Greater Manchester Mayoral Election Hustings for the Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) Sector.
16th July 2026, 6.45pm-8.45pm at Main Hall, Friends’ Meeting House, 6 Mount St, Manchester, M2 5NS
More info, email: info@vsnw.org.uk
How will the next Greater Manchester Metro Mayor work with the VCFSE sector?
Greater Manchester’s Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector is the backbone of our region, supporting communities and residents and driving social and economic change across all ten boroughs. As we look to the future, we bring the contenders for the next Greater Manchester Mayor together to explore the unique challenges, opportunities, and strategic priorities facing our sector and how they hope to use their power in this role to respond to them.
Candidates will set out their vision for Greater Manchester and how they intend to work with the VCFSE sector to deliver it. They'll answer pre-selected questions drawn from those submitted at registration by the broad range of VCFSE organisations attending. The event will close with candidates' closing statements.
Key themes are likely to include tackling inequality, honouring the GM VCFSE Accord, devolving power to communities, and resourcing the VCFSE to continue to shape a positive future for GM.
This non-partisan debate will be independently chaired by be Grace Dyke from Yellow Jigsaw. Yellow Jigsaw is an Award-winning community media training & agency, empowering people to share their views & stories.
Candidates invited*
Labour – Bev Craig
Green – Geraldine Coggins
Conservative – Phil Eckersley
Liberal Democrats – Richard Kilpatrick
Reform – Sian Astley
*Due to limited time for the hustings and to ensure candidates get fair chance to answer questions on a full range of matters important to the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector, we are limiting candidate invitations to representatives whose parties received a vote share of over 4% in the last GM Metro Mayoral election in 2024.
This event is organised by the *Greater Manchester VCFSE Leadership Group. We are a coalition of VCFSE organisations who work to promote the role of the 17,000+ Voluntary, Community, Faith & Social Enterprise (VCFSE) organisations in Greater Manchester. For more information, please visit our website: https://www.vcfseleadershipgm.org.uk