How Birmingham’s color was ‘sprinkled’ as a ‘roaming’ cost-cutting bite.

Birmingham City Council “can be great again” when it overcomes the “self-inflicted wounds” that brought it down, Max Caller, the city’s chief government commissioner, has said.

The council has fallen from being one of the best in the country to “in need of intervention” because of a collective failure to heed the warning signs over many years, Max Caller told the steering committee of control of the council in March.

On the city’s damaging budget cuts, including cuts of £149m this year, affecting children’s services, libraries, bin collections, day centres, adult care, schools and disabled children, he warned that more will follow. Council Tax bills also land with a 9.99% increase.

“There are no quick fixes,” Mr. Caller said. “You still have a funding gap. This is the time to be sincere and honest. Until you do that, there will always be a sense that a clever whistle can be made. Does not exist”.

Driving through Birmingham, you can clearly see that the cuttings fly with bare and dead potted plants on the streets of Birmingham, where Google StreetView shows only two years ago, once full and blooming flowers.

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