Tameside Council leadership challenger Councillor Ged Cooney has broken his silence after throwing down the gauntlet to current leader Councillor Brenda Warrington.

Speaking exclusively to the Tameside Reporter, he said he had been approached to challenge for the leadership by the local Labour party and had accepted.

As a long-serving member of the council, having been elected back in 2004 as a councillor for Droylsden West, he was gracious in his praise for Cllr Warrington’s achievements as the Executive Leader of the council.

“It has to be recognised that Cllr Warrington has had to steer the council through difficult times with the collapse of Carillion and the decisions around the construction of Tameside One as well as leading us through Covid, which have been really difficult times,” he stated.

Shock news of the leadership challenge, coming on the eve of the local 5 May elections, first broke on Tuesday.    

An inside Labour source told the Tameside Reporter that long-serving Droylsden West councillor Ged Cooney, Executive Member (Housing, Planning and Employment), had officially indicated his intention to stand against Cllr Warrington. 

It comes after her controversial full council ‘bulldozer’ comments in relation to the Godley Green development and aimed at the Conservative opposition.

But the comments caused widespread consternation among residents and councillors – although the borough solicitor deemed the leader had not broken any rules. 

The inside Labour source told the Reporter: “There has been a complete disconnect between the executive Labour leadership locally and the local Labour group. 

“The ‘bulldozer’ comment was the final straw and the discontent that has been there for a number of months grew from the full council meeting. 

“We, as councillors, appreciate that a development the size of Godley Green is going to cause residents concern and those concerns have to be addressed properly and we have to answer them appropriately.” 

Although Cllr Cooney has made it clear he will stand for the leadership, no actual challenge or change of leadership will happen until after the local elections on Thursday, May 5, at the first AGM a week or so afterwards. 

Cllr Cooney has been the council’s official spokesperson on the Godley Green project since it began - with the Labour-controlled council backing the development. 

At the budget full council in February, Cllr Warrington had hit back at the Tory opposition over the project to build 2,150 homes on green belt land in Hyde, and the ‘Brenda the Bulldozer’ nickname given to her. 

Tameside Council leader Brenda Warrington speaking at February's meeting

During the meeting, Cllr Warrington said: “Godley Green, make no mistake, I will be on that first bulldozer and that is a promise.

“I will be on that bulldozer that actually starts to dig up ready to build houses on Godley Green and believe me, it will be rammed down your throat.

“It really will.”

Following the town hall meeting, her comments outraged some people opposed to the garden village project, which has garnered more than 3,400 objections.

In response to a Freedom of Information request from the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Tameside Council stated that there had been 29 written complaints. 

But Tameside’s legal chief Sandra Stewart, the borough’s solicitor and statutory monitoring officer, ruled there was no case to answer.

She said the comments fell within ‘legitimate freedom of expression and need to be heard and understood in the context of the whole meeting’, adding that councillors should be able to express their opinions in ‘forceful terms’.

Following the meeting, Cllr Warrington issued a statement in which she said: “After four years of personal abuse and harassment on this matter, I aimed my comments at those councillors who have been personally abusive, disrespectful and disingenuous in this debate.

“We are having to build houses on the greenbelt at Godley Green because of government imposed housing targets.”

Cllr Warrington, who represents the Denton West ward, became the local authority’s first ever female leader in January 2018.

She also became the first female Chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund in its 95-year history and the largest Local Government Pension Scheme in the UK.

At the time she was elected with overwhelming support, stepping into the shoes of Cllr Kieran Quinn as leader following his sad death on Christmas Day the year before.

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