Next week I will be meeting the Chair and Acting Principal of Bournville College to run through the financial and strategic issues they are facing. We will be discussing what needs to be done to safeguard opportunities for young people in the South Birmingham area and beyond, and to build a secure future for the college itself – a keystone of the redevelopment of the Longbridge area. I don’t want...
I was very concerned to see, via Facebook, that parking charges were introduced late last week for the parking spaces available outside the Bull’s Head pub on Kings Norton Green. A number of local residents had been ticketed as they had parked there without realising that these charges had been introduced, and that they were subject to a fine of £50. I raised the issue with Birmingham City...
I know a lot of local people have experienced problems with London Midland Trains “Leaf Fall” service. I have written to London Midland to raise local people’s concerns about the amended timetable. You can find a copy of their reply to my letter here. As you will see, London Midland have reinstated stops on the 7.52 Longbridge to Four Oaks Service and the 8.10 Lichfield to Longbridge. I...
I am very pleased to send you my report of some of the things I have been doing over the last year as your Member of Parliament. Times have been tough here in the past few years. Month by month local people have been seeing the prices of food, heating and travel rise faster than their wages. The number of residents – especially those under 24 – out of a job for over a year is...
This year’s Remembrance events have been special in so many ways. Most obviously, of course, it is 100 years since the outbreak of World War One. In June it was also the 70th anniversary of D-Day in World War Two. This is also the year in which British combat troops leave Afghanistan; a conflict that has claimed the lives of 453 UK service personnel in the past thirteen years. In amongst the...
I know how fed up people are about the way Governments and Councils behave. Sometimes it seems like politicians are all show, talking a different language and not listening to what people are saying to us. I have always tried to be a different kind of politician – taking up the issues that matter to local people and giving residents a say in the decisions that matter to you. So I am really...
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.