GREATER MANCHESTER’S MAYOR IS ELECTED BY THE PUBLIC. SO WHO DECIDED THE PUBLIC SHOULD NO LONGER BE ABLE TO WRITE DIRECTLY TO THE MAYOR?

THE MAYOR HAS AN EMAIL ADDRESS. IT SENDS YOU BACK TO A FORM.

Andy Burnham gave the address out himself and asked people to write to him in confidence. Write to it today and an automated system tells you to submit your correspondence again, through a web form.

I WENT LOOKING FOR THE WRONG STORY

I set out to show that the Mayor of Greater Manchester had spent nine years hidden behind a contact form.

The evidence went the other way.

Burnham gave the address out himself. On 26 March 2020 he posted the.mayor@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk from his own account.

The next day GMCA published a story of its own. Burnham had asked members of the public and employees to write to him in confidence about companies flouting Covid guidance.

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More than 300 emails arrived in two days, about more than 150 companies. His words on that page: since asking people to contact me in confidence to share their experiences, I have received more than 300 emails. The page ended by telling people they could email him, and promising that all correspondence would be treated in strict confidence and complainants would remain anonymous.

That address still exists. What has changed is what happens when you use it.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW

Yesterday I sent my open letter to Bev Craig at that address.

It was not rejected or undeliverable. The system received it and acknowledged it at 09:25.

The subject line of the reply reads ACTION REQUIRED TO PROGRESS YOUR MAYORAL ENQUIRY.

It thanks me for writing, then says that to enable a response I must choose one of four links.

• Invite the Mayor to an event
• Invite the Deputy Mayor to an event
• Submit correspondence, general enquiries and feedback
• Make a formal complaint

The action required is mine. I wrote to my elected Mayor at the address her predecessor gave out, and was told I had not done it properly. An address that does not exist is a gap. An address that receives your email and sends you back to a form is a system.

IT IS NOT ON THE PAGE MARKED CONTACT

Go to the GMCA website today and look for a way to write to her.

There is a page under Contact Us headed The Mayor. It confirms that Bev Craig OBE took office on 3 August 2026. It offers a form to invite her to a meeting or an event. It offers the press office for media enquiries. It offers a sign-up for her newsletter.

And then, in its own words, "For everything else, use our enquiry form."

No address. You can subscribe to what she wants to tell you in one click. There is nowhere on that page to send her anything.

The Deputy Mayor's page carries a link reading "email the Deputy Mayor." It takes you to the same web form.

WHEN DID THIS CHANGE?

In 2020 the Mayor asked people with serious concerns to email him, and 300 of them did. In 2026 that same address answers with instructions to fill in a form.

I cannot date the change. GMCA can.

So these are the questions, and every one of them has a documentary answer.

• On what date was the automatic reply introduced on that address?
• Who authorised it?
• Does an email sent there reach the Mayor's correspondence team if the sender never completes the form?
• Is the original email logged as mayoral correspondence, or discarded unless it is resubmitted?
• How many emails have been received at that address and redirected to the form?

There is no comfortable answer available.

If the redirection was introduced under Burnham, the question is why the mayoral address he publicly advertised was turned into a gateway to a form, and how much correspondence went into it.

If it was introduced around the arrival of a new Mayor, the question is why one of the first changes made was to make writing to her harder.

SHE ALSO HOLDS THE POLICE POWERS

This is not only about a mayoralty. Bev Craig holds the Police and Crime Commissioner functions for a force pursuing 1,099 suspects for the organised rape of children.

Two other mayors hold the same transferred functions.

South Yorkshire took them on in May 2024. The old commissioner's website still carries a banner telling you where the functions have gone, with the Mayor's policing email and a phone number, so that nobody is left stranded.

West Yorkshire publishes two addresses. One for policing and crime, one for the Mayor.

Greater Manchester took those functions into the mayoralty as far back as 2017 and now publishes neither.

Every Police and Crime Commissioner office I checked publishes a direct address. Thames Valley publishes one with a ten working day commitment. Suffolk publishes an email and a phone number. West Mercia publishes an email, a postal address and its office hours. West Midlands publishes an email and a phone number.

WHO THIS IS FOR

I found the address in a committee paper. Most people cannot, and should not have to.

Think about who writes to a mayor holding police powers.

A mother whose daughter is being groomed and who has got nowhere with the police. A survivor who wants the person responsible for policing to know what was done to her. Somebody whose complaint about an officer has gone round in circles for a year. A witness who is frightened. A family who have lost someone.

An email lets you write in confidence. Burnham promised exactly that in 2020. All correspondence will be treated in strict confidence, and complainants will remain anonymous. Three hundred people wrote to him on that basis in two days.

A form gives you none of it. Your words go into their system to be categorised, routed, closed and counted inside the building, and nobody has said who reads them or what happens to them.

GMCA does not publish figures showing how many mayoral enquiries it receives, how many are answered, how many are forwarded elsewhere, or how many concern child sexual exploitation. Nobody outside that building can audit any of it from the information GMCA publishes.

The mayoralty was created to put a named, directly elected person at the head of regional power. Councillors and MPs across Greater Manchester routinely publish email addresses. The Prime Minister has a published route. The Chief Constable's force has a contact page. Even the King has a correspondence address.

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS

Bev Craig did not create the system I ran into yesterday. However, she now owns it. She either acts now, or demonstrates to all of us, just exactly what is taking place here.

More than two million people were entitled to vote in the election that put her there. This office was created so that regional power answers to a named person on a ballot paper rather than to a committee. Those two million now have a form.

And so their is no avoidance of my position, I believe this is just another step towards the destruction of democracy implemented by what more and more people are describing as the Manchester Mafia.

Craig now must issue instructions ensuring

1. her the.mayor@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk is published on the page marked Contact.
2. Let correspondence sent to it be treated as correspondence.
3. Publish a separate address for the policing and crime functions, as West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire both do.

I doubt very much she will ever tell us when the Mayor's email address was turned into a route back to a web form, who made that decision and why. But she does have the power to fix this,

None of this requires legislation, a review, or anybody's permission. If it is still like this in a month, it is no longer something Bev Craig inherited. It is something she has chosen to keep.

For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.

Now the harder fight begins.

Andy Burnham is no longer the Mayor of Greater Manchester. He is the Prime Minister. That does not place him beyond scrutiny. If anything, it makes scrutiny more important than ever.

As Mayor, Burnham commissioned a series of Assurance Reviews across Greater Manchester, including one in my hometown of Oldham. They were presented as a search for the truth. They were nothing of the sort. They were cover ups of cover ups that allowed those responsible to escape proper accountability.

Don't take my word for it. Even former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver has described what happened in Oldham as 'nothing short of a cover up'.

Three boroughs of ten were reviewed. Seven were never looked at. His own review team asked for the minutes of the meeting that closed down an investigation into 97 identified suspects, was told they could not be found, and accepted it. Operation Hexagon ran under his mayoralty and his policing powers, and he has never answered a single question about it.

Despite every effort to stop us, we forced a National Inquiry. Now Burnham and others are attempting to rewrite the history of what happened under their watch.

At present, the inquiry has made no commitment to examine Burnham's own role or the decisions taken during his time as Mayor. That must change before the Oldham investigations begin.

And now the office he left has passed to Bev Craig. She led Manchester City Council while inspectors found its material was reaching detectives so heavily redacted that some pages carried only a few words. She has never publicly named Augusta, Green Jacket, Edison or Victoria Agoglia. She has held the police and crime powers for a week.

I have asked her to do three things. Write to her Chief Constable about the men who have gone to Pakistan. Investigate Operation Hexagon. And write to Baroness Longfield demanding the whole city region is investigated, not one town at a time.

I will publish what she does. I will publish what she does not.

That is why this campaign cannot slow down now. Which is why I need your help to be able to continue.

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Should we succeed, politicians will go to prison. Even if there is only the smallest chance of this happening, isn't it worth your support?

Raja Miah MBE