Community News

A new digital inclusion team at the city council will ensure Birmingham’s most vulnerable and excluded citizens will have better access to online services. This is one of the recommendations in a report to cabinet setting out a city-wide digital inclusion strategy.

Birmingham City Council has brought together 40 different organisations to ensure people have access to equipment, network connectivity and skills for improving their quality of life, developing their careers and saving money.

Faith leaders have been encouraged to keep their congregations safe from Covid-19.

With infection rates remaining high in the city, Wolverhampton's Director of Public Health John Denley has written to faith groups asking them to continue with the measures they have put in place to protect their congregation, and to keep windows and doors open to allow fresh air to flow through places of worship.

The Metro Mayors for Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and West Midlands joined forces to call for an extension of the Government’s successful Housing First pilot scheme for tackling homelessness.

Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram and Andy Street all share the same ambition to end rough sleeping and believe that the three Housing First pilots in their areas have been making a significant contribution to achieving this. Figures show that 96% of those who benefited from the scheme had come straight off the streets, 25% before they were 18 years old.

A young care leaver from Wolverhampton has received an award from The High Sheriff of the West Midlands in recognition of his "great and valuable services to the community". 

Ricky Lowther was presented with the award at a reception attended by the High Sheriff Louise Bennett OBE DL in the presence of the Mayor of Wolverhampton Councillor Greg Brackenridge last week. 

September 4th is set to be the most popular day to get married in the UK and as wedding season draws to a close, top10casinos.com has commissioned research that illustrates how the  typical 2021 wedding has played out in numbers.

The study of 2,000 people has revealed that in total, we have popped 92,364 bottles of champagne and have “cheersed” each other 52 times a day. Around 3,500 photos have been taken, including 1,008 selfies, averaging at a photo being taken every six seconds.

A delivery driver is swapping the steering wheel for walking sticks and taking on a 615-mile challenge in aid of a mental health and wellbeing charity. 

Kevin Beale, aged 75 from Kidderminster, is walking the Monarchs Way to raise money for the Kaleidoscope Plus Group. He will also donate some of the funds raised to the Children’s Air Ambulance and RDA (Riding for the Disabled Association).

Rapid progress is being made on the development of the new Perry Barr Railway Station ahead of next year’s Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

A steel frame which will support the new station building is now taking shape on site as work continues at pace to get the structure ready for opening next spring. Deputy Mayor of the West Midlands Councillor Bob Sleigh was among guests to visit the site to see how the £30.9 million development project is proceeding and sign the steel girders – thus preserving their names on the building for posterity.

Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Cannon Hill Park, canal-side at Mailbox, Winterbourne House & Gardens and St Paul’s Square have each received a celebratory plaque to mark their position as one of the city’s favourite breathing spaces.

The findings were revealed in a new survey of Birmingham residents commissioned by Taskforce for Lung Health. With 1 in 5 people in the UK diagnosed with lung disease during their lifetime, the Taskforce is encouraging people across the city to pause and ‘take a breath’ for five minutes and appreciate the vital role our lungs play.

A team of 14 daredevils from Azets, the UK’s largest regional accountancy and business advisor to SMEs, has raised a total of £2,600 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity by abseiling 190 ft down the Park Regis Hotel on Broad Street.

The event took place on Saturday, 21 August 2021 and is the first active event under Azets’ new charity partnership with Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity. The partnership, announced last month, includes a pledge by Azets to raise £25k in the next 12 months under its ‘Strive for £25k’ campaign, which will cover the cost of a full-time peer support worker for Forward Thinking Birmingham.

Sweetlake Meadow is a selection of stylish new apartments, townhouses and executive detached properties in Shrewsbury, which Shropshire developers, SJ Roberts Homes, have now completed.

Sweetlake Meadow is in a prime location for families, with children of all ages, and helps to fulfil the local area’s growing demand for quality living. The community of 173 properties is close to Shrewsbury town centre but still nestled amidst glorious countryside.

Twenty-two ‘inmates’ were recently incarcerated for office-based crimes against their co-workers, all in the name of charity. The Jail or Bail event raised more than £30,000 for Midlands Air Ambulance Charity during its 30^th anniversary year.

Midlands Air Ambulance Charity collaborated with HM Prison Shrewsbury and invited employees of corporate supporters and Midlands businesses to sign up their CEOs and senior managers to a Jail or Bail event. Each ‘inmate’ had a £600 goal to fundraise in order to raise their bail and be released after a night in the clink.

City of Wolverhampton Council is seeking views on proposed changes to further protect three existing conservation areas from harmful development. A public consultation on Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plans for Bushbury Hill, Vicarage Road (Penn) and Wightwick Bank will start tomorrow (Monday August 23) and run until October 11. 

The current appraisals for these three areas do not adequately support their designation, which means it is difficult to protect their special architectural and historic features when development is proposed. The new independent appraisals have been commissioned to provide strong, up-to-date evidence to better support and protect the three conservation areas. 

Children in Heath Town, Wolverhampton, are enjoying the chance to hone their football skills for the season ahead thanks to a new grass pitch developed as part of major transformation works on the housing estate. City of Wolverhampton Council has invested in the Inkerman Street pitch and goalposts so families have green space to take part in physical activity on their doorsteps. 

The new pitch and posts come in addition to an extensive demolition programme of vacant buildings, major improvements to existing residential blocks undertaken by Wolverhampton Homes and the start of construction works on new council homes. 

As the number of road users taking to two wheels continues to grow exponentially, RoSPA and See.Sense have conducted pioneering new research which could prove invaluable in greatly enhancing cyclist safety by more effectively pinpointing potential collision blackspots.
 
Hundreds of Birmingham-based cyclists travelled tens of thousands of monitored miles to generate billions of lines of potentially transformative data as part of the Cycle Smart Brum study, which has provided city authorities with far greater insight into where proactive safety measures would be most gainfully deployed.

Birmingham Weekender is back this Bank Holiday weekend with over 100 free events including music, dance, performances and installations all hosted at Bullring & Grand Central.

The cultural festival, which takes place between Friday 27^th – Sunday 29^th August, will be set across the iconic centre’s footprint as well as the surrounding New Street Station concourse, Birmingham Markets and 1000 Trades Square.

Wolverhampton’s Beat the Street challenge has come to an incredible conclusion, with residents travelling the equivalent of more than twice around the world.

Some 9,579 players joined the giant physical activity game, walking, cycling and rolling 60,888 miles in four weeks, with the winning schools, teams and individuals announced on the Beat the Street website, www.beatthestreet.me/wolverhampton.