Angeliki Stogia

Angeliki Stogia is a British Labour Party politician, councillor for Whalley Range in the City of Manchester and Executive Member for Environment, Planning and Transport, with a leading role in the Manchester Climate Change Partnership.[1]

She was first elected to Manchester City Council in 2012 taking the seat from the Liberal Democrats with a swing of over 36 per cent gaining a majority of 1,758. She was re-elected in 2016 and 2020. She was a Labour candidate for the North West England constituency in the 2014 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.

She came to pursue a BSc degree in European Studies and Languages at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1995 from Arta, Greece. She worked with for the Network for Europe with the voluntary sector in the North West.[2] She is the first ever Manchester councillor of Greek heritage.[3]

She has been prominent in debates about transport policy in Manchester during changes precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic in England, proclaiming "We hope that pedestrians and cyclists will reclaim the streets of this city".[4] The decision to pedestrianise a stretch of Deansgate in May 2020 was attacked by Diamond Bus North West who claimed that the temporary traffic order was made to further the widely publicised long-term objective of Manchester City Council to close Deansgate to traffic permanently. Stogia denied that the decision to settle the company's application for judicial review implied an admission of unlawfulness, but rather "an unwillingness to risk further public money on the inherently uncertain outcome of a court hearing contesting the legal challenge which they brought when other bus companies were willing to accept the temporary closure." Consultations on permanent closure are continuing.[5] Stogia stressed the need to resolve the issue of how buses could be re-routed when the road was first sealed off for four days during the Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019.[6]

She is involved in the decision to plant thousands of new trees across Manchester in the Tree Action Mcr scheme, which she says is "a visible demonstration of our deep-rooted commitment to greening the city and Manchester becoming zero carbon by 2038."[7]

She is responsible for the implementation of Chris Boardman's Bee Network plan in the Manchester City Council area. In 2020 two schemes have been approved for full delivery – in Beswick and Chorlton – at a cost of nearly £3 million.[8] She was criticised because of the City Council's decision not to apply for funding of Pop-Up Bike Lanes in June 2020 when neighbouring authorities in Oldham, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford were setting them up on radial routes into Manchester. She defended the council's position saying "The evidence points to the need for neighbourhood improvements, rather than pop up temporary cones for commuter cyclists down major routes which take capacity from public transport and don’t form part of an integrated transport network."[9] She says pop-up cycle lanes are ‘not a magic bullet’ for encouraging safer ways of travelling because they offer little to pedestrians or cyclists making short journeys.[10]