Tag Archives: local politics

Politics and the art of making things complicated

27 Monday Jul 2009

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Decisions made in local government often come across as being complicated because they are complicated, and the use of technical language is the only way to adequately explain what on earth they’re about. And no amount of re-wording or attempts to simplify is ever going to change that. Often, though, what’s discussed seems complicated because bureaucrats and politicians have temporarily lost the ability to communicate effectively and have submitted to pressure to use jargon. And I’m often guilty of this, too. However, given the importance of some of the stuff that gets discussed in local government – and, also, bearing in mind that the overuse of jargon has been identified as one of the reasons why people are turned off politics – this ’overcomplication’ is not only frustrating, it also isn’t good for democracy.

Today’s Birmingham Cabinet Meeting, for example, had over 20 items on the agenda, most of their titles and reports written in the usual impenetrable council style. So the meeting began with an item titled the ‘Reconsideration of Decision Called-In – Multi Area Agreement for Employment and Skills’. And the agenda included the snappily titled item: ’Winning Resources: Local Area Agreement Working Neighbourhoods Fund Strategic Interventions’. Yet both these items – if you can get past the titles - were, and are, extremely important – dealing with the spending of huge amounts of money on trying to tackle perhaps the biggest problem this city faces at the moment – long term, mass unemployment. We should all, as far as we can, be trying to get away from this sort of convoluted language.

Today’s Cabinet Meeting was actually one of the most important for a long time, with decisions being made on the:

‘Highways Maintenance and Management Private Finance Initiative’ – the awarding of a £2.2bn, 25 year, highways’ maintenance contract (one of the biggest PFI contracts in the country).

‘Approval of Academies Process’ – significant progress on the setting up of 3 (controversial) new Academy schools.

‘BMG Birmingham History Galleries Project – Full Business Case’ – the awarding of a £2.9m contract to repair the roof works at the Council House Extension and the submission of a £4.8m bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the setting up of a History of Birmingham Gallery at the Museum and Art Gallery. It was also agreed to spend £874,000  to cover development work on the project.

Be Active – £9.3m to be spent on an 18 month project to increase participation in sport. All residents may now swim/use the gym at council run leisure centres completely free of charge.

There was much more discussed at Cabinet today, all of it important to residents in Birmingham and not much of it decipherable by those outside of local government. And that’s why we need to ensure our established local media survives this deep recession. After all, somebody needs to help explain what all this stuff means.

Flooding in Birmingham – the wrong kind of soil, the wrong kind of rain

24 Friday Jul 2009

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floodingbhamTo 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.

Birmingham Citizens’ Advice Bureau and the Recession

23 Thursday Jul 2009

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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.

AWM Funding Cut and ‘Business Support’

21 Tuesday Jul 2009

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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.

£500m Govt aid not helping jobless

20 Monday Jul 2009

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Interesting article in the Birmingham Post today about how the public sector led approach to tackling unemployment doesn’t actually appear to be making any difference. Even at the height of the ‘boom years’ unemployment in certain wards in the city was at 20%. ( And the figure was much higher if you included people on disability/single parent benefit).  With the unemployment claimant rate  in Aston currently running at 28.2% (and with the wider ’worklessness’ figure across the city at 37%) it’s obvious that we need a radical change in how we address this issue. The current approach just isn’t working.

July Unemployment Briefing

UK’s ‘City of Culture’ 2013

15 Wednesday Jul 2009

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birminghamnightBen Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, has announced that a competition is to be held to find the UK’s first ‘City of Culture’:

“Culture is something that we are incredibly good at in the UK.  But excellence and innovation in the arts does not begin and end inside the M25 and I believe we have been too London-centric for too long in our cultural life.  So this competition aims to find a city or area outside London that has the wow factor, with exciting and credible plans to make a step change in its cultural life and engage the whole country.”

Birmingham’s bid to be the 2008 European Capital of Culture went horribly wrong (despite us serving up Balti to the panel of judges) with the prestigious title going to Liverpool. And although the award doesn’t bring any extra funding Liverpool has by all accounts really profited from their year in the spotlight – the city seeing a significant boost in publicity and a large increase in visitor numbers.

Apparently the regional character of our bid worked against us last time – judges felt that our ‘Be in Birmingham’ phrase also really meant ‘Be in Warwick’ and ‘Be in Stratford’. It was suggested that we should have just concentrated on selling Birmingham. Also, it was rumoured that the committee chairman was critical of the city’s built environment and our lack of iconic architecture. A lot has changed, of course, over the last 6 years (the competition was held in 2003) and we now, of course, have Selfridges and a re-developed Bull Ring.

Outline applications have to be in by 16th October and the winner will be revealed at the end of 2010.

Marketing Birmingham

29 Monday Jun 2009

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buildingMarketing 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.

North Birmingham Walking and Cycle Route

26 Friday Jun 2009

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cyclerouteBCC agreed this week to sign a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Sustrans on the North Birmingham Walking and Cycle Route.  This will unlock £650,000 of Lottery grant funding and enable work to start on the £2.654m route, which will run from Pype Hayes to Sutton Park. Connecting links will join up Castle Vale, Walmley, Good Hope Hospital and Falcon Lodge.

Good to see some of what is known as the ‘People’s Millions’ being spent in Birmingham.

The money will be spent on traffic calming, road crossings and public art – the design of which, it seems, will involve local schools. Sustrans are very keen on a branded ‘Portrait Bench’, to link their schemes across the UK. Hopefully this won’t be too perscriptive, and schools will get the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the project.

Local papers and democracy

25 Thursday Jun 2009

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saveourlocalpapersWith the NUJ claiming to have seen ‘internal company documents’ that suggest the Birmingham Post might become a weekly or bi-weekly paper, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of how important the local media is for democracy.

The FT’s Jonathan Guthrie wrote an interesting article on this last week, which began with the assertion that ‘dissent is the essential business of journalism’. He went on to praise our very own Paul Dale, of the Post, for his uncovering of a report that poured scorn on the notion that Birmingham’s Central Library was suffering from ‘concrete cancer’.

Good local scoops, Guthrie argues, bring scandals to the notice of the national media. We all lose out  in the long run if the local media is downgraded.