In the staid world of local government, where town halls were traditionally seen by ministers as supplicants of Whitehall, Sir Howard Bernstein stood out as a rare public servant determined to break the mould of civic passivity.
As chief executive of Manchester city council for 19 years, Bernstein, who has died aged 71 after a short illness, was instrumental in transforming his native city from what he once called the doldrums of the post-industrial 1980s into Britain’s second biggest commercial and business centre, pulling in billions of pounds in investment.
The new skyline of the city, with 27 towers up to 65 storeys high built in central Manchester alone since 2018, and at least a further 20 under construction, is a testament to the resurgence of a city once labelled the 19th century’s “cottonopolis”.
But Bernstein’s principal legacy lies in a string of daring projects and initiatives that set Manchester apart from its more cautious counterparts. He was the municipal entrepreneur par excellence, prepared to challenge the centralist mindset of the London-based governing class.
His achievements seemed endless. In the 90s alone, he prepared the way for the 64-mile Metrolink tram system; the rebuilding of the inner-city Hulme housing estate after the demolition of huge, brutalist concrete crescents; the Bridgewater concert hall; and the nearby convention centre in the former Midland rail station, which brought international conferences to the city.
But it was the city’s bid for the 2000 Olympic Games – bold to some, foolhardy to others – that laid the foundations for arguably the most transformative period in Manchester’s recent history. A vast derelict area in the east of the city was earmarked for a stadium, velodrome (now the headquarters of British Cycling) and related sporting facilities.
Working in partnership with council leaders, Bernstein used Barcelona’s 1992 Olympics as a model for Manchester, and a delegation visited the Catalan city. With Bernstein’s help, the Guardian published a special supplement interleaved into its northern editions. While the bid proved unsuccessful, it spurred a new wave of optimism: the east Manchester site was subsequently transformed for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Bernstein was adamant that the 2012 London Olympics (he was a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority) would never have happened without Manchester’s successful organisational experience of the 2002 Games.
Born near the city centre, in Cheetham Hill, he was the elder son of Miriam and Maurice Bernstein. His father, the son of Russian immigrants, sold raincoats from a room above a launderette. His was, he recalled, a happy childhood, growing up in a vibrant Jewish community.
After Temple Hill primary, then Ducie high school (later gaining an external degree through London University), he arrived at Manchester town hall as an 18-year-old office boy, and stayed there for 46 years – which he did not find particularly remarkable. As a “proud Manc”, why would he want to work anywhere else? The truth is, many were eventually keen to visit him as the Manchester brand grew in importance.
His early promise – and audacity – came to the notice of Graham Stringer, the former city council leader and latterly local Labour MP when, as a junior officer in the early 1980s, Bernstein successfully challenged expansion plans for London’s Stansted airport as anti-competitive – and certainly against the interests of Manchester airport, which the city bought. The airport, with two runways – unlike Stansted – has proved a handy cash-cow for Manchester.
Bernstein rose to become assistant chief executive in 1986 and deputy in 1990. Working with Labour council leaders – first Stringer, then Richard Leese – the team took a pragmatic approach to working with a Tory government, to the unease of the Labour hierarchy, and Bernstein engaged the then environment secretary Michael Heseltine to work with him on the Hulme regeneration project.
After the devastating IRA bombing in June 1996 – which destroyed the Arndale shopping centre and, literally, lifted the roof of the magnificent Royal Exchange, the world’s former cotton trading exchange – Bernstein drew on that relationship to bring Heseltine, now deputy prime minister, to the city. The £100m subsequently authorised by Heseltine for the rebuilding was used to lever hundreds of millions more from business through a newly created public-private sector city development company. Leese succeeded Stringer in 1996, and Bernstein was appointed chief executive two years later.
The Commonwealth Games site, originally called Manchester Eastlands, is now dominated by the Etihad Stadium, home to Bernstein’s beloved Manchester City, owned by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a big local investor. One of Bernstein’s regrets was a failure to persuade the Football Association to use the stadium – which, he ensured, is owned by the city council, and leased to Manchester City – as a new national stadium and what he called the “Wembley of the North”. “I put a strong case to them, ‘Why must it be in London rather than the north?’, but they wouldn’t have it,” he once told me.
Another missed opportunity, according to Bernstein, was the BBC’s move to MediaCity in Salford Quays rather than to what he thought would be a more prestigious site in Manchester city centre.
The editor of the Manchester Evening News, Sarah Lester, spoke for many in the city when she posted on X: “I’ve never come across anyone with not just the vision, but an unmatched ability to get things done.”
That view, however, is not universal. Last year, Save Britain’s Heritage thought the prospect of 51 more tower blocks – whether granted planning permission or in the pipeline – further threatened the city’s “rich and vibrant character told through its buildings and rich history”.
For all that, however, Bernstein’s legacy stretches beyond the relatively narrow boundaries of the city itself to the wider metropolis of Greater Manchester, a combined authority representing 2.8 million people and headed by an elected mayor, Andy Burnham, since 2017. The significance of the office was underlined in a devolution deal championed by the then chancellor George Osborne in which some Whitehall powers, notably health and social care, were devolved to the mayor and the new Greater Manchester combined authority. Burnham is in no doubt that Bernstein was instrumental in pulling together local council leaders, across the political spectrum, to gain agreement for a metropolitan authority equal in status to Greater London.
After retirement in 2017, Bernstein was a strategic adviser to Deloitte and an honorary professor of politics at Manchester University. He was also a strategic investment adviser to Manchester City’s parent company, and honorary president of the club, as well as of Lancashire cricket club for a decade. He was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Greater Manchester in 2017, and knighted in 2003.
He is survived by his wife, Vanessa, by his children, Jonathan and Natalie, from his first marriage, to Yvonne Selwyn, which ended in divorce, and by three stepdaughters, Danielle, Francesca and Dominique, and seven grandchildren.
• Howard Bernstein, public servant, born 9 April 1953; died 22 June 2024
