Homes England, the Mayors and the Midlands: Who Answers When Delivery Falls Short?
Social housing is infrastructure in all but name. The homes commissioned under the arrangements now being drawn up will stand and shelter families long after the ministers and mayors who announced them have left office. The landlords who own them cannot easily walk away when a scheme proves harder than expected. The promises made at […]
The Black Country’s young people want to work but they have a connection problem
I grew up in the Black Country; I went to school here and, as a teenager, like many of my friends I had my first job here working evenings and weekends in a corner shop. My brother lived the same experience – getting a start in life by working part-time at a clothes shop. It […]
Built to Hand Over, Owned for Life – Closing the FHS Stewardship Gap in Affordable Housing
There is a quiet asymmetry at the heart of how affordable housing gets built in this country, and the Future Homes Standard (FHS), for all its ambition, has yet to reckon with it. A housebuilder’s obligations effectively end at practical completion. A Registered Provider’s begin there – and run for the next thirty years, forty […]
Small sites, better neighbourhoods: A Midlands Housing Opportunity
A vacant corner plot, a redundant garage court, an awkward gap in a street. These places rarely dominate the housing debate, but I believe they deserve a more deliberate role in how we think about the Midlands’ future. Their potential begins with providing additional homes. It also extends to the streets, connections and shared spaces […]
Ending Rough Sleeping Takes More Than a Bed: A West Midlands View
Across the West Midlands, we know that rough sleeping is one of the clearest and most painful signs that something has gone wrong long before someone reaches a doorway, a tent or a car park. It is visible, urgent and unacceptable. But it is also complex. As chair of the West Midlands Combined Authority Homelessness […]
Labour’s effective nationalisation of the West Midlands’ bus network is socialism by the back door
Labour’s Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, and the Mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker, have announced new plans to bring the West Midlands’ bus network under public control. On Monday, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) approved the acquisition of National Express’s West Midlands bus operation. This effectively brings buses in the West Midlands into […]
The five key priorities for building a resilient, future-ready organisation
The business landscape in the West Midlands, and more widely across the UK continues to evolve rapidly as organisations respond to economic pressures, technology trends and new innovations. In the current climate, the organisations that will thrive over the next decade won’t be those that adopt the most technology. They’ll be those that manage change […]
Do we back our winners enough?
Today is A-Level Results Day. For thousands of young people across the country, this morning will bring celebration, relief, perhaps disappointment and, for many, the first big decision about what comes next. Some will head to university. Others will start apprenticeships, go to college, enter employment or take a different route altogether. And that is […]
We keep asking young people to be employer-ready. But are employers young-people-ready?
“Talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn’t.” It’s a phrase I return to often because it captures a major challenge facing young people today. We do not lack talent, potential or ambition. We lack enough routes for that talent to be seen, developed and given a fair chance to succeed. For years, the employability debate has focused […]
Andy Street on Burnham, devolution and the fight for a regional voice
At a time when the former Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has just got the biggest promotion of his life, we were privileged to hear from Sir Andy Street, another former Mayor, at the Centre for the New Midlands about his thoughts on what getting the top seat at the table might mean, where […]