Philip Parkin

The council cabinet has agreed the development framework for Sutton Coldfield Town Centre, setting out the vision for its long-term regeneration. This is a signficant step forward for the town centre, and not just for local residents. As the largest suburban town centre in the city, it has a vital role to play in the regeneration of Birmingham and the wider region.

The document is also an excellent example of the importance of wide, public consultation, a point I made in the press last week:

I am extremely proud of the Sutton Town Centre Regeneration Framework which was approved by the Council Cabinet last week. To finally have in place a Supplementary Planning Document, which will guide future development in the town centre, represents a significant milestone for Sutton Coldfield. Right from the start we were determined to make sure that the views of residents would guide the framework, and Andrew Mitchell MP, as well as your councillors, ensured that the the six week statutory consultation period was doubled to three months so that everyone would have the opportunity to have their say. The exhibitions held at the Mall, and the library, were extremely well attended by members of the public and numerous meetings were held at neighbourhood fora and ward committees. And, of course, we were very lucky to have the whole process overseen by Elizabeth Allison, Chair of the Sutton Civic Society. This was particularly appropriate given our strong determination to preserve the historic legacy of the town. And the views of residents have clearly been taken into account in the finished document. A number of the original ideas remain, of course, because they were supported by the vast majority of the people who commented. However, the consultation has led to either changes or the strengthening of  many of the draft proposals.

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.

The debate rages on about Birmingham’s most famous carbuncle, with Andy Foster, chairman of the Friends of Central Library, continuing to make the case for its survival. 

And there does seem to be a strong ‘architectural’ argument for keeping the building.

Designed by a local architect, John Madin, the library is one of Birmingham’s key Modernist buildings and a notable example of the Brutalist style. Its ‘inverted ziggurat’ form – think upside ‘stepped’ pyramid – has attracted worldwide acclaim. 

And of course, one of its biggest problems is that it was never properly finished: it was meant to be marble-clad but the budget ran out, and plans for the landscaped gardens (with five pools!), that would have softened its design, were never followed through.

Unfortunately, however, the building seems to have long since lost the PR battle, and a lack of maintenance over the years as well as the state of neighbouring buildings means it faces imminent demolition.

But why can’t we save the building (and use it as, say, a modern art gallery, as has been suggested), open up the route from the city centre to Centenary Square and build a new library on a separate site? We desperately need a new library but does that mean we have to pull down the existing one?

We’ve demolished some wonderful Georgian and Victorian buildings in this city, because the architecture was out of favour or the properties were ‘in the way’. And we’ve ended up regretting it. As Andy Foster points out, it looks like history is about to repeat itself.

Birmingham is to be one of the pilot areas for the government’s new ‘Total Place’ initiative . This is, by all accounts, a Big Deal, with the council calling it ‘perhaps the most significant initiative for local areas and local government for some time’ and the Communities Secretary John Denham seeing the project as ‘potentially a chance to rewrite the future of public services’.

Over £7.5bn of public money came into Birmingham last year and the aim of Total Place is to identify where and how this money could be spent more effectively. It asks the question ‘can we do better for less’? And given the huge sum of money we’re talking about, the answer has got to be ‘yes’. With the project in Birmingham focusing on how various bodies deal with mental health problems, drug and alcohol misuse and ‘guns and gangs’ - we need to make sure that ‘we do better for less’ not just in order to save money, but also to ensure we’re providing the best service we can to some of the most vulnerable people in the city.

Whether the involvement of a non-directly elected body like Be Birmingham - and the bureaucracy and time constraints of ‘yet another government initiative’  – is the best way of achieving this, remains to be seen. And the only way we’ll have a chance of knowing if it’s worked will be if Be Birmingham publishes realistic targets – over which it has direct control – and an outside body gets to scrutinise its performance.

The government’s ‘Strengthening local democracy’ consultation paper, which includes the concept of Total Place, talks about enhancing the power and scope of councillors’ scrutiny role:

Councillors, on behalf of their citizens, should be able to scrutinise public spending provision, influence decision making and hold other service providers to account’.

Unfortunately, however,this is all happening the wrong way round. The unelected quangos have already got the power, and they’ve had it for some time. Yet only now is the consultation beginning on how to keep this power in check. And given the ongoing concern over the running of the Multi Area Agreement in Birmingham, it’s interesting to read in the consultation paper that ‘as sub-regional structures grow in power and influence, it is important that greater power is matched by clear, democratic and accountable leadership‘. It states that ‘these existing and planned sub-regional structures derive democratic legitimacy through elected councillors from their member local authorities controlling their activities‘. Not so in Birmingham, of course, where there are no elected members sitting on the Board set up to administer the MAA.

The consultation goes on to suggest that ‘committee meetings should be open to the public’ and that the council should be able to ‘scrutinise the activity of local authorities working together at the sub-regional level’.

All eminently sensible stuff, and let’s hope the government means it. Unfortunately the conversation about how to best scrutinise the unelected should have begun a long time ago.

Unemployment in Birmingham was a huge problem even before this recession, with levels at 20% in some wards in the city. With the economic downturn particularly affecting the manufacturing industry, and unemployment now considerably worse, getting people back into work has become the city’s biggest priority.

A £500m fund set up for the City Region to tackle this problem, and a new plan – the Multi Area Agreement for Employment and Skills (MAA)- gives us the opportunity to make a real difference to residents’ lives. Unfortunately, however, and even though Birmingham makes up 40% of the City Region in terms of population, there’s not a single elected member for the city sitting on the Board set up to administer the MAA. Instead, the Employment and Skills Strategic Management Board (ESSMB) is made up of chairs of the regional Employment and Skills Boards, directors of Job Centre Plus and the Learning and Skills Council, and the chief executive of Solihull Council. The only councillors on the board are the leaders of Solihull and Dudley Council. There are no elected members representing the interests of Birmingham residents, despite our particularly acute problem with unemployment.

We desperately need a fresh approach, particularly given the lack of progress made in the past. The reason this issue is in the news today is because the Council’s Regeneration Scrutiny Committee ‘called in’ the original Cabinet decision, made in June. The Birmingham Post’s call for a City Region version of this body, to scrutinise the Employment Management Board which, afterall, meets behind closed doors, is an excellent idea. And proper accountability at the regional level should also reduce the risk of further ‘call-ins’ when the money is eventually spent on the ground.

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.

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

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.

Ben 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, 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.