An Update on Our Meeting with Andy Burnham
We want to update everyone who signed and supported our open letter about Manchester’s mental health crisis. After more than a year of trying to get a response, we finally met with Mayor Andy Burnham on 20 October 2025 to discuss what’s happening in the city’s mental health services.
It shouldn’t take months of unanswered letters and public pressure for elected leaders to meet with the communities most affected by these failures — but that’s what it took.
Why We Wrote to the Mayor
In September 2024, we wrote to Andy Burnham about the high and rising number of Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) reports issued by coroners in Greater Manchester. These reports are official warnings after preventable deaths, and they show that serious risks are being ignored.
We wrote again in August 2025, asking for two clear actions:
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A halt to the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust (GMMH) restructure, which is being pushed through without proper consultation.
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A statutory inquiry into the deaths, unsafe care, and failures of leadership in Manchester’s mental health services.
After contacting the Mayors press office we were kindly offered a meeting.
What We’re Seeing on the Ground
The situation remains dire. People with severe mental illness in Manchester are dying at twice the rate of those elsewhere in England. Greater Manchester has the highest number of coroners’ warnings in the country. Mental health spending across the region is still below the national average, despite much higher need.
Since GMMH took over Manchester’s services in 2017, things have gone backwards — fewer local services, less continuity of care, unsafe wards, and communities left without support. Staff and families continue to tell us about burnout, risk, and fear.
This is not a functioning system. It’s abandonment with a paper trail.
The Meeting
Our CHARM team — Annabel, Angela M, Anandi, Paul, and Angela Y — met with Andy Burnham, Professor Sandeep Ranote (Clinical Director for Mental Health, NHS Greater Manchester), Melissa McGuinness (Programme Director for Commissioning Development), and Conor, the Mayor’s Health and Policy Manager.
We opened by setting out “What’s the Problem?” and “Our Vision” — using data, experience, and stories from families and frontline workers.
The meeting lasted 75 minutes instead of the scheduled 45. The Mayor listened and acknowledged that Manchester’s mental health services have been underfunded for many years.
“Back in 2009, when I was Health Secretary, we already knew Manchester was underfunded,” he said. “The services have never been what we would want them to be. The community mental health strategy needs to be co-produced — we’ll see what we can do.”
Professor Ranote said the voice of service users should be central and offered to include CHARM in the ICB’s Mental Health Clinical Effectiveness and Governance Group. She also said the ICB’s Quality Team could look at the rising number of PFDs.
We welcomed these comments but made it clear that token gestures aren’t enough.
“We don’t want to be an add-on,” said Paul Baker. “We want a real change in approach — one that tackles inequality, asks ‘What happened to you?’ instead of ‘What’s wrong with you?’, and puts care back into the heart of mental health.”
We also raised the examples of alternative community systems such of Trieste, where services are open, community-based, and non-coercive — showing that a rights-based approach can work in practice; Open Dialogue, the Hearing Voices Approach and other ways of keeping people safe without hospitalisation, such as Host Family sand Shared Lives.
Andy spoke about the Live Well programme, which aims to fund community-based support through voluntary groups, saying it could “break down silos” and “build from communities.” He ended the meeting by saying he would return to us with ideas and another meeting in two months time.
Our Reflections
Andy described some of what he heard as painful, at the end of the meeting he said he was excited by the opportunity to create systemic change, he said it was a great way to start the week.
The issues we raised are deep-rooted, and real progress will depend on transparency, accountability, and action. It was important that this meeting finally happened. Listening is not the same as change.
The mental health crisis in Manchester is not a matter of poor communication — it’s the result of years of underinvestment, centralised management, and political failure. While people talk about strategy, families are still losing loved ones to preventable harm.
We will continue pressing for:
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A pause on GMMH’s restructure until proper consultation takes place
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A public inquiry into preventable deaths and unsafe care
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A rights-based, democratic approach to rebuilding mental health services
As Angela Young said at the end of the meeting:
“We hope this marks the start of genuine change — but it has to move beyond talk.”
What Next
We’ll keep you updated as things develop and share any response from the Mayor’s Office. In the meantime, we ask everyone who signed the open letter to keep spreading the word and holding local leaders to account.
We know Manchester can do better — but only if we stay organised, visible, and persistent.
Read or sign our open letter here
Contact us:
Community for Holistic, Accessible, Rights-Based Mental Health (CHARM)
41 Old Birley Street, Hulme, Manchester M15 5RE
Email: charm.mentalhealth@gmail.com
