What is about to happen to Birmingham is devastating – it will ruin the city I love

Europe's largest council must make urgent budget savings of £300m – but at what cost? Birmingham’s ‘golden decade’ now means the city faces years of paying more for less, says proud Brummie Chris Stevenson

Host of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Birmingham’s ‘golden decade of opportunity’ is now a mere memory (PA Wire)

It was a little over two years ago that Birmingham residents were told that their city was at the start of the “golden decade of opportunity”.

It was about to host the Commonwealth Games, the HS2 high-speed railway between London and the north – of which it was the major interchange – was well underway, and a number of smaller local projects would have a huge, transformative effect on the entire West Midlands.

I’d felt that sense of optimism in my hometown for years. Cranes dot the skyline as you drive into the city centre, a sign of the wider development across the region. Longbridge, in south Birmingham, a couple of miles from where I grew up – which, for decades, was home to British car manufacturing – was going through a regeneration of its own.

So news that Birmingham is now to make urgent budget savings of £300m – slashing bin collections and dimming streetlights while implementing a 21 per cent rise in council tax over the next two years – is, as the city’s Labour-run council has said, devastating.

Last September, just as Rishi Sunak was preparing to kill off the northern leg of HS2, Europe’s largest local authority issued a Section 114 notice, informing the government it would not be able to balance its budget, rendering it effectively bankrupt. Today, its deficit stands at £87m.

It is not the only authority to face funding issues. Over the past year alone, four English councils have declared themselves to be effectively bankrupt, with more than half warning they will go under in the next five years. On Monday, Nottingham City Council approved hundreds of job losses and service cuts to try and plug a £53m budget shortfall. Councils across the country are expected to face billions of pounds in collective deficits by 2026.

There are a number of reasons Birmingham finds itself in this position, including significant cuts to government-funded grants and equal pay claims which could total as much as £1bn. Up to 600 public sector jobs could also be axed.

But it is the people of the city that have ended up footing the bill, and who will face paying more for less.

Substantial cuts, worth tens of millions of pounds, could be made to the adult social care budget and the Children’s Services department. While fortnightly bin collections and dimming streetlights will be inconveniences that will impact quality of life, cuts to services will be keenest felt by some of the most vulnerable people.

There is also a cultural impact to this. Under proposals for savings, a significant number of libraries could be closed, plus the likely withdrawal of financial support for arts and creative organisations in the city, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

As a proud Brummie, I found it hard not to be moved when councillor Liz Clements broke down in tears during a council cabinet meeting last month. “Arts aren’t a luxury,” she said. “They are actually what makes life worth living in this city, and they are a reason to keep going. So I, personally, I’m really devastated about that... But I know we’ve got to get through and set the budget.”

The arts are a big draw for visitors. Tough decisions have to be made, and there is plenty of blame to go around, but Birmingham will be severely diminished by such wholesale cuts.

This is all part of a grim picture. With residents feeling anger, embarrassment and a slew of other emotions. Birmingham is a proud, diverse and vibrant city, and it pains me to see it this way – set to lose some of what makes it great. I only hope that other cities don’t have to follow suit.