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A council has defended the £12,000 cost of sending a delegate to an international conference on the French Riviera. Bury council said representatives from all ten Greater Manchester councils attended the annual three-day MIPIM real estate conference in Cannes in March this year. Figures published by MailOnline following freedom of information requests stated Bury council reported costs of £12,000 to send a representative to the conference. MIPIM, which translates from French as The International Market for Real Estate Professionals, is an annual conference bringing together developers from across the world to promote their areas and seek inward investment from global players. Bury council said they made a ‘late decision’ to send one officer to the conference, at the request of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), which was keen to promote huge infrastructure and jobs projects it is overseeing, including the massive Northern Gateway development, which straddles areas of Bury, Rochdale and Oldham The council added that that request was ‘in order that the whole of Greater Manchester was represented’. Mailonline stated that nationally, more than £170,000 of taxpayers’ money was splashed out on sending more than 60 civil servants and council officials to the conference. A Bury council spokesman said the officials from the Greater Manchester authorities represented the region at the conference under the ‘Marketing Manchester’ banner, a brand charged with promoting Greater Manchester nationally and internationally as a place to visit, invest, meet, and study. The council questioned the comparability of costs associated with the different delegations, saying that £9,000 of the £12,000 bill was for admission and the package they paid to Marketing Manchester, which included various events and opportunities to promote the region to investors. They have questioned whether other councils included this fee or just gave the travel and related costs of the trips when answering the freedom of information requests as other councils sent more officers than Bury did with seemingly lower costs. The council said the remaining cost were for accommodation and flights, which were economy class with EasyJet. The council added that the cost claimed for subsistence by the delegate during the conference was less than £20 a day. A spokesman for Bury council, said: “We believe this is the first year that all 10 Greater Manchester authorities attended at the same time. “This reflects the growing international reputation that the city region has built, as reflected in the major investment projects taking place across the area – not least of which is the £1 billion Northern Gateway, the largest regeneration site in the north of England and one which will create 20,000 jobs. “This will bring substantial benefits to Bury, alongside our own regeneration projects in Bury, Radcliffe and Prestwich . “We took a late decision to send one officer to the conference, at the request of the GMCA, in order that the whole of GM was represented.” Bury council said that each officer attending from across Greater Manchester ‘worked extremely long days promoting their town and region over the course of the conference’. MIPIM bills itself on its website as a conference where delegates can do ‘one year of business in a week’. The Bury council statement, added: “This conference enabled us to engage with a variety of development, funding and consultancy stakeholders from a world-wide audience in order to promote numerous regeneration schemes within Bury, which total £250 million of investment. “Part of this includes promotional and marketing activities which show the value of Bury being seen as front and centre of regeneration and the Northern Gateway. “We are acutely conscious of the need to spend taxpayers’ money wisely. “We are confident that the cost of attending this conference will be repaid many times over by the economic and employment benefits this borough will secure.” At the time of publishing GMCA had not responded to a request for comment.
