Marketing Birmingham, the public-private partnership responsible for ‘improving national and international perceptions’ of the city, is to be scrutinised by the Council’s Regeneration O&S Committee later in the year.

The Council reduced its shareholding in Marketing Birmingham to 49% in 2007, in order to give the partnership greater autonomy, and it currently provides the organisation with £1.968m in funding per annum.  In return, Marketing Birmingham agrees to:

• Improve the value of the events and conference sector by £25m per annum.
• Improve perceptions of Birmingham as a visitor destination.
• Improve business perceptions of Birmingham as a ‘place to do business’.
• Increase the number of visitors to the city.
• Increase the economic impact of leisure tourism.

The most recent monitoring report, for 2007-08, showed Marketing Birmingham reaching the majority of its (16) targets. It failed on just one - that of ‘improving the perception of the city as a visitor destination’ – with a recent survey ranking  Birmingham as 6th against a target of 2nd. There are clearly still plenty of people around unaware as to how much the city has changed over the last 20 years.

As part of the review, the Committee will approach the usual big name quangos, public bodies and ’partners’ and ask them to share their experiences of working with Marketing Birmingham and no doubt there will generally be a postive story to tell.

My suspicion, though, is that smaller organisations and events inevitably end up getting squeezed out by these bigger names. These bodies don’t often get much in the way of funding from the council and rely heavily on ‘help in kind’ instead. It’s essential, then, that the review gets as wide a variety of responses as possible. I’ll be pressing to make sure, for example, that we talk to organisers of some of the festivals that take place throughout the city.

Any ideas, comments or suggestions would be gratefully received.