Response from our councillors

In response to our letter, Ladywood Unite is addressing the council response forwarded to us by our new councillors. We are committed to providing an informed view of how the regeneration is affecting residents.

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6 July 2026

Dear Councillors,

Ladywood Unite met to review your reply, and we would like to thank you for your offer to meet with us. Could you please let us know when you are available? If you are able to suggest a few possible times, we will check these with residents.

On balance, we believe the regeneration scheme has done far more harm than good, and is likely to cause further harm if it continues. We would therefore ask you and Council leadership to consider cancelling the scheme in full, either by recalling or replacing the original report and withdrawing from the contract.

We are working to regenerate our area and build homes in other ways. This includes working with community developers, creating a community land trust and neighbourhood forum, organising litter picks, supporting urban landscaping, fundraising, and joining with other local and national groups working on similar issues.

Unfortunately, the Berkeley scheme is not guaranteed to deliver any social housing. Comparable schemes suggest that local councillors cannot ensure this will ever be delivered in practice, and Berkeley’s last major regeneration had fewer social homes at the end than at the start. 

Demolition and substantial displacement will continue to threaten residents throughout the scheme, both during and after your elected term. We ask that you act now to protect us from future harm.

Like others throughout the city, we are concerned about whether council officers have the skills, expertise and leadership necessary to deliver this and other major projects. While residents have been informed that our councillors are seeking a “total reset” of the project, this will be difficult to achieve while council officers continue a pattern of providing misleading and, at times, demonstrably false information.

If Council leadership is not willing to withdraw fully from the scheme, we would ask that it is reviewed against Green Party principles. We look forward to discussing this with you, and our detailed replies to you and the Council are also attached. If you require any supporting evidence for our replies, this is largely available on our website, or we can provide supporting documents.

Kind regards,

Ladywood Unite Steering Group

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1. Affordable and Social Housing Provision

BCC RESPONSE: The scheme will provide a minimum of 20% affordable homes sitewide, with the intention to provide a 50/50 split between affordable rented homes and affordable sale homes – with socially rented homes being a priority. This is outlined within the Community Charter and expanded upon with the You said, we did document (page 43). There will not be a decrease in the number of social homes.

This proposal is in breach of Green Party policy on regeneration projects and its commitment to “a net increase in social homes”. Take the current figure of 12,000 homes proposed, which is known to exclude the tower blocks. Even if one generously assumes that two-thirds of the proposed 10% affordable rent provision will be social rent, this would amount to approximately 800 homes, which is only slightly more than the remaining 784 existing social rent homes that may be affected by demolition. The net gain would therefore be minimal in a city where over 30,000 households remain on the social housing waiting list.

This proposed offer of fewer than 10% social rent homes is also in breach of Green Party policy on housing: “All housing developments in Birmingham to have 25% genuinely affordable social rent as a target in Birmingham’s Local Plan” 

As a side note, the current draft of Birmingham’s Local Plan, if approved, will also be in breach of this policy, as it will lower the minimum affordable housing threshold across the city to 20%, with a significant impact on the delivery of social housing: https://www.itv.com/news/central/2024-10-14/birmingham-city-council-to-slash-affordable-housing-targets. 

2. Right to Remain in Ladywood

BCC RESPONSE: A right of return is usually applied in circumstances where people are moved away from their homes due to redevelopment and given the opportunity to return once building has completed. 

We are taking a build first approach to estate regeneration in Ladywood. This means that new homes are built before any existing homes are demolished. This allows residents to move directly into new housing without needing to be relocated elsewhere temporarily or displaced. 

The build first approach, in combination with the commitment for less demolition and increased refurbishment keeps disruption low. For example, the majority of residents will not need to leave the area, change GP or move their children to another school.

The language within the draft charter was amended to make clear residents being moved out of the area, would be an exception, rather than the rule. This is further reinforced through the You said, we did document.

We are asking for a right to remain, not return. The approach to build first is not a guarantee in the charter and the regeneration team has a history of not following through with a build first approach in the rest of the city. The regeneration team have not been willing to put any guarantees in the charter although we have repeatedly asked. Without firm guarantees, this is also in breach of the following Green Party policy commitments to:

• Minimise demolition of homes

• Guarantee existing social rent tenants the right to remain in the area in a new social rented home
• Ensure private homeowners losing their home to get like-for-like replacement
• Ensure all residents losing their home move into a new home in one move

A build-first principle is welcome in theory. Yet a build-first principle is an operational principle, not an unconditional guarantee of the right to remain or return. Unfortunately, the charter does not provide an unconditional right to remain or return for homeowners or social tenants.

Moreover, there is a serious risk that there won’t be sufficient truly affordable and social rent homes guaranteed by the scheme for displaced people to move into, which has been a problem in other regenerations. The 2023 Full Business Case states that the provision of affordable housing is subject to viability (Appendix 2: B4), and that such viability is “largely predicated on achieving private unit sales” (Appendix 2: C3). 

Under the National Planning Policy Framework, viability is generally expected to provide a 15–20% profit margin for the developer, which may reduce the delivery of social housing and potentially increase the rate of demolition over the course of the project.

Birmingham offers a daunting picture in this regard. According to FOI data, 22,483 homes were completed in Birmingham between 2020 and 2025, of which only 762 were for affordable rent and only 407 were for social rent. Approximately 90% of the homes being built are market or luxury housing, in a city where around 80% of annual housing need is for affordable and social rented homes.

Value engineering presents further risks. FOI data show that in Birmingham, between 2018 and 2023, just over 4,500 affordable homes were approved at the planning stage, but only just over 1,500 were delivered.

The demand from homeowners for like-for-like replacements now appears in the Charter’s “Community Views” section. However, that demand is not substantively addressed. Moreover, the majority of homeowners don’t want to move in the first place, and have incurred substantial financial costs already due to the regeneration such as due to changing their retirement plans and legal fees.

With regard to tenants, the Council speaks in terms of intentions rather than commitments or guarantees, including about the offer to move into a new home in a single move. Without stronger protections in the charter, great harm is likely to come to residents and we need the support of our councillors to achieve these protections.

3. Resident Charter 

BCC RESPONSE: The charter was developed with residents through a wide range of engagement mechanisms. This was done over almost a two-year period.

A ‘You said, we did’ document was produced to demonstrate how community voices shaped the charter, and also highlights where it has not.

It’s not the right time to review the charter, being launched less than 12 months ago. Resident offers will be reviewed in line with an agreed masterplan and it would be premature to change the document at this stage.

The Council has a powered by people framework in place, which is specified within the charter and also signed up to by Berkeley St Joseph.

There are serious concerns about the process leading to the finalisation of the Charter. Given the amount of time residents and council officers spent over the course of the two years, it is a missed opportunity. The Resident and Community Steering Group has said they do not want to sign up to the Charter in its current form.

Participation in the 12 engagement workshops held in October and November 2023 was capped at only 20 participants per workshop, limiting opportunities for meaningful and inclusive engagement. Additionally, the activities carried out during these workshops were not sufficiently or appropriately designed to produce a charter. The questions asked were too generic, and the methodology used to elicit responses was too vague to be effective. From the outset, the workshops were presented and designed as information sessions rather than hands-on activities aimed at producing an output, the significance of which was not fully explained to participants.

A survey was then launched a few days before Christmas 2023, running until the end of February 2024. Structured in four parts, the survey invited participants to state their priorities on a range of topics, including trust, the importance of community involvement, compensation, rehousing options, parking, and green spaces. Four videos accompanied each section, outlining the range of feedback and suggestions BCC had received during its workshops. However, the clustering of so many topics within a single survey, together with the lack of clarity about how the feedback would be used, remains a cause for concern.

Workshops held in June and July 2024 focused on the Community Charter, but residents were not given access to the draft Charter that the Council had already been working on, limiting the extent to which they could influence the process.

Surveys were then launched again in December 2024, but they were very poorly publicised by BCC and remained open for only one month. This was followed by another survey in June 2025, which gave residents only 14 days to respond.

The charter changed after publication without notifying residents of the changes and resident queries about the changes were ignored by council officers.

Overall, the process for finalising the Charter has largely involved eliciting feedback through pre-formatted questions rather than genuine co-production, creating the risk of the selective use of residents’ input. As one officer admitted, residents’ feedback had been “cherry-picked.”

Finally, the statement that the Charter cannot be updated at present contradicts repeated statements describing it as a “live” and “dynamic” document that should reflect residents’ demands, rather than simply the progress of the regeneration project. This is stated, for example, in the February 2026 Homes Overview and Scrutiny Meeting report:

4.1.8 The Charter is a live, dynamic document, and will be regularly updated to reflect the evolving landscape and to meet changing resident and delivery demands which will develop during the Regeneration project. 

The Charter itself also states (p. 3):

the charter must remain dynamic, regularly updated to reflect the evolving landscape to meet changing resident and delivery demands 

We need local councillors to advocate for residents’ views to be meaningfully included in the charter. The charter should be changed now and the council should evidence how it reflects resident and stakeholder views rather than those of the council and developers.

4. Participation in Planning and Design

BCC RESPONSE: Development of the masterplan is still very much in the early stages and the responsibility of the developer. The masterplan will form the basis of a hybrid or outline planning application. However, more detailed planning will evolve in later stages of the project via ‘reserved matters’ applications – these will be more specific to particular parts of the estate, in line with the agreed phasing.

Two stages of master plan development have been completed so far – this is currently under review.

This statement is a cause for concern: “Two stages of master plan development have been completed so far – this is currently under review.” Engagement sessions were presented as opportunities for residents to provide feedback, but nothing concrete was produced. Residents were not involved in co-producing any part of the plan. This statement therefore requires further clarification.

The quality of the sessions also remained problematic. Engagement with residents has been structured around eliciting feedback on pre-formatted questions rather than co-design. The problem is that feedback is discretionary, not binding.

These activities remain insufficient. Workshop attendance fell from 177 participants in July to 140 in December out of over 5,000 residents. These figures suggest disengagement and limited reach. Without a pause and a rethink, disengagement risks being used to justify proceeding without residents’ meaningful involvement.

In July, residents felt their knowledge was being used to design a neighbourhood in which they might not ultimately live. In December, some residents were left standing in the rain and cold without seating. Information was also confusing, including contradictory dates regarding when residents would be informed of their regeneration category about whether their homes would be demolished or not. Meanwhile, the sequencing of engagement activities changed without clear explanation. Earlier planned discussions on regeneration opportunities were postponed, while later-stage sessions on masterplanning principles proceeded without any clear rationale being provided.

Reports from these sessions have been concerning. For instance, calls to remain in Ladywood were not treated as binding. Instead, they were softened into something that residents merely “value”, making them appear optional. This tendency was compounded by the arbitrary distinction the report draws between expectations and “non-negotiable components”. Affordability and housing quality were labelled “non-negotiable”, while the core issue of avoiding displacement was relegated to the status of a mere expectation.

The distinction between “expectations” and “non-negotiable components” was not, for example, elicited through the forms shared with residents during the workshops, which focused on priorities, community needs, and suggestions for improvement. This distinction was an interpretation introduced by the authors of the reports and, worryingly, deprioritises issues that are central to current residents of Ladywood.

Reports from the December sessions indicated that residents supported statements relating to green space, good-quality homes, and vibrant communities. However, these aspirations remain inconsequential without firm guarantees, which existing policies currently fail to provide.

5. Transparency of Regeneration Documents

BCC RESPONSE: The development agreement is a commercially sensitive document. A legally approved and redacted version of the agreement has been made publicly available. 

The Council is not in a position to publish any further versions of the contract at this time in line with the Councils constitution as this would make public, sensitive information about the way Berkley St Joseph business operates.

A full business case was attached to the cabinet paper related to the scheme, published in June 2023. This provides a financial breakdown and highlights any risks to the council and is publicly available.

While it is reasonable that commercially sensitive details are not to be shared, we request an independent assessment of what counts as commercially sensitive and what can be shared rather than an assessment conducted by the council and developers. There is information in the reports that should be made available to the public, such as the phasing.

The Development Agreement dedicates a significant amount of space to the project’s phasing. Specifically, the Agreement contains at least 125 pages detailing phase leases and phase development agreements, including what appears to be a phasing map or plan (the indicative draft phasing plan), all of which have been redacted.

The Development Agreement was signed on 30 April, yet residents were told months later, including during the July workshops, that the phases had not been agreed. This raises serious concerns about transparency and the authenticity of communication with the community.

6. Governance of the Resident and Community Steering Group

BCC RESPONSE: The Council recognises that the Resident Steering Group will play a vital role in the governance of the estate regeneration programme, bringing valuable lived experience, strengthening accountability, and enhancing the legitimacy of the process. The group will have a meaningful role in shaping proposals, providing insight, scrutiny, and constructive challenge and will influence key decisions throughout the project. In some areas, there may also be opportunities for direct involvement in decision-making.

There are no current plans to dissolve the steering group. It is important that any representative body reflects the community, particularly those residents directly impacted by regeneration by tenure and geography. The structure and composition of the group could significantly change, as further clarity emerges through the masterplan. The LRCSG will be reviewed once this position is understood. In the interim, the priority is ensuring it is able to operate effectively within the programme governance.

The Resident and Community Steering Group is neither elected nor demographically representative. Ladywood is 77% Black and Asian communities, yet the group’s membership does not reflect this diversity. The Council has not undertaken proactive measures to encourage participation in the Steering Group from seldom-heard and ethnic minority communities. Residents have also reported receiving no response to requests to join the group, with no explanation provided for their exclusion. This is a missed opportunity to use valuable community expertise to shape the project.

When the Steering Group was established, members had limited time to review key texts, such as the Terms of Reference, and residents’ suggested edits to governing documents were only selectively incorporated.The Steering Group terms of reference function as a “gag order”, preventing members from criticising it publicly even if to improve it.

Members of the Steering Group have also complained about their inability to influence decisions, as well as limited access to information about the regeneration process. Berkeley Homes has been invited multiple times to speak with members of the group. In June, members of the group were told that Berkeley had suspended any face-to-face meetings about the regeneration process, heightening the painful uncertainty residents continue to experience about potential demolition of their homes.

7. Meanwhile Offer

BCC RESPONSE: The meanwhile is detailed within page 21 of the Ladywood Residents & Community Charter.

The regeneration of the Ladywood estate will likely take two decades to fully complete. In the meantime, our aim is to ensure the Ladywood estate is maintained and the community supported, both in the lead up to the regeneration commencing and whilst we make changes to the estate. The meanwhile offer has been shaped by some of the key messages provided by the community throughout engagement such as community safety, continued maintenance of existing homes and the general neighbourhood, employment opportunities, cost of living pressures and mental health and wellbeing support. The Meanwhile Offer isn’t fixed. It’s meant to grow and evolve through continued collaboration with local people and key partners. Further information on the meanwhile offer, including next steps can be found in pages 35,36, 57 and 58 of the You Said, We Did report.

The regeneration was approved in June 2023. Three years on, residents have not seen any improvement in the area by the council and have had to undertake these themselves. The council’s maintenance of existing homes remains poor. Over the past two months alone, residents have reported multiple incidents of fly-tipping, persistent leaks – including in properties that have had new fittings – as well as pigeon infestations and rat infestations.

The Meanwhile Offer detailed in the Development Agreement focuses on the temporary use of land during redevelopment, such as public art, community gardens, pop-up events, and food festivals. While welcome, these initiatives are insufficient given the scale of disruption and distress the regeneration will cause, and the lack of clear guarantees for residents’ right to remain in the area.

The offer of mental health support was sporadic, not fit for purpose, and now appears to be discontinued. For example, residents have been asked to travel out of the area to attend group mental health support sessions that are not regeneration-specific.

A 2024 survey by MP Shabana Mahmood painted a stark picture: 86% of respondents said regeneration had negatively affected their mental health; 71% opposed the plans; and over seven in ten rated the Council’s handling of regeneration as “very bad”. This remains unaddressed.

The regeneration has failed to provide any employment opportunities. This is compounded by the findings of the March 2026 Birmingham City Council report Opportunity through Regeneration: Reducing Unemployment, Raising Skills, which questions the assumed correlation between regeneration and employment, and highlights a narrow definition of employment with an exclusive focus on construction.

This is reflected in Ladywood. According to the 2021 Census, unemployment stands at 16.8%, significantly above both the Birmingham and national averages.

In Ladywood, current regeneration policy frames “local value” primarily through employment in the construction sector. While this may generate short-term job opportunities linked to redevelopment activity, it raises important questions about the extent to which employment provision reflects the broader occupational structure of the area, particularly in care, retail, administrative, and other service sectors that currently sustain a significant proportion of residents’ livelihoods.

Moreover, the definition of “local” extends up to a 30-mile radius, encompassing areas beyond Ladywood and in some cases outside Birmingham. This expansive geography risks diluting the principle of place-based benefit, as it becomes unclear whether employment opportunities are primarily targeted at residents directly affected by regeneration or distributed across a wider regional labour market.

Sadly, employment opportunities are already set to move out of the area such as through the Frank Allart factory, a local employer, which has agreed to relocate because of payment from Berkeley to acquire their premesis.

8. Safeguarding

BCC response: The Council received a number of emails from Ladywood Unite in relation to this matter, some of which we found to be inappropriate and resulted in a request form the City’s legal team to remove inappropriate social media posts.

Two individual complaints were later received and not upheld via the Councils corporate complaints process. The Councils two stage complaints process was exhausted. This was later escalated to the Ombudsman where no wrongdoing was identified. The Ombudsman is an independent body that investigates complaints about public services, such as the council, to decide whether people have been treated fairly and properly

The Council will provide no further comment in relation to this matter. 

We kindly request that our local councillors speak to the affected parents and children to see if they are okay and what actions the parents and children would like to see take place next. The council does not appear to be equipped to take on this matter.

The evidence, which we can provide as needed, is that children were spoken to about the demolition of their homes at a youth club and offered free food and sim cards. The council has not provided any evidence that parents consented to the council speaking to their children about the regeneration. This is in breach of safeguarding guidance. 

When posting about this true fact publicly on social media, the council sent legal letters to residents to try to silence them, which did not work. We now further request our local councillors review the youth safeguarding procedures for the regeneration, ensuring that officers obtain parental consent before engaging with children or offering them free food and sim cards, and independently review any future legal letters sent to Ladywood community groups by the council.

9. Support for residents requiring early moves

BCC reply: Without a masterplan or planning approval there isn’t a live ‘scheme’. The Councils allocations policy doesn’t allow us to apply any housing priority at this early stage in the project. Any priority would be subject to a Local Lettings Plan further down the line.

Where the Council have been made aware of individual housing needs, we are working with residents to explore broader support available to them through Adult Social Care and other partner agencies.

This is very much a ‘live scheme’ for residents in that it directly impacts the ability of residents to move and sell their homes, as covered in the local press. We kindly request that our local councillors respond to the existing resident correspondence they have already received requesting their help with early moves and set up a clear process and procedure for handling these going forward.

The council response mentioned a local lettings plan, which does not apply to private homeowners who are also affected by the scheme. We now further request our local councillors to review the current support for residents requiring early moves, meet with them, and set up a proactive monitoring and check-in system for these residents and provide new housing options and adaptations where possible.

10. Implementation of upheld complaints outcome

BCC Response: This relates to an individual complaint relating to an external organisation. This has been responded to via the council’s complaints process. A separate meeting also took place with the complainant and follow up communications have been issued.

The Council is not able to comment further on this individual complaint. 

We kindly request that our local councillors review the documentation related to this complaint and ensure the outcomes the council themselves agreed to are actually implemented. This is the only complaint that has ever been upheld in the entire regeneration scheme to our knowledge and we believe this is because the event was recorded by a resident so it was impossible for the council to refute. The council has subcontracted the ARK organisation and is responsible for their performance and deliverables. We now further request our local councillors to review the current complaints process to ensure it is impartial, meet with residents who hold evidence of bias in the complaints process, and set up an independent councillor monitoring and review system for all complaints related to the Ladywood Regeneration. 

11. Inclusion and representation

BCC Response: This relates to an individual complaint. The complaint was found not to be upheld, and the Councils two stage complaints process has been exhausted.

An independent external organisation managed the set-up of the Steering Group. It has been made clear that age and ethnicity were not used as a deciding factor, with the exception of identifying one Youth representative aged 18-25.

The Council will not comment further in relation to this matter.

No resident should ever receive an email from the council stating they are excluded from regeneration activities due to their age and ethnicity. The council does not appear to be equipped to address this matter. We request our councillors to meet with this affected resident and respond to and resolve the outstanding correspondence from them. The council’s email to the resident stated:

“This left our selection down to the choice between two freehold homeowners, one of whom was selected as they represented a significantly different age group to the other panellists’, and they are from a minority ethnic community, which makes the panel significantly more diverse and representative, otherwise all on the panel would have been in the same age bracket and from white ethnic backgrounds.

We are sorry that this selection criteria has meant that you have not initially been included within the evaluation panel.”

As above, we now again further request our local councillors to review the current complaints process to ensure it is impartial, meet with residents who hold evidence of bias in the complaints process, and set up an independent councillor monitoring and review system for all complaints related to the Ladywood Regeneration. 

12.Timelines

BCC Reply: An indicative timeline has been provided within the Ladywood Resident & Community Charter.

The December Masterplan sessions introduced three categories of intervention (these can be found here: Keep in Touch with Latest News – Ladywood Estate Regeneration – Commonplace).

We recognise that following the December sessions there was an expectation that further communication would follow in the spring that would provide an indication as to which part of the estate these categories would apply. A communication explaining the delays was issues in February (link above). However, we fully acknowledge that the delay since that time has been significant and understandably frustrating for the community.

We are currently working with Berkeley St Joseph to progress a coordinated update. Providing clarity in this area is a key priority. 

Residents were told they would find out if their homes would be demolished in early 2026. In contrast to the council’s reply, there is no current timeline available for the regeneration anymore (see reply to Freedom of Information Request 84385178 May 2026). We suggest the developer and council re-provide a timeline for when residents will find out if their homes will be demolished.

13.Standards of communication

BCC Reply: We recognise the importance of respectful, clear and professional communication at all times, particularly given the sensitive nature of regeneration and the impact this can have on residents and community organisations.

While we do not recognise or accept the characterisation outlined, we take feedback about communication seriously and expect all officers to engage respectfully and professionally at all times. We will continue to review our training approach, including your suggestion regarding additional input.

We request our local councillors take action to implement our suggestion that council housing officers receive a comprehensive training and education programme, for example, led by Public Health officers with substantial experience communicating with the public about sensitive issues. Residents themselves have offered to create and provide a training programme for council offers via a CPD to improve their standards of communication. It is no longer sufficient for housing officers to self-evaluate their communication standards.