MediaCityUK


MediaCityUK is a mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside MediaCityUK shopping centre. The land occupied by the development was part of the Port of Manchester and Manchester docks.
The BBC signalled its intention to move jobs to Manchester in 2004, and the Salford Quays site was chosen in 2006. The Peel Group was granted planning permission to develop the site in 2007, and construction of the development, with its own energy generation plant and communications network, began the same year. Based in Quay House, the principal tenant is the BBC, whose move marks a large-scale decentralisation from London. ITV Granada completed the first phase of its move to MediaCityUK on 25 March 2013, followed in two stages by the northern arm of ITV Studios: the second stage involved Coronation Street being moved to a new production facility on Trafford Wharf next to the Imperial War Museum North at the end of 2013. The Studios on Broadway houses seven high-definition studios, claimed to be the largest such facility in Europe.
MediaCityUK was developed in two phases; the first phase was completed in 2011, and the second is dependent on its success. The site became Europe's first WiredScore Certified Neighbourhood in 2020, with all commercial buildings achieving either a WiredScore Platinum or Silver rating. Metrolink, Greater Manchester's light-rail system, was extended to MediaCityUK with the opening of the MediaCityUK tram stop on 20 September 2010 and further extensions are planned. Road access was improved by the construction of the Broadway Link Road.

Location

, at the eastern end of the Manchester Ship Canal on the site of the former Manchester Docks, became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom after the closure of the dockyards in 1982. MediacityUK, an area on both banks of the ship canal, is part of a joint tourism initiative between Salford City Council and Trafford Borough Council encompassing The Quays, Trafford Wharf and parts of Old Trafford. The Quays development includes The Lowry Arts Centre and the Imperial War Museum North.
A total of of land was earmarked for the development of MediaCityUK. The first phase of its development was primarily focused on a site at Pier 9 on Salford Quays. In 2010 it was announced that the ITV production centre would be built on Trafford Wharf in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford.

Background

In 2003, reports emerged that, as part of the plans for the renewal of its royal charter, the BBC was considering moving whole channels or strands of production from London to Manchester and closing Pebble Mill in Birmingham. Early discussions involved a plan whereby the BBC would move to a new media village proposed by Granada Television at its Bonded Warehouse site at Granada Studios in the city.
Proposals to relocate 1,800 jobs to Manchester were unveiled by Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, in December 2004. The BBC's justification for the move was that its spending per head was low in northern England, where it had low approval ratings, and its facilities at New Broadcasting House in Manchester needed replacing. An initial list of 18 sites was narrowed to a short-list of four during 2005, two in Manchester – one at Quay Street, close to Granada Studios, and one on Whitworth Street and two in Salford – one close to the Manchester Arena and one at Pier 9 on Salford Quays. The site at Salford Quays was chosen in June 2006, and the move north was conditional on a satisfactory licence fee settlement from the government.
The chosen site was the last undeveloped site at Manchester Docks, an area that had been subject to considerable investment and was emerging as a tourist destination, residential and commercial centre. The vision of the developers Peel Group, Salford City Council, the Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company and the Northwest Regional Development Agency was to create a significant new media city capable of competing on a global scale with developments in Copenhagen and Singapore.
Salford City Council granted planning consent for an outline application for a multi-use development on the site involving residential, retail and studio and office space in October 2006 and consent for a detailed planning application followed in May 2007. In the same month, the BBC Trust approved moving five London-based departments to the development. The departments to be moved were Sport, Children's, Learning, Future Media and Technology and Radio Five Live.
Construction started in 2007, with the initial site owner, Peel Group, as developer and Bovis Lend Lease as contractor. The media facilities opened in stages from 2007; the first of them, the Pie Factory, was in a refurbished bakery. It featured three large sound stages suitable for drama productions and commercials.
In January 2011, Peel Media received planning permission to convert on-site offices used by Bovis Lend Lease during the construction of the first phase into the Greenhouse. In November 2024, Lansec acquired the ownership of MediaCityUK from Peel Group.
The first trial show took place in November 2010 in Dock10 Studio HQ2. The half-hour test show featured a power failure and a fire drill, which involved a full evacuation of the audience and crew. The first programme filmed at Dock10 in MediaCityUK was Don't Scare the Hare in February 2011, and the first to transfer was A Question of Sport, the same month. BBC employees started transferring to the development in May 2011, a process that took 36 weeks. Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson confirmed that up to a further 1,000 jobs could be created or transferred to the site.
In January 2012, the BBC was accused of not supporting the community by the area's local MP, Hazel Blears, after it was reported that only 26 of 680 jobs created at the development had gone to residents of Salford.

Buildings and facilities

Traditional street names are not used in the development; instead, the main thoroughfares are styled blue, white, pink, yellow, orange, purple and green, with street furniture and ambient lighting colour-coded to match. A stylised map of the site has been devised. Landscape architects Gillespies regenerated the brownfield site to create public spaces. The focal point is a piazza and landscaped park, around which the buildings are located. The piazza's two distinct areas, The Green and The Stage, have the capacity to hold events for up to 6,500 people. A free-standing big screen, in front of The Studios, is viewable from the piazza.
The BBC occupies three buildings: Bridge House, Dock House, and Quay House, all designed by architects Wilkinson Eyre, with the interior design by ID:SR Sheppard Robson. The buildings, whose simple forms are intended to harmonise with their waterfront settings, provide of accommodation and office space, of which the BBC occupies.

Flexible workspace

MediaCityUK includes flexible workspace and serviced office accommodation marketed by the development under the names Flex and Arrive. In April 2022, Place North West reported that 55,000 sq ft of conventional office space in the Blue building was converted into serviced workspace to be managed by Arrive.
In July 2025, Insider Media reported that MediaCity invested £1 million in its flexible workspace offering, and that 11,308 sq ft of space had been taken across multiple office towers; the report also described a refurbishment that added 15 office suites ranging from two to 16 desks.
Landsec has described Arrive as part of MediaCity's flexible-workspace offer aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises.

Critical reception

Architects Sheppard Robson won several awards for their interior design of Quay House for BBC North, including the British Council for Offices Award and the AIT Award. The engineering group Ramboll received recognition for its design of the Salford Quays footbridge, which was praised as "a graceful and well engineered bridge a delightful testament to the art of structural engineering". The bridge designers won the British Constructional Steelwork Association's 2012 Structural Steel Design Award and a North West Civil Engineering Award from the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The architecture at MediaCity was received unfavourably by Building Design magazine, which awarded the development with the 2011 Carbuncle Cup for Worst New Building. Owen Hatherley writing in The Guardian also criticised the development, describing it as "an enclave, easily closed off from the life of the rest of the city". These critiques highlighted concerns about the design's disconnect from its urban surroundings and its impact on the local community.

Tenants

BBC

, approximately BBC staff are employed at MediaCityUK. The BBC currently occupies three buildings at MediaCityUK: Bridge House, Dock House and Quay House.
The BBC North operation at MediaCityUK was brought about by relocating a significant number of staff from BBC premises in London. On 31 May 2007, the BBC Trust gave final approval for the creation of "a major new BBC centre in the North", to be completed by 2011. It was claimed that the development would create up to jobs and add £1 billion to the regional economy over five years. It was announced in July 2010 that the BBC Breakfast programme would move to Salford Quays. In 2009, the BBC had estimated that moving to Salford would cost almost £1 billion, spread over twenty years, but in May 2011, Director-General Mark Thompson claimed that the cost of moving was much less than that originally planned.
In 2017, the Centre for Cities published a report showing the impact of the move in the five years between 2011 and 2016. It found there were 4,600 new jobs in MediaCityUK, however 2,000 of those were BBC staff relocated from elsewhere in the country, while 1,200 were from existing Greater Manchester businesses relocating for 1,400 net new jobs created at MediaCityUK by the move; there was little relocation of other businesses from elsewhere in the country, with only 145 in existing businesses moving to Greater Manchester. The number employed in media within one mile of MediaCityUK was static over the five years, as cuts in output offset new job growth. However, the economic impact outside Salford was greater, with the creation of 4,420 new jobs for existing businesses in the wider city region.
Various divisions of the BBC have bases at the MediaCityUK campus, generally referred to as BBC North. Output includes network programming ; BBC children's TV ; BBC Three; Radio Manchester, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Sports Extra, 6 Music,BBC Radio 1,BBC Religion & Ethics, BBC Sport, BBC Learning and the BBC Philharmonic. The campus is also home to a 24/7 engineering team overseeing online and broadcast output, plus teams for other key products and services including: BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds, BBC Research & Development, Children in Need and Comic Relief. Some staff in the commercial division, BBC Studios, also work from MediaCityUK.
In November 2022, the BBC announced plans to vacate Bridge House as part of a scheme to reduce costs. Staff from BBC Children's, BBC Education, BBC Sport and operations staff will relocate to other MediaCity premises, Quay House and Dock House, by the spring of 2024.