Housing loans granted while Burnham was mayor investigated by councillors

Loans made to property companies - including three controlled by Manchester City's Abu Dhabi owner - while Andy Burnham was Greater Manchester mayor are being investigated by councillors.

About 50 developers have been lent more than £1bn between them from a fund managed by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) since 2015.

John Leech, the chairman of the GMCA's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, told the BBC concerns had been raised about the transparency of the process to approve the loans.

"We just want to be clear that there is a transparent rather than an opaque process," said Leech, who is the Liberal Democrat opposition leader on Manchester City Council.

He said the approval process had been criticised as "very opaque in the past and that it's not necessarily been clearly understood why X was successful and Y wasn't".

A GMCA spokesperson said it was supporting the committee with its enquiries.

The money came from the Greater Manchester Housing Investment Loan Fund (GMHILF).

The fund was set up in 2015 with an initial £300m of government investment to help developers build new homes across Greater Manchester.