Cuts at Birmingham Hospice

Plus, Labour 'furious' as candidate 'distracts' from Starmer

Good morning Patchers — here is your Friday briefing.

There’s distressing news from Birmingham Hospice today who have announced cutbacks. Since the hospice was formed in 2021, when Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice in Selly Park and John Taylor Hospice in Erdington were merged, it has already made significant cost savings by merging management and support staff roles. Further efficiency savings were made earlier this year, which resulted in a small number of posts being made redundant. Now, they are regretfully scaling back their operation to make up for a budget deficit. More details below.

Elsewhere, Labour has told its Clacton candidate to pack his bags and head to the West Midlands, much to the dismay of local campaigners down in Essex — one has even suggested feathers were ruffled at party HQ when the would-be MP was getting more attention on social media than Starmer. Plus, why your local library might have closed for the day and two very cultured recommendations for your weekend.

Enjoy, and we will be back tomorrow with our weekend read.

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Brum in brief

💷Budget cuts at vital service: Birmingham Hospice has announced that due to an estimated £2.4m budget deficit this year, it will make redundancies equivalent to 45 full-time roles — 14% of the workforce — and reduce the number of inpatient beds available. High increases in costs for energy, food and drugs and inequivalent rises in NHS funding were cited by the organisation as reasons for the measures. Simon Fuller, CEO of Birmingham Hospice, said: “The prospect of having to make highly skilled specialist end-of-life clinicians and support staff redundant is totally unpalatable. We are doing everything we can to support all our hospice colleagues through this difficult time.”

🧳Labour pulls out of Clacton: Labour’s Clacton general election candidate has been seconded to the West Midlands to campaign amid reports that Labour HQ was frustrated by how many tweets he was getting. Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, 27, who works for Labour’s equalities team and has made a splash on social media for his stylish outfits, had been standing against Reform UK leader Nigel Farage since last month — the party has since faced criticism it is not standing up to him. Local campaigners in the constituency (which Labour deems unwinnable) have also had their resources pulled. A campaign source told The Guardian: “At one point [Jovan] was getting more retweets than Keir Starmer. The officials were furious with him and said he was distracting [from] Starmer’s campaign.” Read more here.

📖Council accused of ‘cloak and dagger attack’: Libraries across the city have begun to close for an extra day a week, to continue over summer, due to staff shortages. The move comes as Birmingham City Council is consulting on a new model that will see libraries amalgamated with neighbourhood advice services to cut costs. Campaigners have labelled the move ‘closure by stealth’ and Conservative leader Robert Alden has called it a “cloak and dagger attack”. In a statement the council said this was a “temporary measure” and that staff are unable to be replaced due to the “consultation timeline and the need to make in-year savings”. They also claimed that the arrangement would prioritise “health and well-being by building in resilience to facilitate annual leave arrangements, and unforeseen absence”. The new timetable launched this week. All the details at BirminghamLive.

🎞️Trippy triptych: The new film by Yargos Lanthimos — known for slightly oddball flicks like The Favourite and Poor Things — opens today. You can catch his “triptych fable” at the Mockingbird. Tickets here.

🎷Cat’s meow: If your payday doesn’t fall at the end of the month and your saving your pennies, head to Symphony Hall for their Free Jazz Fridays. This week nu-jazz group Dreamscapes are on the bill producing music with “a sense of true freedom”. More info here.

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