Philip Parkin

Bikes sales are booming, it said on last night’s excellent BBC4 documentary ‘Ride of My Life: The Story of the Bicycle’, as they always are at times of recession or rationing or when fuel prices spike. And although the bike manufacturers that used to line the canals in the centre of Birmingham have long since gone, one niche company, Brooks England, is still, against all odds, in business. They’ve been operating out of Smethwick since 1866, produce some of the finest handmade bicycle saddles in the world, and, it appears, have never been busier.

The programme also included some fascinating footage of how they do things in Portland, Oregon, a place dubbed the US’s most ‘bicycle friendly city’. Portland has the highest rate of bicycle commuters in the country, runs regular community projects whereby bikes are provided for residents to use free of charge (yes, a lot of them get nicked), and has spent a fortune on cycle friendly highways and infrastructure. And the climax of the cycling year is the city’s Providence Bridge Pedal, an annual bike ride across the ten Willamette River bridges that join up the city. Thousands of cyclists take part every year and the place, it seems, grinds to a halt.

And I see that Birmingham is to hold a similar (sort of) event this year – starting from the Markets in the centre of town, going out along Pershore Road to Cannon Hill Park and heading back again. Which, granted, is not exactly the ten Willamette River bridges, but is probably the most sensible route we can hold it on. The so called ‘Sky Ride’ (yes, it’s sponsored by the TV company) will be held on 12^th September, is costing £70K and, I think, is an excellent idea. There are six taking place across the country (London has held a similar event for years) and, whilst acknowledging that it is only a one day event, it could lead to a few more people taking up the cycling habit. Unlike Portland however, with its miles of cycle friendly highways, and notwithstanding our excellent North Birmingham Cycle Route, the biggest problem for most people (especially those with kids) will be how to get their bikes to the city centre in the first place.

Like every local authority, Birmingham City Council is under huge pressure to save money. It also needs to be mindful of the (on the face of it) radical devolution of power that is promised in the government’s Localism Bill, set to be passed at the end of next year. A report will be presented to the Cabinet Member on Monday which attempts to address these two issues, with the subsequent consultation exercise running concurrently with a Scrutiny Review on similar lines. Both will report back to the Executive at the beginning of November, but whatever happens, it seems unlikely that the constituency based model will continue in its present form.

The suggested proposal (though the report makes very clear that the Executive has ‘not yet formed a view on the preferred approach’) appears to be for a ‘lift and shift’ of delegations and executive powers from Constituency Committees to the central directorates. So, responsibility for running community libraries, for example, would shift from a devolved constituency level to the Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture. The report suggests that this could save £1.5m and that although power would be going back to the centre, a strong ‘influencing and accountability role’ would be retained by Ward, Constituency and …. Area Committees.

These Area Committees, which don’t yet exist, would be based on the city’s Local Policing Units and broken down into four areas: Birmingham North, West & Central, East and South. Sutton Coldfield, for example, would form an Area with Erdington. Ward Committees would be ‘retained and expanded’, and, it is hoped, Community Chest funding would continue to be made available.

consultationonlocalisation

It’s not the photograph of the ‘Afghan Girl’ that grabs your attention as you set foot inside the Steve McCurry retrospective at Birmingham’s Waterhall Gallery – you will already have seen the image plastered on numerous billboards round the city, or on the leaflets and publicity material promoting the event. You will certainly not have failed to notice it on the huge banner hanging outside the exhibition hall. No: it’s less this individual image, striking though it is, more the realisation that there are dozens of photographs of a similar intensity hanging alongside it.  Magnum photojournalist Steve McCurry has spent the last thirty years or so capturing such images from areas of international and civil conflict around the world; much of it focussed on the human consequences of war. There are photographs in the exhibition, then, from Afghanistan, Tibet, Iraq and Cambodia and through them all, whether it’s fisherman in Sri Lanka, or monks on the steps of a huge shattered pagoda incongruously merged into the towering mountainside, runs this intense focus on the human condition.

The free exhibition runs until 17^th October 2010 at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Waterhall.

The Arts Council has launched a £500,000 initiative to help turn empty shops into creative spaces. With the Local Government Association warning that high streets run the risk of becoming ‘ghost towns’ unless urgent action is taken to find other uses for recession-hit retail units, displaying local art should go some way towards maintaining or improving the vibrancy of town centres.

This kind of initiative is obviously not going to benefit the local economy in the same way that a new (rate paying) business would, and at best it’s a temporary measure, but it should at the very least help shops from falling into disrepair. And of course ‘animating the high street’ and getting art and creative enterprises out of their usual spaces is always a good thing, with a successful town centre clearly being about more than just shopping.

Applications from individuals and organisations in Birmingham should be looked on favourably, with the city fulfilling criteria such as already being in receipt of DCLG funding and having a (fledgling) network of town centre managers in place. And the kind of activity that will be funded is fairly broad, too, with the Arts Council looking to fund anything from art to recording studios to family arts workshops.

If anyone is interested in applying for a project in Sutton Coldfield town centre, please let me know.

To my huge surprise the two hour presentation/debate on flood management that I sat through at this week’s Regeneration Committee meeting, turned out to be really interesting. And given the ongoing problems with flooding in Birmingham, how we deal with this issue is becoming increasingly relevant.

Last year’s Pitt Review – set up in response to the problems caused by the widespread flooding of 2007 - contained 92 recommendations for improvements in Flood Risk Management (FRM). The review led to the Draft Flood Risk Management Bill which was put out for consulation in April ’08, and proposed/concluded the following:

• high intensity localised storms (thought to be as a result of climate change) are causing increasing problems with flooding
• it is now acknowledged that not all properties in flood risk areas can be defended
• the Bill will create clearer structures and responsibilities for managing risks, and enable better planning/prediction and warning of floods

The wrong kind of soil

As Birmingham doesn’t have any large rivers, we don’t (usually, and 2007 aside) get the kind of dramatic headline grabbing incidents of flooding common to some parts of the country. However, probably uniquely in Europe, the city is part of a large conurbation at the top of a river catchment. It’s much more common for cities to have developed on the coast or near large rivers. We also appear to have the wrong kind of soil – there’s a geographical fault line under the city with impermeable clay to the south east/permeable sand stone to the north west. So we get our very own, special kind of flooding taking place simultaneously at several locations across the city (Aston/Witton/Handsworth etc). This makes it extremely difficult to offer effective flood warnings. (Though setting up ‘local flood action groups’ in these areas is seen as an attempt to tackle this).

The wrong kind of rain

Also, our location on top of a catchment of rivers makes flood warnings much less reliable than elsewhere in the country. It also means the city is much more affected by less predictable local weather patterns – we get different types of flooding in different parts of the city, depending on the intensity and duration of the rainfall.

So, the Pitt Review/Draft Bill is going to mean that Birmingham (for no extra cash) will have to:

• lead in the management of local flood risk
• establish ownership and legal responsibility of e.g. flood defence assets (embankments/gates/pumps etc)
• collate and map the main flood risk management and drainage assets

As a lot of this is going on in Birmingham, anyway, it seems as though the real benefit of the bill – aside from making it clearer to everyone what they’re meant to be doing – will be in ensuring that neighbouring authorities operate to similar standards and under the same guidelines as we do.

Recent news from Birmingham’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau makes it clear that the recession is hitting harder in this city than elsewhere in the country. Locally the organisation has seen a:

• 77% increase in debt related issues (c/w 32% growth nationally across the CAB network)
• 60% increase in benefits issues (nationally 29%)
• 14% increase in employment advice (nationally 9%)
• 93% increase in Jobseekers Allowance Issues (nationally 61%)

The Birmingham CAB has also seen a 34% increase in mortgage arrears issues and a 184% increase in debt collection problems. The number of people seeking bankruptcy advice has gone up by 122%.

There are 426 CABs across the country, predominately staffed by volunteers and they’re independent charities, dependent on a variety of (often short term) funding streams. And it seems that the absence of more stable funding makes it extremely hard for Birmingham CAB to make long term plans. Even in the ‘good times’ the organisation was under pressure – over 58,000 people sought (free) advice from the CAB  in 2007/08 and it dealt with debt issues totalling £60m.

These latest figures don’t just underline how severely the recession is impacting on Birmingham – they also remind us as to the incredible job done by CABs across the country as well as of the huge importance of the volunteer workforce.

It’s hardly surprising, given the dire state of the economy, that AWM is having to cut funding for a number of projects in the region. After all, it’s had its budget cut by central government by £48m and has seen a significant drop in return from its own assets. However, this isn’t just a story about a budget squeeze and the pressure on public finances. Projects in the region are also being cut because AWM has been forced by the government to re-direct £64m of its funding, earmarked for regeneration schemes, into support for business. On the face of it, this is no bad thing. If ever there was a time for businesses to get extra help, then it’s now, as they struggle to cope with the worst recession in 80 years. However, I’m not convinced that the support AWM is funding is measurable in any way or is going to make any tangible difference. Take the £3.5m ‘Automotive Recovery Programme’, announced yesterday. Apparently 120 companies are to be ‘assisted’ and up to 1000 jobs safeguarded by AWM’s delivery of up to £50,000 of ‘specialist strategic consultancy’. Is this what companies really want at the moment? Consultancy? Wouldn’t a cut in regulation, support in retaining staff and improved access to bank funding be more helpful?

It doesn’t make sense to stop funding projects by, for example, Thinktank and the Black Country Living Museum - projects which are helping to safeguard jobs and attract tourism into the West Midlands – and to spend the money instead on (relatively) small packages of consultancy support. And it will be fascinating to see how much of the total £64m is actually taken up by businesses. After all, the £2.3bn loan fund set up for the automotive sector in January has not yet been successfully accessed by a single company.

If a serious bid is put forward for Birmingham to become the first UK City of Culture in 2013, and if it’s put together in partnership with as wide a range of interested parties as possible, then we’ve got to have a good chance of winning. There seems to be so much going on in this city at the moment, and so much energy and cross-over between events/projects etc that the city just seems ready for an award like this. We’re a long way from the embarrassment of the 1992 Olympic Bid when the city’s ambitions were seriously adrift from reality (were we really going to have sailing on Edgaston Reservoir?). However, even if Birmingham ends up not being successful in 2013, as long as the actual process of the bid celebrates all the good stuff going on in this city, then it will have been worth it. In the case of Liverpool, 2008 European Capital of Culture, Phil Redmond saw the process of bidding as being as important as the award itself:

The confidence of the people has improved not just because it had a fantastic year long festival of world class cultural events, but because they realised that great things could be done in their city. That great things had been done in their city and that great things could be done again in their city. And they could do them.
Yet, there was something else. It was done the way they wanted it done. Other’s were invited to the party but it was very clearly a family affair. Liverpool may have been the UK’s host city for the EU award, but Liverpool took what was nothing more than a badge of authority and made it its own.
No culture can live, if it attempts
to be exclusive.
Mahatma Gandhi
That is how the UK City of Culture of programme should inspire. Instilling a sense of ambition and ownership, while sending out a clear but simple message that wherever the “badge of authority” is awarded, the people there are part of the UK cultural mosaic but that they also have their own distinct culture to promote. Perhaps rediscover. Perhaps nurture. Yet, whatever the aim, like Liverpool, the badge of authority is their opportunity to make a real step change.
Whatever that is will be left to potential bidders to define, but will form part of the award criteria. It will also be a valuable asset in its own right because although the ultimate accolade, with its subsequent media exposure, will prove extremely valuable, the European programme has also demonstrated that the process of bidding, in terms of auditing assets and building cultural networks, is itself a very positive outcome.
It will be those networks that will deliver in the future. It will be those networks that will discover, like they did in a post-industrial Northern port city in 2008, that great things can be achieved individually, but even greater things can be delivered collaboratively.