'Piccadilly Gardens will be well kept': vows Council Leader Bev Craig

This article has been split into parts so readers can read one element of it and return when they want.

Part one: The Drug Wall

“Are you fucking mad, you fuckwit?” shouted a man, possibly mid-thirties, who started to chase another younger man across the road. They dodged the Bee Networks’ finest in a display of nifty footwork and disappeared up Oldham Street with the hunter screaming continual obscenities.  

I was passing through Piccadilly Gardens, as were hundreds of others, on an early October evening. Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid much. If you live in Manchester or visit frequently there’s such regularity to these incidents in this area they almost don’t register beyond the initial alarm. 

According to some who can reach as far back in memory to the fifties and sixties Piccadilly Gardens was once a little paradise on earth. The flower beds were immaculate and there were signs reading ‘Keep off the grass’. In late 2025 the grass is usually of a different kind and there are other harder options available.

The most prominent location for dealers is a joyless lump of masonry, a planter, lying adjacent to the Queen Victoria statue. She doesn’t look amused. I call this The Drug Wall. There’s always someone there and given there’s no permanent police presence they  seem largely careless about the illegality or even the consequences. 

A couple of weeks before the latest plans for Piccadilly Gardens were released, Councillor Pat Karney told listeners on BBC Radio Manchester:  “I've seen all the crackability and all the rest of it. I've seen all the YouTube thing, and some of it's fair, some of it's unfair. We've got big plans though to bring back lots of features that people liked in the old days, because all the time people tell me they want to see lots more flowers, colour and all the rest of it. So…please stick with us, be patient with us…judge us when we have the regeneration plan. But then we have to work on the people plan, we've got to get these hooligans that sell drugs, we've got to get them in court and in jail.”

'Crackability' is a new one to me and sounds a fun night in an Irish pub but Karney is referring to how the area around Queen Victoria and outside Superdrug has become a twisted tourist attraction. People who probably call themselves ‘citizen journalists’ come along with smart phones or even professional kit looking for trouble and then slapping the coverage all over the internet and social media.

Whatever the motivations of the people filming incidents, and some are definitely seeking trouble, the place simply feels threatening. Bizarrely it also features one of the few children's playgrounds in the city centre. 

Part two: A permanent GMP presence? Not quite

When the Council launched new plans for Piccadilly Gardens recently there were seven main points. Tackling anti-social behaviour and criminality was high on the list.

Here’s what the plans say on the subject.

‘A strengthened police and multi-agency presence (with) a new police team based in Piccadilly Gardens. GMP (Greater Manchester Police) will announce more details in due course.  This element will also include having an enhanced presence of council, police and other agencies in Piccadilly Gardens to improve its management and ensure any issues which arise can be dealt with. In the first instance, the Community Partnership van will be used for this.’

There will also be: ‘Upgraded CCTV and improved lighting, with more coverage and sharper images to increase the deterrence of crime and anti-social behaviour.’

When I interviewed Council Leader Bev Craig about Piccadilly Gardens recently we quickly focussed on the policing.  

“There’s been a bunch of extra money from the Home Office for the police which will result in extra policing there,” she says. “There will be 21 GMP officers that will be on the ground in and around the city centre. There’s potential for a bit of extra money to help us with the CCTV and some of the crime and safety measures, if we don’t get that, we’ll have to factor that in ourselves.”

I ask her how much money has actually come GMP’s way for this increased city centre presence. 

“They don’t share the costings with me,” says Bev Craig. “It doesn’t work like that when we get an increase. They give us boots on the ground.”

She pauses and says: “You could spend £100m on that place but if you don’t deal with the social challenges that come with it you’re not going to get anywhere. You can get drawn into the aesthetics and what it looks like but if you forget those issues you’ve got a problem.”

Exactly so. So will there be a permanent police presence?

“Yes, a permanent police presence,” says Craig and then slightly contradicts herself.  “Not a police station, because they tried that ten years ago and people complained at three in the morning they didn’t have enough coppers sat at the desk. What we’re talking about is a multi-agency presence around the Gardens, and our anti-social behaviour team and the police will have people rota-ed to it. And yes there might be a time when they get called to crime elsewhere but it’s about the neighbourhood policing of Piccadilly Gardens and the side streets.”

So it's more of a bigger policing presence around the Gardens through various agencies rather than a permanent GMP presence. This doesn’t matter if it works of course but, as Bev Craig herself points out, if the policing of Piccadilly fails it’s back to square one, or rather Gardens one, and any aesthetic changes will be pointless. 

Part three: Changes seen by the end of spring '26

The new plans are pretty, a bit RHS Bridgewater and a bit Mayfield Park. The planting seems suspiciously delicate but, remember, the images are only 'indicative'. Of course, as is the way with these things, the sun is shining, people stroll around smiling, nobody is shouting "Are you fucking mad, you fuckwit!" It’s the set of The Truman Show.

What is surprising is there are only three images of what might change. There's no plan or map to give the overview and a sense of scale. Shouldn't there be more images and from more angles? For example, the press release talks of a children’s play area to match the quality of the excellent one at Mayfield yet there’s no image. Odd. 

This is small beer given a new consultation in the never ending story began in 2023, following on from images being published in 2016 and which at least gave us an overview. Why is there so little detail in 2025? Has this latest incarnation been rushed after all these years? 

Before discussing the design by Manchester firm LDA Design I ask Bev Craig for some timeframes.

She says: “Once the Christmas markets decant that’s when the guys get in and the fountain will be removed. At the same time the walls get ripped out as well. For that work to be done we’re currently talking spring.”

Spring. You heard it here. Spring ends on 31 May. Let’s see. The Queen Victoria statue was erected in 1901 and one critic described it as: ‘the most inept of any sculptural monument…ever seen in England’.

The same could be said about the most inept of any fountain ever seen in England, er… Europe, er… the world. It arrived in 2002 with "the awful bridge we've never managed to upkeep" and a massive break-your-leg trough round the edge. In its brief moments of operation kids loved it but it was as reliable as an HS2 budget and through most of its last 23 years it just squatted there eating up space, a definition of pointlessness.

The new plans have given up on a fountain. Good. We have decent water features for kids to play in at Exchange Square and Cathedral Gardens. There’s a weird trickle one in St Peter’s Square too.

The really good news is the planters, including The Drug Wall, are going at the same time so before or during spring. 

The concrete wall with the laughably-titled ‘pavilions’ on the tram station side is staying. It’s Legal & General's and not anything the City Council can do much about although: “I’ve taken as much down of it as I can get away with,” says Bev Craig, adding, “And in fairness, L&G have been helpful. I think the lights on the back of the wall have made it more pleasing.”

They have, a bit: let’s not cry over spilled milk but it was ultimately a bizarre feature to put in a city centre which we’ve regretted at leisure. You can read about the Wall here with some pictures of the lights Bev Craig mentions.

In Manchester: Shaping the City from 2004 and a big self-promotional Council tome there are four pages on the work that took place in 2002 when the Sunken Gardens were removed. The ‘construction value’ was given as £10m. The entry is headed: Piccadilly Gardens has been transformed into a bright, open, safe and enjoyable space’. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. 

A huge proportion of the original Gardens area was lost for the red brick behemoth that is One Piccadilly Gardens. The development of the building helped finance the 2002 redesign. The quid pro quo was the curious little wood between the tramlines on the Primark side of the Gardens. It was never a real compensation. 

Back to money. 

“What is the cost for the works in the early part of the new year. Have you a figure?” I ask.

“Not quite, because we have some work after Christmas about how much it’s going to cost to rip out the fountains and the walls. The paving, the grassing, the aesthetics isn’t the main cost component. We’re talking multi-millions but we’re not talking tens of millions,” says Bev Craig.

I don’t get any further with the figures. It all felt so vague on detail. It will be interesting to revisit the numbers when that ‘work after Christmas’ has been completed. For reference the budget stated before a consultation in 2023 was £25m. The one in 2016 was £10m.

Part four: Grass and flowers and mumpsimus

The Council, despite multiple failures here, insists that lawns and flowers must remain despite no other European city trying the same in a similar central space. Not many professionals or commentators agree with the Council and common sense seems to howl against lawns given the millions of grass-defeating feet savaging the space each year.

But if anything we’re going to get more ‘green’.

Point one of the Council’s seven points is ‘Putting the ‘Gardens’ back in Piccadilly Gardens – more trees, planting and floral displays.’  

Councillor Pat Karney says in the interview quoted above: “We've got big plans to bring back lots of features that people liked in the old days.”

Councillor Bev Craig puts it differently from her colleague.

“If it were sentimentality we would have gone back to the Gardens as was (with these designs)." She smiles and says: "Believe you me I’ve had lots of debates in the last six months as to what constitutes a flower and what constitutes a bush but I’m going into this with my eyes open.”

“There is a bigger point for me," she continues. "When I go to other European cities and cities across the globe, there are areas which have the classic civic square, in my view that’s Albert Square here. I genuinely think cities can cope with an interchange of a busy throughfare and some plants that don’t get trampled and a bit of grass for people to sit on. It’s not beyond the realms of public management in city squares across the world.”

Even if that were the case Manchester’s not managed to juggle the two things Bev Craig mentions for nearly quarter of a century and let’s not kid ourselves but the glory days of the old, much sentimentalised, Sunken Gardens had long gone by the 1990s. More to the point those were proper gardens, they were not trying to be a multi-functional event space.

It must be remembered Piccadilly Gardens was always an accidental solution to the problem of a large cleared site. I wrote about the various plans here from a new cathedral through art galleries to libraries. The Gardens arrived because none of the plans worked out: it was a filler. 

“I get the challenge,” say Bev Craig. “There are some who would have it paved completely, like you, but at the time when there are limited places where you can go and sit with a sandwich if you’re working in the centre…you just have to go to Piccadilly on a sunny day and it’s rammed. I think this isn’t sentimentality. The fact we’re taking the fountains out and paving that whilst adding some additional green space and planting doesn’t mean we’re turning it into a park.”

This is a fair point, about it being ‘rammed’ on good days. In that case maybe the City Council should make sure the other publicly owned green spaces benefit from more love and spread the load on sunny days. Cathedral Gardens, for example, is seemingly permanently hired out for events and one large area is covered in astroturf.

“What about events,” I say, “won’t they churn the space up and the grass will have to laid again?”

Bev Craig shakes her head: “Once Albert Square is open we won’t be putting Christmas Markets on the grass. Part of this is how you manage the whole space. At the minute there’s anti-social behaviour, people hanging about at the walls, lads playing football, a broken fountain, the whole space isn’t properly managed. But once Albert Square is open, the Christmas Markets won’t be on the grass.”

Again, you heard it here. There won’t be events on the grass in Piccadilly Gardens.

Bev Craig laughs: “Listen, if Richard (Leese) or Graham (Stringer) had taken away the name ‘Gardens’ and called it ‘Piccadilly Square’ then we might be in a very different situation.”

That’s an interesting reference to previous council leaders but isn't this her chance, a chance to change the name and change the nature of the design? At Confidentials.com we’ve always suggested, and we are very much not alone, that the place should be completely hard surfaced with lots of softening elements, in particular trees. Think St Peter’s Square without the trams. The name could be changed to Manchester Square. It would be a practical long-life solution. This article gave out all the arguments which followed from this one.

I suggest the new plans might have to be revisited sooner rather than later.

“Look,” says Bev Craig with force, “it depends on how well it’s upkept and I intend to keep it like that.”

Big statement that. It sounds like a statement of intent about how, on her watch, the new changes will be an improvement that's here to stay. 

Bev Craig continues: “No matter what we do not everybody will be happy with Piccadilly Gardens, there’s no one solution that makes everybody happy. This has been something we’ve agonised over for a long time. There is a need for a space to do a multitude of things and that’s what we’re creating here. I’m not just doing it for an easy life in the MEN. How can you get it right and feel safe so you can spend time there? How do you connect into the side streets?"

She then brings in an important observation. 

"The former Debenham’s building, the Rylands restoration will be another pivotal moment?" 

Definitely. The Rylands restoration will help improve the look and the amenity of the area. Any Piccadilly Gardens change must do the same because then it can be the cataclyst for wider development. 

Walk from the Gardens down to the station. This street, also called Piccadilly, is one of the most rundown in the city centre and yet one of the most important. It's the introduction to Manchester for so many people. There are empty plots, empty upper floors and grand plans that have never been realised (shame about this one with the Union Bank). 

Admitedly there are unintended moments of humour within the chaos here. I’m sure Smokers Paradise is a very good neighbour for the British Heart Foundation charity shop. Perhaps it's a symbiotic relationship, one leading to the other.

Nonsense aside, if the new plans for Piccadilly Gardens do work, and the results look great and criminality is reduced, it might encourage owners and developers to get to work along that strip. That would prove to be a major benefit.

For decades Piccadilly Gardens has been a gift that keeps on taking. Let’s hope it's different this time. I was once introduced to the word mumpsimus. The word has several interpretations: 'a traditional custom or idea adhered to although shown to be unreasonable or obstinately adhering to old customs or ideas in spite of evidence they are wrong or unreasonable'.

For many people that’s Piccadilly Gardens right there.

But let’s hope - cross fingers, tie fairy totems in trees, whisper magic spells and say Piccadilly Gardens three times in a mirror - let’s hope, despite the vagueness, this time the city is getting it right.

Part five: a post script

Despite the length of this article I felt something was missing. I hadn't talked to anybody at The Drug Wall,

So one very cold night last week, just after 10pm, I went to see if anybody would talk to me. As I approached, one group of four dark clad individuals moved away. Another group became aggressive when I asked questions.

One man was prepared to talk. He was from Nigeria, very articulate, good-natured, and said he’d been, legally, in the UK for three or four years.

“There are so many people coming into Manchester, they always come here (Piccadilly Gardens) because it’s the centre of town, I guess,” he said. If the wall was an area for dealing  he wasn’t saying. “I don’t know honestly. People do stuff everywhere.”

I told him of the planned changes to the Gardens. He said: “The only thing that’s constant in life is change. You know we adapt, we survive. It’s all about survival, man. That’s how we do it. Different ways of survival. You got your means, I got my means.”

This is why in any debate about Piccadilly Gardens we have to be careful.

Some of the people who slap things up on social media are clearly looking to blame immigrants for all the UK’s ills. The Gardens are an easy target because they are a focal point. Every European city of scale has such a place where immigrants gather. In Frankfurt on a visit a couple of years ago it was close to the main station, in fact so many of these types of places are close to the station. Naples is another example.   

And of course Piccadilly Gardens is not all about criminality. As Deansgate Councillor Joan Davis says: “Lots of Mancunians don't have a garden, nor do they live next door to a park. Have a look at Piccadilly Gardens during sunny weather when the grass isn't covered with stuff. Hundreds of Mancunians, families and young singles, as well as a few visitors, meet up to chat together, maybe with some food. Many people can't afford a bar or a café to sit in so they bring their own food or buy something cheap from a supermarket to sit on the grass.”

She’s right. The space brings many of the populations of Manchester together. It's one thing getting rid of the criminality and that must be done, but retaining the more communal aspect of the Gardens must be a critical consideration. 

What is absolutely certain is ‘the old days’ won’t come back, the world has changed, the economy has changed, the way people use cities has changed and in Manchester the demographic has changed dramatically. Piccadilly Gardens is going to remain a place that attracts people new to the city whatever happens there. 

We can argue about a hard surfaced square or a semi-gardens but if Bev Craig’s determination in ensuring the new plans work out and the results are policed and maintained then we might, at last, have a less controversial Piccadilly Gardens. We might.