"If 2024 was a year of new partnerships, preparation and planning – 2025 will be a year of delivery"

The next 12 months will be about continuing our strong track record of delivery. This will be challenging, but challenge drives innovation.

At a national level, 2024 was a year of considerable change. For some parts of the market there has also been significant uncertainty and challenge.

However, the last 12 months has been a year of real progress for Muse across the North West region. By working closely with all our partners, major delivery milestones have been achieved across several of our places, whilst we continue to develop an incredibly exciting pipeline.

At the start of the year, we completed the delivery of Eden in Salford, the first design reviewed NABERS 5.5 star building in the UK which is covered by Europe’s largest living wall. Shortly after, we completed our first Passivhaus certified homes at Greenhaus in Salford. We quickly followed up by starting on site with Willohaus, which will provide another 100 affordable and Passivhaus certified homes for the people of Salford. We’ve broke ground with Salford Rise, obtained outline planning consent for the Innovation Zone, which alongside Willohaus, has marked a major step forward on Crescent, the £1 billion opportunity being delivered by ECF in partnership with Salford City Council and the University of Salford.

Alongside our partners at St. Helens Borough Council, we have made great progress with the town centre regeneration, which started on site in 2024 and will be moving forward in 2025.

We are delighted to have been appointed as Manchester City Council’s Development Partner for the town centre regeneration in Wythenshawe and we continue to make big steps forward with our places in Blackpool, Bury, Crewe, Oldham, Stockport and Tameside.

If 2024 was a year of new partnerships, preparation and planning – 2025 will be a year of delivery.

Indeed, there must be a sense of urgency if we are to meet ambitious, collective targets for the delivery of new homes, inclusive growth and investment.

As place-based regeneration begins to progress away from city cores, we have a real opportunity to positively impact people’s lives. Whether that be through employment and training, quality new homes, better infrastructure or attracting new investment. Inclusive growth should be the foundation of what we do in 2025.

It’s our long-term partnership approach which will underpin this. Working together with the public and private sector we can best target and shape regeneration. We can use our skills and resources to take the strain and deliver based on trusting and long-term relationships.

To enhance our ability to deliver, we recruited 14 people into our team in the North West throughout 2024, evolving our already talented, energetic and diverse team further, bringing with them new ideas, different backgrounds, approaches and perspectives, all of which will improve what we do and how we do it.

The Muse Academy, which launched in 2023, has really started to take off, and we have our first apprentice, Raheim, and first graduate, Abiola, starting to make a real impact in our business. We are determined to offer more opportunities for young people in the communities where we are working. This has seen us form a new partnership with Oldham College, to support its T-Level students, who we look forward to welcoming back into our business at the end of January.

I am also incredibly excited about the opening of the Empower Youth Zone in Salford later this year, we are a patron donor of the Youth Zone and look forward to working with them to offer opportunities for the young people of Salford.

The next 12 months will no doubt be challenging, but we will embrace these challenges positively, and strength will lie in our partnerships. As we confront these challenges, they will inevitably drive innovation, with new and better approaches. We know it won’t be business as usual but the year ahead looks exciting in the North West.