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For a person with a metropolis to run, and an election to struggle, Ian Ward appears supremely relaxed. I’ve saved him ready however he betrays no frustration as he sits, alone, cuppa in hand, in Shard Finish Wellbeing Centre. It is the world he represents, and one of many 69 metropolis wards going to the polls subsequent month.
The nationwide pollsters and consultants are in Labour’s favour; regionally, the Boris Johnson issue is at the moment so poisonous that the Conservatives group chief Robert Alden can barely communicate his identify. The Liberal Democrats are hoping for a resurgence, however are ranging from a low base of simply eight elected councillors. So it needs to be a walkover, proper?
Learn extra: Birmingham Labour launches native election manifesto
However native elections are notoriously unpredictable, with councillor character and voter turnout crucial. Birmingham Labour doesn’t have resounding help regionally, even amongst their very own members, with candidate choice in some wards coming beneath fireplace.
There’s additionally been anger over the antics of canvassers in a single ward, Small Heath, which resulted in violence. Police are investigating.
Ward says his candidates can be be combating onerous for each seat, and taking nothing with no consideration. Victory is just not presumed.
However a 60 web page Labour manifesto that units out a plan that may rely upon the social gathering nonetheless being in cost in 2032 speaks volumes.
The ten yr imaginative and prescient he has mapped out seems to borrow from the New Deal playbook of President FD Roosevelt, who led the US out of the Nice Despair of the Nineteen Thirties. Like him, Ward guarantees a greater future forward out of hardship – a ‘golden decade’ no much less.
It is the Commonwealth Video games this summer season that can mark the beginning of this golden age. Regardless of having to dig hundreds of thousands of kilos deeper into the native coffers than he ever stated he would, together with additional income funds that have been deemed untouchable, Ward insists the Commonwealth Video games continues to be a superb deal and a boon for town.
“I am unable to consider anything we may have executed that may have introduced the sort of funding from the Authorities into town that has come from it, definitely not in the course of the interval of austerity. All of this funding would have gone to a different metropolis if we had not efficiently bid for the Video games – so I believe it was completely the suitable determination to do it.”
He’s sure the entire metropolis will each profit, and embrace, the Video games when it comes. “Birmingham is aware of the way to do issues in model,” he says with a broad smile.
However when the final race is run and the billion-strong TV viewers fades away in midsummer, what sort of metropolis has Labour created? Supporters level to town’s Dwelling Wage standing and excessive ranges of inward funding throughout town as indicators of progress on Labour’s watch.
Labour’s inexperienced credentials are there too, they are saying, by the introduction of the controversial Clear Air Zone, the divisive Low Site visitors Neighbourhoods, new cycle routes, air air pollution screens in faculties, and bikes and scooters for rent.
And, if solely the trams get working once more, a public transport system for town is within the works that can assist make extra automobiles redundant, and all our lives more healthy.
On the local weather, schooling, the longer term for younger individuals, creating jobs and expertise, enhancing well being inequalities and social care provision, town is in protected fingers with Labour, goes the message. Learn all about it for yourselves right here.
However critics abound. Ward’s accusers say beneath his tenure the council has develop into extra keen about pulling in wealth and promoting off council land for improvement, focussing on the ‘huge shiny issues’ just like the Video games and HS2, than about retaining their social contract with the poorest communities and defending providers.
For Ward, the 2 are intertwined. Solely by bringing in traders and alternatives to town can he shield the weak and lift up the struggling, he says. It is primary trickle-down economics in motion.
“We’re about the entire individuals,” he says of his Labour administration. “When you look throughout town, two of the large challenges that we’ve got are the rising inhabitants, with 150,000 extra Brummies coming within the subsequent decade. We’ve received to construct properties for them, and create jobs.
“We are able to most likely construct 65,000 new properties inside Birmingham on this decade, and that is what we’re meaning to do. And we have got to create 100,000 jobs over that interval. Now with a view to do that, we have got to draw the funding into town.
“So if you happen to look throughout Birmingham, there’s not simply cranes within the metropolis centre, there’s cranes proper throughout Birmingham. It is solely by creating these jobs and constructing these properties that we may give individuals a stake sooner or later.”
(Picture: Birmingham Mail/Darren Quinton)
Ward highlights how the council has needed to develop into extra independent too within the face of the scathing influence of Tory austerity cuts, which has seen the council lose three quarters of a billion kilos in sources and funding. Its workforce has been slashed from round 22,000 in 2010 to lower than 12,000 as we speak.
Addressing well being inequality, closing the hole on life expectancy between the poorest and wealthiest areas, serving to enhance residing requirements and discover extra properties for determined households, and elevating attainment at college, notably for white working class and black African Caribbean boys, are large challenges – however a lot of this has worsened, not improved, within the final 4 years. Labour say they’re the social gathering to sort things.
Garbage ‘a serious precedence for individuals’
The state of the streets – exterior of the pristine metropolis centre – is excessive on the checklist of complaints for a lot of residents. Flytipped garbage, missed collections, potholes and unclean roads are a difficulty that bothers everybody as they manoeuvre to work, outlets and faculties.
The council is responding to these complaints, says Ward – partly by a daily cellular family garbage dump and recycling unit, the place individuals can drag their particles and damaged furnishings to a listed neighbourhood location when it visits their space. Its purpose is to make sure those that battle to pay the cumbersome waste disposal cost can accomplish that, and the items are to be made a everlasting function.
A plan to sort out garbage mounting up in alleyways, and to assist tenants residing in flats above outlets to raised get rid of their garbage, are additionally within the masterplan.
“We’re not the one metropolis that is experiencing this,” he stated of the rise in fly-tipping. “We recognise that is the precedence of most residents throughout Birmingham and we share that precedence and we’re decided that we are going to have clear streets going ahead.”
He disputes that fly tipping of cumbersome garbage is rising as a result of individuals are too poor to pay the hefty cost – regardless of what residents in Newtown advised me solely final week. “I do not consider that it’s people who find themselves in an issue paying the cost that truly fly tip on the streets. That is felony exercise being carried out by criminals and we’re one of the vital profitable in prosecuting compliance.
“We put extra individuals in entrance of the courts and are one among just a few native authorities that truly had somebody despatched to jail for flytipping. So we do take motion.”
He additionally added that the waste assortment providers extra usually had been variously hampered by an absence of HGV drivers and Covid illness, resulting in missed collections – however issues are actually settling down. There have been hardly any collections missed on this week after Easter, he stated.
Letting down households
The dismal, and repeated, safeguarding failures that emerged within the home-to-school transport scheme for kids with disabilities, and the obvious reluctance of the council to be really open about these issues, has been a black mark in opposition to Ward’s management.
A scarcity of clear accountability – by senior officers and politicians – has irked households whose youngsters use the transport service, with no person showing to have taken the rap for primary failures that meant drivers who had not received legitimate DBS (felony checks) in place, or had been moreover vetted, have been allowed behind the wheel. A crucial report by legal professionals Weightmans, not but revealed in full, highlighted the utter chaos occurring behind the scenes.
The Authorities has additionally been compelled to usher in nationwide commissioners to assist type out town’s particular wants schooling provision after two startlingly unhealthy inspection studies.
Ward understands the anger these points have generated. He confirms senior individuals departed the council on account of these failings and, although he says he cannot touch upon particular person circumstances, says the state of affairs highlighted that the council’s human sources processes have been “not all the time working properly”.
He confirmed: “The council has beforehand paid out important sums in reference to individuals who have left the organisation for no matter cause. What we’re wanting very carefully at now are our processes so that the place individuals have did not carry out inside the organisation we will exit these individuals in a faster approach than we’ve got up to now.
“There’s all the time two sides to each story and all the time the potential for authorized motion and appeals however what we need to do is guarantee that we have got our processes as clearly outlined as we probably can and make that far slicker than it has been up to now.”
Profligate spending on interim posts and short-term employees has additionally come beneath fireplace. The present finance chief, Rebecca Hellard, was on an interim contract for 18 months, at large value. Ward says she has executed an unimaginable job for the council, enjoying a pivotal position in getting the funds into the very best form for years.
Learn extra: 65 consultants introduced in by Birmingham Council – costing £5 million
However on the final level, he says a reliance on interims has been born out of a dearth of individuals trying to work in native authorities. “All councils are experiencing elevated issue in recruiting top quality individuals. I believe this goes again a few years, proper again to the Thatcher governments of the Eighties when native authorities was being rubbished and undervalued. This gradual drip feed has put individuals off. We have to change that.”
One in all his prized Cupboard colleagues, Paulette Hamilton, leaves the council subsequent month to deal with her position as the brand new MP for Erdington. Earlier than leaving she was caught up in a probe into declarations of curiosity, after showing to fail to correctly declare hyperlinks to a housing firm at a vital assembly.
When requested about it, Ward confirmed he was going to assessment the present preparations for declaring pursuits. “This is de facto, actually necessary as a result of I believe transparency and honesty in politics are very important. I believe we see with the present authorities that if you are going to mislead parliament, if you will be economical with the reality, you simply erode the rules of democracy.
“We’ve to be clear, we’ve got to be sincere, and we’ve got to be open in every thing that we’re doing and act in the very best pursuits of the individuals we symbolize, not our personal pursuits.”
On variety and equal alternative for individuals from all communities, the council can also be beneath fireplace, its largely white panel of administrators and senior managers held up as an emblem of a failure that extends into different public sector organisations within the metropolis.
“I believe it is a actual problem as a result of we stay in an excellent various metropolis and that is not all the time mirrored,” stated Ward.
“I used to be the primary chief of town council to make sure the make-up of the Labour group in Cupboard was gender balanced and various. We’re wanting now very carefully on the metropolis council as a complete, constructing on our ‘Everyone’s Battle, Everyone’s Enterprise’ technique which has truly acquired plaudits up and down the nation for being one of the vital radical paperwork to handle this problem.”
He added it was additionally very important to draw extra younger individuals to work for town council, and recognise the good profession they’ll carve out in native authorities.
Our time is up. There can be extra questions for Ward to reply, as this quick election cycle unfolds – not least at a particular hustings occasion hosted by Birmingham Stay and Birmingham Mail.
That occasion takes place on Thursday night, starring the leaders of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens.
It is a digital gathering that can be broadcast on the Birmingham Stay Fb web page and youtube channels concurrently. We may also be talking to fringe events with candidates in a couple of metropolis ward.
If you need to submit a query prematurely, e mail jane.haynes@reachplc.com The most effective questioners can be invited to place their query stay to the candidates.
Polls open on Could 5. You’ll be able to view a listing of candidates right here.
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