is sparse and it’s driving Stopfordians away
Despite increasing attention being shone on Stockport in national media, with The Times picking it as ‘one of the best places to live in 2023’, demand for housing in Stockport is not a new phenomenon.
In a housing strategy document released for 2016, Stockport Council’s opening gambit consisted of five simple words: “Stockport faces a housing crisis.”
It continued: “For many people finding accommodation in Stockport is almost impossible.”
This will have influenced the decision to designate a portion of Stockport town centre as Greater Manchester’s first ‘Mayoral Development Corporation’ (MDC), but as residents wait with baited breath for new developments to come to fruition, sadly, those planning documents published in 2016 still ring true for many in the town today.
Robbie Cowbury has a keen interest here. He moved to Manchester from London in 2017 and lived in Withington and Northern Quarter before looking to buy in the more affordable area of Edgeley, just on the outskirts of Stockport town centre.
He works for a charity tackling homelessness in Greater Manchester and has campaigned as a Liberal Democrat candidate in local elections for the Edgeley ward twice, so he’s acutely aware of how people in Stockport are experiencing housing issues.
“Housing quality is probably more of an issue that comes up for me than housing cost is,” he said, “but housing affordability is not off the radar.”
Supply of housing in areas like Edgeley is short. At the time of writing, Rightmove had just 12 properties listed for rent, and only eight of those were under the £1000pcm mark.
He continued: “In a few instances, people worrying about rent increases, and people having rent increases layered on them without seemingly any pushback.
“But lack of supply is absolutely and categorically driving both those factors.”
This is precisely what the MDC was designated to address, turning a brownfield site of dilapidated unused mills and commercial units to potentially provide up to 3,500 new homes.
There are mentions of affordable housing in those plans but so far there has been no firm commitment to an amount.
Robbie said: “It’ll be interesting to see, and there’s a few factors that I’d be really keen to keep an eye on, and campaign on, like obviously one is the amount of affordable or maybe even social rent housing.
“The higher that number can be, the better, just from the point of view of my day job.”
Robbie says that the fear that he hears most prominently on the doorstep is not for the currently-housed generation, but what the picture might look like for the next generation in Stockport.
He said: “The people I speak to when I’m knocking on their doors, obviously people who are housed, and in general can afford their housing.
“The things that I’ve heard concerns of are where their kids are going to live, whether their kids are going to be able to afford to live in the same places they are.”
Just down the road from where I met Robbie, this very scenario is currently playing out.
Jake Farnworth works for a high street bank in the town centre and his partner, Steph, from Liverpool, makes a good living in TV set design.
Upon Steph earning a six-month contract in Gorton, just north of the Stockport boundary, the couple looked for a short-term let nearby to provide more space than is available at Jake’s family home.
After over two months of searching, they found nothing.
Such is the short supply of housing in Greater Manchester boroughs, Jake and Steph, two hard-working and successful young professionals, have to settle for makeshift sleeping arrangements.
Jake said: “We stay on a mattress down in the living room, which is fine to be fair.
“Obviously at first it was a bit like, you know, I didn’t really want her staying all the time because it’s not great having to stay in the living room, but it worked out okay.”
The pair’s search focused predominately on Reddish, Cheadle Hulme, West Didsbury and Salford Quays, as Jake felt that central Stockport is more of a buying than a rental market.
It was the pair’s first time in the housing market, and what they found was a cut-throat industry where, even for rental properties, to stand a chance you constantly have to monitor your phone, register interest as soon as a property lands, view and put an offer in for the property, all within a 48-hour period.
Even then, some luck is required to be successful.
Having avoided the rental market around central Stockport, I asked whether he felt it would ever be feasible to buy a house in his hometown instead.
“I don’t know whether it would be, because I think Stockport’s an up-and-coming place and the prices are just going to keep going up and up and up,” Jake said. “If I was going to stay in Manchester area, I would love to live in Stockport, but I would probably go to somewhere like North Manchester, seems to be a lot cheaper.”
It seems the fears that Robbie has heard, from parents worrying that their children won’t be able to afford to stay in Stockport, are materialising.
Jake continued: “The whole reason Stockport’s so expensive is because it’s a nice area for one. Two, it’s up and coming in terms of the Markets and obviously they’re doing the bus station up, they’re having apartments put in at Sainsbury’s and the viaduct, so it’s like a mini-Manchester in a sense.
“It’s crazy. I’ve lived here all my life and all of a sudden, I’m thinking I can’t even live here because of the price.”
In the end, due to the length of time it was taking to find a property and the short-length contract Steph was on, the couple eventually abandoned their search.
Many areas are battling a housing crisis, but it can feel particularly pronounced in Stockport, as residents feel the triple-whammy of a national housing crisis, increasingly strong local transport links and an improving social scene.
There is little doubt Stockport is on the up, but it could mean some Stopfordians are on the out.
