SMALL-TOWN GOES TO NATIONAL STAGE – Burnham has so far disclosed little of his team’s work on a first 100-day plan

For Britain’s next prime minister, Andy Burnham, a sprawling car park in the centre of a former cotton-manufacturing town in northwestern England represents everything wrong with prior development projects that have hollowed out UK town centres.

He wants to ​reverse that process by using public money to pump-prime housing, transport and urban renewal to attract the scale of private investment needed to rebuild such towns, with a focus on providing for the needs of ‌the local population.

Burnham, who ran Greater Manchester as its mayor from 2017 until June, is expected to become Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade on Monday, replacing Keir Starmer.

He has so far disclosed little of his team’s work on a first 100-day plan, or of his wider vision of how he plans to govern.

Yet at least 10 officials, former aides and people who worked with him told reporters plans for places such as the town centre of Middleton, which locals describe as having become little more than a “drive through” because of the large car park and two major roads dissecting it, offer ​a starting point.