In neglected ‘Birmingham town’ where children are poor but hope grows

It’s an area of ​​Birmingham that has been largely overlooked for decades, but has a population the size of a small town. It carries several labels of unwanted poverty – the UK’s child deprivation capital, a black spot for youth unemployment and a place where a third of residents live in energy poverty, unable to afford to heat their homes.

It has more food banks than actual banks and all but one ward is among the most deprived 10% in the country. It also includes some of the most densely populated parts of the city. Welcome to East Birmingham, an area that stretches from Bromford in the north to the edge of Solihull in the south.

But it is also full of potential, much of it untapped and held back by government neglect, argues Birmingham Hodge Hill and North Solihull Labor candidate Liam Byrne, who says his “life’s work” has been to alter the trajectory of residents who I live here.

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Now, at last, he believes there is hope on the horizon after the East Birmingham Inclusive Growth Council he chairs extracted a promise that up to £1.3bn would be heading to the area to launch new jobs. work, skills and opportunities. In an announcement last month, the board outlined a package of measures designed to make the area attractive to employers and developers. This would bring in more business rates, which could be retained locally to help regenerate some of the city’s poorest communities – from Alum Rock to Ward End.

READ MORE: Neglected Birmingham area to get £1.3bn funding to lift hope and create jobs

The land in question lies between the planned high-speed stations at Curzon Street and Solihull, ignored for decades while other parts of the city thrive. “This is quite simply one of the biggest investments we have seen in East Birmingham since the Second World War and, together with High Speed ​​2 coming soon, is an absolute game changer.” Byrne said when announcing the deal. last month.

Looking to find out more, I met Byrne in the Dolphin Women’s Center cafe, which is located on the lakeside in Ward End Park. Recently reopened after a £1 million regeneration, the recipient of a first batch of funding in the area, it’s a great place to spend a summer afternoon.

Over coffee, just a day before Rishi Sunak’s shock announcement of the July 4 election, Byrne recalls the pivotal moment he recognized the once-in-a-generation opportunity. He was in Gordon Brown’s 2009 Labor Cabinet when Andrew Adonis, then transport secretary, outlined plans for the new high-speed line 2 to link London to Birmingham.

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“The number that stood out to me was how the journey time between Canary Wharf and Birmingham International was going to drop to less than an hour. I had lived in America before I got into politics and I remember being in New York when the trip from Stamford in Connecticut to Grand Central Station was reduced to an hour and almost the entire Wall Street office moved to Stamford as a result.

“We felt this was a huge opportunity for us in East Birmingham to bring huge amounts of business from London to an area with a large workforce and lower cost of living. For 15 years I have been on this mission to make sure East Birmingham is connected. in the prosperity that will come out of HS2 – but it’s also crucial to make sure that we’re not this oasis of inequality that’s in the middle of this new wealth that’s being created in Solihull and Birmingham city centre.”

The £1.3 billion increase in funding will help the area “start building transport, skills, strong mental health services, youth organizations and all the things we need to help rejuvenate what is today the unemployment capital in Britain,” he said.

If it were a city, East Birmingham would be the 16th largest in England, tied with Derby, he added, but is being treated as an afterthought. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change things here.”

READ MORE: Neglected Birmingham area to get £1.3bn funding to lift hope and create jobs

Across the road from the park is the old LDV Alstom site, which will be transformed into the HS2 network control center that will control the train line, creating 550 well-paid jobs along with train cleaning and other manual facilities. “The business park next to it will be big enough to accommodate 3,500 jobs,” Byrne said.

The nearby Wheels site will be transformed into a major sports precinct and a new Blues stadium in a deal with Birmingham City FC on another part of the business district announced to fanfare earlier this year .

One of his hopes is that the business rates generated by the new business and investment zones will finally be able to fund the long-promised tram line from the city center to East Birmingham and on to Solihull.

“It was promised by Andy Street at the 2021 election and we haven’t given up on it despite the suggestion of downgrading it to a bus route or possibly very light rail. We have just completed a transport feasibility study which shows a Western Tram is still the right answer,” he said.

The route would run from Digbeth – Bordesley Green – Heartlands Hospital – through Chelmsley Wood to the airport and NEC. It would be vital infrastructure to transport staff to the new work centres, he said.

“For the first time we can now see the rays of the sun and the next steps will be to work with residents to see what their priorities are. We will start this in Ward End by developing a new community plan for the area. This will be the suburb receiving more investment than almost anywhere in the city over the next ten years as we build the network control center at the former LDV site, the business park and draw up a bold plan to refurbish Ward End House and bring this in the community. use, said Byrne, warming to his task.

“At Tyseley Energy Park we are trying to create one of the world’s largest centers of green innovation, which we hope will be one of the UK’s capitals of hydrogen technology in the future. We have a lot of space to provide a home there for green start-ups. and the kind of business we’ll need to decarbonise East Birmingham homes Hodge Hill is already home to £27 million of upgrades at the Bromford and Firs estate, the country’s biggest pilot upgrade. That will tell us a lot about costs, how much people save on bills and how many jobs can be created with the training provided by South and City College, which has a training center for retrofitting and the green energy center in Bordesley Green;

“It’s endlessly frustrating that progress has been so slow, but now we’re starting to pick things up.”

Unsurprisingly, Byrne believes a combination of a new Labor government and a newly elected Labor mayor, Richard Parker, in the West Midlands will achieve the best results. “I have been shouting into the wind in Westminster for years. It is clear that the Departments of Transport, Treasury, DWP and Leveling are incapable of having a single co-ordinated plan to deliver on the opportunities of HS2 in this place with the highest unemployment in the country.

“We’ve had a lot of arguments with the DWP about the way they do business – at one point they reorganized their operations in the north and south without regard to the East Birmingham plan. They were hopelessly disorganized and failed to take advantage of opportunities.

“I think a Labor government will be less isolated. Labor will bring money and power from Westminster to the regions and into the hands of mayors like Richard Parker, who has been a strong supporter of this project for five years.” Parker helped advise Byrne in his failed mayoral bid in 2021, helping to write the manifesto that was the foundation of his own this time around.

“He is deeply immersed in the moral mission of ending poverty in the West Midlands, and this is the poorest place in the world, and the place to start. He’s also close to Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, so he’s very well placed to persuade the government to hand over the power and resources we need to move faster.”

He hopes for the transition ahead. “Walk into any primary school in East Birmingham and you will see that the children of this next generation are extraordinary.” He reflects on the ideas presented in his local Earthshot competition last year with local schools – “we had eight and nine-year-olds from Alston Primary writing an environmental education curriculum; children from Lea Forest Academy have designed an iPad-powered canal cleaning barge.

“Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. They have the talent and should have the chance to work their way into the bright middle-class jobs of the future, just like the kids in the better-off parts of the city. Build ladders to prosper. it is what we now have the chance to do. We haven’t had a chance to do that in years.”

The Tory government has long wanted to “make an example of Birmingham, really beat Birmingham”, he claims. “They took a billion pounds out of the city through austerity, which says all you need to know. The cuts they have imposed on welfare and education means this constituency has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK. We are the youngest constituency with more families than any other part of the country.

“Things like the two-child benefit cap are condemning thousands of people here to raise their children in poverty. Add in cuts to special needs education and you make it worse. These cuts mean that if you have a child with a disability or special needs, at least one parent will be taken out of work to look after them – which condemns the whole family to growing up in poverty and is simply wrong and grossly unfair .

“We haven’t had a government in the last 14 years that has, frankly, delivered anything on that. They just don’t like poor people.”

Liam Byrne will stand for Labor in the new Hodge Hill and North Solihull constituency in the July 4 general election.

They are also so far understood to be up against James Giles of the GB Labor Party and Imran Ali Khan of the Green Party. The full list of candidates will be published on June 7.