Why East Birmingham Deserves Greater Investment
East Birmingham has been overlooked for too long. It is time for serious, long-term investment in our people, our high streets and our young.
Drive through Alum Rock, Saltley, Bordesley Green or Ward End and you see two things at once: a community full of energy, enterprise and family — and infrastructure that has been allowed to fade. Our high streets work hard, our schools work hard, our families work hard. The system around them has not worked hard enough in return.
East Birmingham is not asking for charity. It is asking for fairness. For the same quality of investment that other parts of our city take for granted: in transport, in housing, in skills, in safer streets, and in opportunities for young people who deserve more than to be defined by a postcode.
When investment finally arrives, it must be done with the community, not done to the community. Local organisations, faith institutions, residents and small businesses know what their streets need. The role of any leader worth the name is to listen first and act second.
I have spent my life in these neighbourhoods. The case for East Birmingham is not political. It is moral. And it is overdue.