No. 10 North fiasco: Prime Minister 'struggling' to find time to head back to his beloved Manchester
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By GLEN OWEN
Published: | Updated:
Andy Burnham's No 10 North is turning into a 'fiasco' with the Prime Minister 'struggling' to find the time to leave London to head back to his beloved Manchester, Government sources say.
Mr Burnham announced the new department with great fanfare when he entered Downing Street in the summer – apparently without appreciating the volume of work required in London.
In addition, security sources say that a lack of fully vetted political staff in No 10 North means that if a national emergency occurs while Mr Burnham is in Manchester he will have to be flown to either London or Edinburgh.
Mr Burnham had decided to split his responsibilities between No 10 and GCHQ's Heron House in Manchester as part of his drive to decentralise government.
But Mr Burnham's workload – and tendency to 'waffle' in meetings – means that the time-split has become chaotic. It also means that the PM's grace-and- favour home Chequers has gone unused (see above). A source said: 'No 10 North is a bit of a fiasco so far. Andy underestimated the scale of his Downing Street workload.'
Mr Burnham's aides are understood to be frustrated by his habit of engaging in long conversations at meetings, derailing his daily schedule. A source said: 'We thought Keir was bad for spending too long talking to people, but Andy's even worse.'
A security official said that there were also concerns about the logistics of handling a major crisis from Manchester.
Government sources have said Andy Burnham (pictured on September 10, 2026) is 'struggling' to find the time to leave London to head back to his beloved Manchester
The official said: 'Even though we are using the GCHQ building, it is not equipped for a full Prime Ministerial war room. Plus there have been issues about the staffing, with a lack of people vetted at the highest security level being prepared to work from there. If the s*** hits the fan, he would have to be flown to London or Scotland.'
A Whitehall source said: 'Andy is definitely having second thoughts about going back up to No 10 North each week. He has been taken aback by the relentless schedule in London. We're now having to schedule more meetings and events for later in the week in and around No 10.
'It's making less and less sense for him to return to Manchester as regularly as he once thought possible.'
A No10 spokesman said: 'It is not true that meetings are running late, and there are not any security issues with No 10 North.'
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