Birmingham’s ‘road city emergency’ action stalls

Dear readers — we hope you had a joyful weekend and aren’t sweltering at your desks today. This month marks a year since Birmingham City Council called a ‘road safety emergency’ but at a meeting last week it was revealed that the transport leader has only ticked off one eighth of his vital to-do list. More on that in your Brum in Brief, alongside Sutton Coldfield’s library woes and an economic uptick expected courtesy of Black Sabbath’s final Brum gig this weekend.

Catch up and coming up:

• First things first, we’d like to highlight a correction we made on Wednesday to our article ‘The revolution starts in Moseley’ and apologise for the error. Councillor Izzy Knowles is a Liberal Democrat and not a Labour member as we originally stated.
• Over the weekend, Dan Cave took the wheel in a report about Birmingham’s slot car racing clubs — you can catch up here.
• Samuel went and profiled the Birmingham headquarters of the Workers Party: expect Stalinist literature and portraits of King Charles. 
• Samuel’s off to Mexico for a month to report for The Independent. The excellent Dan Cave will be filling in while he’s gone and he wants to hear from people about what it is like to live in a city centre flat. Reach him on: dancave@birminghamdispatch.co.uk

Photo of the week

The cover to a 1935 City of Birmingham information booklet as shared by fellow Brum digital media outlet @ichoosemag. Email us at editor@birminghamdispatch.co.uk if you know more about this leaflet.

Brum in brief

🚗 It’s been one year since Birmingham City Council called a ‘Road Safety Emergency’ and any action to improve conditions appears to have stalled — only two out of 16 measures supposed to mitigate the city’s road issues have been enacted. Following a transport inquiry last year, a report published in December set out 16 recommendations including plans to lower speed limits and tackle dangerous parking, as well as working with the police on enforcement measures. Speaking at the time, cabinet member for transport Majid Mahmood also said the authority was “making lots of progress” to introduce a city-wide 20mph speed limit. But in a scrutiny meeting on Thursday, it transpired that the majority of the steps have not been completed, despite the deadline for all having passed. At the meeting, Cllr Mahmood said he was making progress but there was “a disconnect” where recommendations had requested joint letters to be written to the Department for Transport and cosigned by several different parties, e.g. the police and MPs. “That’s something that we can do but it’s going to be resource intensive to get everybody to agree to the wording of letters,” he said. The committee agreed to set a new date for Mahmood to report back on progress.

📚 Sutton Coldfield Library has officially closed due to deterioration of the building and concerns over safety. Birmingham City Council announced in May that “significant investment” was required to address the issues and the decision to close was part of a city-wide, £2.285m worth of cuts to library services. The library is located inside the council-owned Red Rose shopping centre which is set for redevelopment as part of a regeneration of Sutton Coldfield town centre. But, as with cuts to other parts of the library service, the closure has been controversial. Green Party activist Ben Auton held a protest last week demanding that the council relocate and reopen the asset, because its closure “will have profoundly harmful effects” on many people. Speaking to The Dispatch, he suggested the City Council had let the building “fall into decline” and he is convinced their plan was to sell it to developers all along. As for the smaller, Conservative-controlled Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council, Auton thinks they acted too late to resist the loss of their local library and only last week agreed to explore options for funding the nearby, also under threat, Walmley and Boldmere Libraries. He says they are sitting on a “stonkingly large surplus budget” because they don’t have any major responsibilities for public services “which is completely missing the point of what Suttonians want from their council.”

➡️ When The Dispatch caught up with Conservative Royal Sutton Coldfield Town councillor Simon Ward, we heard a different story. He told us that to suggest the council has “delayed” action is “just wrong”. Sutton Coldfield Town Council has put in £1.2m over the last seven years to keep the library going. In 2024, when the council launched their strategic plan, residents were consulted on whether they should step in to help other libraries too; the response was a resounding ‘yes’. Cllr Ward says they’ve been working for the last couple of months to get all the information they need from BCC on how these assets are run. “If we make the ultimate decision to step in in some way,” he said, “we do it in a way that is responsible. We can't have something that isn't sustainable.” He added, “I could cry,” about the closure of the Red Rose service, which has been replaced by a mobile library which is open for three hours a week. The Dispatch reached out to Birmingham City Council for comment.

🌳 In an unexpected instance of theft, a plum tree has been pilfered in Harborne, reports BirminghamLive. The tree was one of 600 planted in Birmingham in 2023 along the number 11 bus route, as part of a National Trust initiative to create a ring of blossom trees around the city. The project harkened back to the ‘guinea gardens’ that the city became known for in the 19th century (and which The Dispatch wrote about here) and The One Show filmed the planting of two plum trees in the south Brum suburb. Sadly, the same year, one snapped in two and the other was mown over. In November, the National Trust replaced the trees and surrounded them with mesh but on 10 June, one was stolen. A spokesperson for the National Trust said that, while they don’t know why or how the tree was removed, “we’re disappointed to see that it has been taken.” They added that “each tree is important, especially in urban areas where they help to improve the air around us as well as bring the beauty of nature closer to where people live and work.”

Quick Hits: 

🗑️ Veteran journo Andrew Neil has made a pithy request of prime minister Keir Starmer: “Since they’re both together in The Hague,” he posted on X, “perhaps Starmer could ask Trump to intervene in the Birmingham bin collection strike. It’s been going on for almost as long as the Iran-Israel confrontation.”

💰 Black Sabbath’s big homecoming gig this weekend is expected to bring a £20m boost to the city. Laura Orrell, director of sales at The Grand Hotel, told the BBC that rooms had sold out almost as soon as the concert was announced.

🌛 Wolverhampton readers: the city council has a ‘Night Vision’ to turn Wolves into “a vibrant, inclusive and dynamic” evening destination. Have your say in a consultation about the city’s night-time economy.

⚽ Police have arrested 24 people in relation to disorder at a March football match between Birmingham City and Shrewsbury Town football clubs, the Express and Star reports. The trouble broke out in the stadium concourse during half time.

➡ ️ Over in Warwickshire, Reform council leader, Rob Howard has quit, leaving 18 year old George Finch in charge. Read more on the BBC.

🚨 A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the death of a woman in Winson Green. Sky News reports that 46-year-old Irene Mbugua was found by police at a house on Markby Road shortly before 1am last Monday. In a statement, her family said: “It's so sad that you got snatched from us in such a cruel manner.”

Media picks

📰 Fred Sculthorp is the latest in a swathe of national journalists to take an interest in Birmingham and its various problems. In a long, narrative report for The Critic, he argues that the second city is a synecdoche for the changing face of modern Britain: population rises, demographic changes activated by immigration and the decline of public services. Sculthorp interviews former Mayor Andy Street, deputy leader of the Independent Candidates alliance Shakeel Afsar, and branch secretary of Ladywood Reform: Steve Kelly. He finds a city in tension: experiencing both civic decline and fast paced urban renewal. 

📰 The Economist has explored the odd phenomenon of the overlooked Midlands, both by people from outside and within its boundaries. There is data to back it up too, a YouGov poll found that “in south-west England, 36% declare that life in the region is a lot better than elsewhere. In the West Midlands, 7% say the same.” The Midlands, states the article, is often passed over by government although this is more true of our neighbours in the East Midlands, “which receives less public capital investment per person than any other part of the United Kingdom.”

Our to do list

🎨 The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists launches their Summer Show this week, with the exhibition open to the public from Friday. Their biggest show of the year, with no restrictions on media or technique, features work from international artists covering three floors. 

🍛 Colmore Food Festival will bring the city centre enclave to life on Friday and Saturday with free entertainment for all. A welcome cap on prices for food and drink makes it all the more accessible. Bon appetit. 

💿 Head to Brindley Place on Saturday to stock up on wax and CDs. This debut record fair kicks off at 9am and there are cross-genre bargains to be had.

🎶 Another day, another record fair — this one’s in Stirchley. Dive into 20 tables of vinyl at Attic Brew Co on Sunday. Catch you on the flip side.

Correction 30/6/2025: the Night Vision consultation is a city of Wolverhampton council initiative, not a WMCA one as originally stated.