Birmingham City Council’s Birmingham in Bloom competition is on the lookout for green fingered council tenants and neighbourhood heroes.

The annual competition shines a light on council tenants and lease holders who green up their environment and take pride in their communities.  This year’s competition – which starts and closes earlier than previous years – is going a step further with three awards that recognise tenants and young people who improve their neighbourhoods and support people in their community.

Joan Goodwin, chair of the City Housing Liaison Board, said: “Birmingham in Bloom celebrates the work put in by tenants and leaseholders to bring colour and pride to their communities through their gardening skills.  This year we thought we would celebrate how people in our communities support each other too with some new awards and prizes for those people who really go out of their way to help their neighbours.”

Birmingham City Council’s cabinet member for housing and homes, Cllr Peter Griffiths, added: “Birmingham in Bloom never fails to impress with community gardens, vibrant flower displays and tasty produce.  This year I would really like to encourage people who haven’t entered before to get creative with their gardening skills and think about who makes a difference in their community.  I would also like to thank our sponsors for their continued support for this event which shows what we can achieve when we all work together.”

The deadline for entries is 30 June 2017. Entry forms are available at local libraries and leisure centres or online at https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20006/housing/1134/birmingham_in_bloom_-_competition and there are lots of great prizes on offer for district and citywide winners in the following categories –

Best front garden – display with the most impact, variety of plants, special features, design and layout Best balcony – visible display of colour, creative with space, ie hanging baskets or window box Healthy Start Award – home grown produce, ie vegetable patch or allotments Community Garden – street or community garden Cleaner Greener Community Award – recognising tenants who have improved the appearance of their neighbourhood Young Person/Group Achievement Award – recognising how young people and young people’s groups have made a positive contribution to their neighbourhood Helping Hand Award – a tenant/leaseholder who has helped someone in their community ie with their garden, waste collection or grocery shop

District winners and their guests will be invited to the awards ceremony at the Banqueting Suite in the Council House on 27 September 2017.

Cash prizes, trophies and gardening tools are sponsored by: Fortem, Glendale, idverde, Keepmoat, The Conservation Volunteers and Wates.

A staggering 27,500 items which help people live safely and independently are loaned out to Sandwell residents every year. And adult social care services make sure that 93 per cent of people who need aids – like walking frames, high seated chairs, perching stools and toilet-related accessories – get them within seven days of being requested.

Now Sandwell Council's cabinet member social care, Councillor Ann Shackleton, is reminding people that wherever possible the council collects and recycles items when they are no longer needed.

The service, which integrates adult social care and health in a pooled budget, called the Better Care Fund, recycles more than half of items which are then suitable to be loaned out again.

The value of these recycled items in 2016/17 totalled a staggering £1.5m, enabling the service to significantly reduce spending on new equipment.

Figures released show more than 12,000 people are currently provided with equipment, to help keep them safe and living independently in their home, with another 2,500 active users of Telecare in Sandwell.

Councillor Shackleton said: "One of the major achievements of the past 12 months was to merge the ordering of equipment and Telecare onto the same system, which has allowed health and social care professionals access to a single ordering system and removed a lot of duplication.

"People who need equipment have it delivered within seven days of request and we are now aiming to increase the recycling rate of many of the items loaned out. I would urge anyone who has loaned items that are no longer needed to let us know so we can collect and recycle them for other people to use.

"The service has also introduced a dedicated occupational therapist role, which has led to greater knowledge of equipment and its suitability as well as realising significant year-on-year savings."

Prevention Stores is the council's in-house provider of equipment and Telecare in Sandwell and loans all kinds of household items to enable people to live safely and independently.

Telecare is the provision of a range of equipment and sensors that alert a carer or professional if something has or hasn’t happened in a property, for example, a person not returning to bed during the night after visiting the toilet. Other sensors include remote smoke detection, medication reminding devices as well as pagers to alert carers to any emergencies. Many items can also be linked to Sandwell’s Community Alarms service.

City of Wolverhampton Council has been handed £478,000 government funding to help fulfil a long-term plan to grow the number of electric taxis in the city. The news was announced this morning by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) as part of its £20 million Taxi Scheme.

The funding means work can now start in the city on building the infrastructure to facilitate electric taxis as they become more readily available over the next decade. An initial 24 charging points will be installed over the next three years, with the aid of match funding from council capital and revenue budgets.

It fits in with wider work to promote low emission vehicles by the West Midlands Combined Authority. Cabinet Member for City Economy, Councillor John Reynolds, said: “We are working closely with the taxi drivers in the city on this project.

“Electric taxis bring many benefits. They improve air quality and public health, make the city more attractive, support the economy of the Midlands, and support innovation and transformation, as well as help reduce carbon emissions.”

Parminder Sekhon, Chair of Wolverhampton Taxi Owners Association, added: “This is great news and these new facilities will help protect the trade as our industry embraces new technologies. Whilst drivers would like to purchase low emission vehicles, it needs to be a viable business option, there are costs associated with these vehicles, any support available from central government and the licensing authority will help drivers make the change to newer cleaner vehicles.”

The council is aiming to convert 16% of both the Hackney and private hire fleets in the city to electric vehicles by 2020.The government will provide top up grants of £7,500 to purchasers of the least polluting category of new electric Hackney carriages.

A network of taxi charging points in and around the city centre will be developed over a three-year period.

Work is underway to complete a further 110 homes in Erdington – and the first of the new homes will be ready to hand over from April this year. The new homes are part of a second phase of redevelopment of the Lyndhurst housing estate by Birmingham City Council, providing both social housing for rent and houses for sale.

Birmingham City Council’s cabinet member for housing and homes, Cllr Peter Griffiths, said:  “This second phase of development will see 110 more houses, bringing the total to 251 quality homes.  As with the first development we are providing both social housing and houses for sale, making sure that we continue to tackle our housing shortage and provide homes for a range of needs and family size – from one to five bedroom properties.  The income gained from houses sold from this latest development will be reinvested into the council’s housing stock of social housing.”

Chris King, managing director for Kier Living added:  “Kier Living are committed to providing Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust and the communities in which we are working with high-quality homes and facilities. Our aim is to develop desirable and vibrant new homes at Abbey Fields in Erdington which will breathe new life into the area and make a huge difference to local people.”

Since 2012, the council has been developing new homes on the estate where a clearance programme of poor quality housing has been ongoing for a period of years.  Rebranded as Abbey Fields, the development has been undertaken as part of the council’s Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust programme.

The first phases of the redevelopment are now completed providing 141 new family homes. Of these 76 were for outright sale and 65 for social rent as new council homes.

The current phase under construction by Kier Living Limited will provide a further 110 new homes of which 85 will be for rent and 25 for outright sale. The homes include a range of two, three, four and five bed houses.  The first of the new homes will be handed over in April 2017. This phase of development is to be completed by June 2018.

Homes for sale in this phase of development are to be provided as part of the council’s own direct sales delivery arm, Forward Homes.  Abbey Fields is just one of the three schemes being delivered as part of the Forward homes programme.  Income generated by the sale of these homes will be reinvested into the council’s own housing stock.

The first eight homes for sale – not due for completion until June – have already been reserved, and the remaining will be released for sale shortly.

Alongside the creation of the new homes, work is also due to start on the new Abbey Fields Park in the centre of the estate in June 2017.

Mike Hibbert, financial director of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce (GBCC), is to retire after 22 years in the role. When he was appointed in 1995 it was the organisation’s first full-time financial appointment at Board level, with the Chamber’s affairs having been looked after by honorary treasurers since its inception in 1813.

Since then the role has expanded into a broad brief and Mike, 60, has been at the forefront of managing the Chamber’s property affairs, its pension funds and also had spells in charge of the Chamber’s international division and work programme, which oversees start-up businesses.

“It was this wide diversity of the role which interested me so much,” says Mike. “I haven’t just been involved with the financial affairs of the Chamber but, of course, these have been central to what I have been doing.

“The possible development of the Chamber’s leasehold site in Edgbaston has been a huge responsibility in conjunction with colleagues and still very much at the forefront of the Chamber’s future.”

Paul Faulkner, chief executive of the GBCC, said: “Mike’s input at the Chamber has been invaluable. The job has required a broad area of expertise and he has been instrumental in guiding the Chamber’s fortunes, which at times have been challenging, over the past two decades.

“On a personal level, Mike has been a great support and source of counsel since I joined the Chamber. He has been a fantastic colleague and an important part of the Chamber's recent developments.”

Born in Oldham and educated at Aston University, Mike qualified with an administrative/management degree and joined the accountancy firm Whinney Murray, forerunners of what is now EY (Ernst and Young).

Originally, Mike joined the Chamber on a three-month secondment under the then chief executive Bob Moore.

“Since then I have worked with three other chief executives – Sue Battle, Jerry Blackett and Paul Faulkner. I have also worked with 22 different Presidents from many aspects of business life, including property, finance, law, education, engineering, television, entrepreneurship and marketing – and this has been one of the other appealing and diverse elements of the job.

“The other fascinating part has been involvement with so many business interests in the city through their membership of the Chamber.

“All of this has made the job an amazing experience and it has been an honour to work in an organisation that has such a magnificent and integral heritage as part of one of the most important cities in the world.”

Mike says that the most challenging period of his time at the Chamber came with the financial downturn at the same time as the Chamber’s Business Link contract ended following a re-organisation of business support by the government.

He says: “The Chamber had a turnover of £36 million when Business Link was with us and we had to cope with losing a large proportion of that as well as the impact of the biggest global financial downturn in living memory.

“Those were pretty challenging days and it has been particularly rewarding to come through them and establish a Chamber that is financially strong and making sustained surpluses for the benefit of our members.”

Mike and his wife Susan, who he met at Aston University, have a son and two daughters, and has recently become a granddad..

“That will keep me busy but I hope to have more time to pursue my other interests, including travel and walking” says Mike. Paul Faulkner added: “Mike will be a hard act to follow and we are starting a recruitment process for a Chief Financial Officer.

A “lifeline” adult social care service for people in Sandwell is helping almost 80,000 callers a year, latest figures show. Sandwell Council’s Enquiry answered 78,000 requests in the last year as members of the public, carers and health professionals sought assistance and guidance. The team also receives up to 160 email enquiries a day at peak periods.

Enquiry supports local residents and their relatives and carers, health professionals and other services. Councillor Ann Shackleton, the council’s cabinet member for social care, visited Enquiry team members at the Independent Living Centre, Smethwick, to find out more about the service.

She said: “Enquiry is part of our wider independent living team and the staff there do an excellent job. It’s a lifeline service for the many thousands of people who use it.

“We want to help people get the right services at the right time, so that they can keep their independence, stay safe and have a good quality of life.

“People get guidance and support on a whole range of enquiries on matters that are very important to them. Where necessary, Enquiry refers people to key workers and other specialist adult social care teams for the support or advice they need.

“The range of enquiries is quite remarkable – from requests for blue badges, personal care assistance and equipment and adaptions in the home to hospital discharges, safeguarding concerns and mental health support.

“Another key aspect of the team’s work is to give advice on home maintenance and staying safe and independent to people with disabilities, older people who may be frail and those with particular health problems.

“I was very impressed with team members’ commitment to helping people resolve their issues, and it’s good to know this kind of high quality support and advice is available.”