April 2014
Featured in this insight: IT & telecommunications, Local & regional government, Media & publishing
Survey: One in three respondents from ‘near Manchester’: A Manchester Evening News survey of 4,000 readers infers that even now people associate themselves with Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire or a local borough – but not with Greater Manchester as a whole.
40 years after the creation of Greater Manchester, which was a major political moment for the region, does anyone truly identify with it?
Of those who live in Greater Manchester – but not Manchester itself – just one in five describe themselves as living in Greater Manchester. Another survey commissioned by BBC Radio Manchester returned the exact same figure.
More than one in three respondents to the Manchester Evening News poll prefer to say they are from ‘near Manchester’, while 25% would say Cheshire or Lancashire. Among respondents, four-fifths (78%) of people see Hale as in Altrincham or Cheshire, but not Greater Manchester
According to the M.E.N readers, Heywood is definitely in Rochdale – despite upheaval when the boundaries were changed. But for Middleton it’s less clear, with a third classifying it with Rochdale and more than a quarter seeing it as Manchester.
In the 60s there were huge uproars over the union of Salford’s five towns: Eccles, Worsley, Swinton and Pendlebury, with Irlam and Cadishead and Salford itself under the one name, with Worseley feeling little affiliation. But nowadays people (nearly two thirds) see both Worsley and Swinton as part of Salford and the rest fairly evenly distributed between Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
Finally the BBC found one in five people think Greater Manchester should be scrapped, but a third think it should have its own regional major.
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