A new monthly travelling food festival is set to launch in Wythenshawe later this month, bringing some of Greater Manchester’s best street food traders to the south Manchester neighbourhood.
Featuring local traders, pop-up brewery bars, take-home produce stalls and a stacked stage of entertainment, the new monthly event will come from original Manchester street food festival favourites Grub.
Teaming up with Manchester City Council, the new Grub Carnival will bring top local food traders to every corner of the region – popping up at a new location in Greater Manchester every month.
The first event will take place outside the former Wythenshawe indoor market on Saturday, 23 July, with street food stalls from non-traditional dumpling purveyors Desert Island Dumplings, burger purveryors Rad Burger and Italian foodies Il Forno.
Go Thief have been confirmed as one of the first festival’s traders. / Image: Supplied
Desert Island Dumplings will also be in attendance. / Image: Supplied
Further traders confirmed for the first festival include The Neighbourhood Coop, Thief Street Grill & Waffle, The Chaat Walas, tiramisu heroes Paradiso Authentic Italian and Marzipan Mcr.
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That’s not all, either. There’ll be a mini-produce market full of goodies from local independent food and drink producers, too, and a fully-stocked beer bar showing off the best summer pours from Manchester’s breweries.
The Grub Carnival bar will be stacked with craft beer from the likes of North West brewers like Vocation Brewery, Squawk Brew Co. Rivington Brew Co and many more, plus the Runaway Brewery team will be there in person pouring and talking about their beers.
Grub’s home at Red Bank in the Green Quarter. / Image: Grub
Elsewhere, there’ll be a range of cocktails, mocktails, wines and soft drinks to enjoy, a Grub Carnival tent hosting a stage full of live entertainment and DJs, and lawn games keep the kids (and adults) amused.
Grub is also reaching out to the Wythenshawe community to collaborate and offer support through their ‘School Of Grub’ scheme, a free-to-attend workshop presented by successful street food traders giving real life advice on how to get started in the business.
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The best prospects from those workshops will then get free mentoring from Grub and a leg up to get to their first street food gig.
Grub also wants to hear from local businesses, residents, artists, musicians and community groups who might want to support or get involved in the event. If that sounds like you then please drop them an email using the address [email protected].
Jason Bailey, Director of Grub, said: ” We’re really excited about taking what we do back to what it is all about and thats markets that benefit the community
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“It’s amazing to have the opportunity to bring this smashing new market to Wythenshawe and we can’t wait to bring folk together to have a great time.
“We’ve got big hopes that this event is just the start of great things happening in Wythenshawe”.
GRUB Carnival kicks off Saturday 23 July at 12 noon and runs until 8pm. The event is free entry, no tickets are needed and all comers including families and dogs are welcome.
Full details of the event can be found on the event page here. The event can be found at Wythenshawe Civic Centre, Rowlandsway, Wythenshawe M22 5RG.
Feature image – Supplied
News
Royal Mail fined £21m by Ofcom failing to meet its delivery targets
Emily Sergeant
Ofcom has fined Royal Mail a whopping £21 million for failing to meet its delivery targets in the last financial year.
Each year, it’s the watchdog’s job to look at and measure Royal Mail’s delivery performance against nationwide annual delivery targets, and for the 2024/25 season, the company was required to deliver 93% of First Class mail within one working day of collection, and 98.5% of Second Class mail within three working days.
If Royal Mail misses its annual targets, Ofcom will first consider evidence of any ‘exceptional circumstances’ beyond the company’s control, and whether it would have achieved its targets had those events not occurred.
However, even after accounting for extreme weather events, Royal Mail was still found to have fallen short of its targets… and this time, they’ve been fined their highest sum so far.
We have fined Royal Mail £21m for missing its 2024/25 delivery targets, without justification.
The company must now urgently publish, and deliver, a credible improvement plan.
This is the third time in a row that Ofcom has found the company to be in breach of its regulatory obligations, after it was first fined a substantial £5.6m in November 2023, and then a further £10.5m in December 2024.
Royal Mail only delivered 77% of First Class mail and 92.5% of Second Class mail on time between April 2024 and March 2025.
Ofcom says it has therefore decided that the company breached its obligations by failing to provide ‘an acceptable level of service’ without justification, and took ‘insufficient and ineffective’ steps to try and prevent this failure.
“Hiding behind the pandemic as a driving factor in failures at Royal Mail does not cut it.”
Royal Mail has been fined £21m by Ofcom failing to meet its delivery targets / Credit: Royal Mail
The watchdog says this is likely to have impacted millions of customers who did not get the service they paid for.
“Millions of important letters are arriving late, and people aren’t getting what they pay for when they buy a stamp,” explained Ian Strawhorne, who is the Director of Enforcement at Ofcom.
“These persistent failures are unacceptable, and customers expect and deserve better.
“Royal Mail must rebuild consumers’ confidence as a matter of urgency, and that means making actual significant improvements, not more empty promises.
“We’ve told the company to publicly set out how it’s going to deliver this change, and we expect to start seeing meaningful progress soon. If this doesn’t happen, fines are likely to continue.”
Featured Image – Royal Mail
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Thousands of elderly and disabled people to get free 24-hour bus travel across Greater Manchester
Emily Sergeant
Hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people in Greater Manchester are set to benefit from round-the-clock bus travel for free.
Currently, as part on an ongoing pilot scheme, people with a Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)-issued concessionary travel pass have free unlimited travel on Bee Network buses between 9.30am and midnight during the week, and all day on weekends and public holidays.
The rule was lifted in August on a trial basis for a month, meaning older and disabled residents in Greater Manchester had access to unlimited free bus travel any time between the allocated hours.
During the August trial, more than 100,000 journeys were made by older and disabled people – with up to 6,000 people a day making use of the pilot.
But now, after proving to be a huge success, the pilot is being extended even further, so that 400,000 eligible residents will now get free bus travel 24-hours a day, seven days a week, starting from 1 November.
If you travel with a TfGM-issued concessionary travel pass, from 1 November you’ll be able to use it on #BeeNetwork buses before 9.30am as part of a second month-long trial.
As well as free early-morning bus travel, during the trial starting in November, eligible residents will be able to board the Bee Network’s night buses for free too.
TfGM says allowing concessionary pass holders to travel at any time will ‘better connect’ them to healthcare, leisure, and retail opportunities.
“The last trial in August was a brilliant success, which saw more than 100,000 journeys made by our older and disabled people before 9.30am,” commented Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
“We are now carrying out this second trial, at a busier time of year, to see whether we can safely remove the restriction permanently and help our older and disabled people to get to work, go shopping, and get to medical appointments.
“We want the Bee Network to be the best public transport system possible and this means it needs to support all of our residents and communities to make the journeys they need to make and use the bus more.”
Georgina Pellant -
1st July 2022 
