Shelagh McNerney
Head of Regeneration - Eastern Gateway, Manchester City Council
Shelagh will be taking part in the 'Where Will the City Edges Be?' panel at the Quality of Life: Remaking the post-industrial city day conference in Manchester on Friday 4 October 2024
Shelagh has a long held interest in and experience of planning and many aspects of the UK built environment across the contrasting socio economic context since the 1980's. She left her home in Liverpool in 1983 for London to become a town planner.
She is currently working for Manchester City Council on a range of development schemes in Ancoats and Holt Town where the city is re-growing eastwards.
She has led multiple teams of investors, property experts, planners, architects, and businesses in UK cities for over 30 years and recently returned to a local authority role. She has a blend of local authority and private sector experience leading regeneration programmes within councils and with developers. She also worked for 10 years within planning and architectural practices and directly within construction companies.
She has written and undertaken research for think tanks, academic institutions, developers, construction and architecture companies and local authorities mainly in the North of England.
Shelagh trained as a town planner in the mid 1980s at Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London gaining an MPhil. She also has a postgraduate diploma in Built Environment Research from the University of Salford (2017) and completed an MA in Architectural History at the Bartlett, University College London in 2022.
Shelagh is pro-development and economic growth. She is involved in contemporary debate about the built environment and believes how building comes about is ‘the ultimate form of human self-expression’. Her working life has been associated with city and town plans from policy and ideas with investors and landowners to public/private funding, managing the implementation of specific schemes in local neighbourhoods and working to overcome the many constraints to development.
