Happy new year

New year but no Ladywood solutions from Birmingham City Council and our local political representation.

We have had little to no support from our own local Councillors Bore and Hartley.

Instead, we have had support from other politicians. Following the meeting of Ladywood resident George Smith with Mayor Andy Street and Cllr Robert Alden mid November ’23, councillors from other wards in Birmingham raised questions to the council on our behalf. Documents about these questions are linked below.

We are very grateful to Mayor Andy Street and Cllr Robert Alden for speaking with us and taking these questions forward on our behalf. Thank you.

We are still waiting on key information from our other meeting at the end of November, where Ladywood residents met with Berkeley Group, Councillor Francis, Councillor Cotton, and Paul Kitson and David Stevenson from the Council. We were assured of a prompt reply but we have not even received the meeting minutes yet.

We did, however, receive an insufficient reply to questions some of us voted on and asked over 100 days ago. Around 100 residents in good quality and new government and non-government housing still don’t know if their properties are in the firing line. Responses below.

Finally, don’t forget that the council have provided us a survey about the regeneration but we only have had six weeks to respond over a holiday period. Presumably this survey is to somehow make up for the fact that many people who wanted to attend their engagement events last year could not because there were not enough spaces. The survey is very long – link here. If you don’t want to go through it all, we have extracted the key information for you here.

No matter what the council tell you, we deserve to have at least equal power and a seat at the table with the Council and Berkeley Group. Instead, we continue to be ignored, manipulated, and barely informed. Ultimately, although we can’t know anyone’s true intentions, we can see from the actions thus far very little thought was given to us the residents until we stood together.

Thank you to everyone who has been supporting us in 2023 – we look forward to working with you more in 2024!