The new Moseley and Kings Heath Public Space Protection Order – some concerns

 

Birmingham City Council is currently consulting on the introduction of a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) that covers most of Moseley, Kings Heath (including most of their residential roads), Highbury Park and Kings Heath Park.

The police will have extra powers to restrict the following activities:

• Groups causing Anti-Social behaviour

• Being under the influence of intoxicating substance and/or alcohol while in a public place.

• Damage or destruction of property (graffiti)

 

This PSPO replaces a much earlier PSPO that ended on 25^th September 2020 and which the Council did not renew. That old PSPO covered the years 2017 to 2020.

The old PSPO focused mainly on the shopping areas and restricted the following activities:

·         Anti-social behaviour caused by groups of people or individuals in public spaces;

·         Verbal abuse;

·         Threats of or use of violence;

·         Anti-Social Street drinking;

·         Obstructing Pathways;

·         Begging;

·         Possession of goods, items or materials used for unauthorised graffiti;

My initial thoughts on the new PSPO is: why has the scope of the restricted activities been watered down compared to the old PSPO, with a lot of anti-social activities removed. The old PSPO gave the police extra powers to deal with anti-social behaviours that were difficult enforce due and took months and months of paperwork to restrict on individuals, The new PSPO leaves three activities for which the police don’t need any extra powers, with one activity that is worrying broad in scope.

For example, the new PSPO restricts “Damage or destruction of property (graffiti)”. This activity is already covered by section 1 of the criminal act 1971 and doesn’t need a PSPO. In contrast, the old PSPO restricted the “Possession of goods, items or materials used for unauthorised graffiti” which meant the police could intervene and prevent a known graffiti tagger from starting their nightly anti-social activity.

Another example, the new PSPO restricts “Being under the influence of intoxicating substance and/or alcohol while in a public place.”, which would potentially mean that anyone leaving the pubs of Moseley or Kings Heath on a Saturday could be handed out an on-the-spot fine by the police for being intoxicated. In contrast, the old PSPO restricted “Anti-Social Street drinking” which is what the public are really concerned about.

The old PSPO restricted “obstructing pathways” and “begging” –these activities are removed from the new PSPO. The old PSPO meant that restrictions could be put on individuals who were begging and had no need to beg. Removing this is a big mistake. Believe me, I had to deal lots of people who did not need to beg and did it to get extra cash. To illustrate my point, I had to deal with one person begging in Kings Heath, who lived in Council warden-controlled accommodation, had all the support given to him that he requested – I had a meeting with him and his Housing Officer - and he would still beg with a big sign saying “I’m homeless.” And before someone jumps down my throat, yes we dealt with plenty of people who were begging and in genuine need. In these cases they were given assistance in ensuring they were claiming benefits that they were entitled to and accommodation was found for them – although finding accommodation for people who refused to come off heroin was impossible.

The consultation on the Moseley & Kings Heath PSPO can be seen https://www.birminghambeheard.org.uk/place/moseley-kings-heath-pspo-consultation/

A link to the draft PSPO is at the bottom of that page  - it is in tiny letters and easily missed.

Sarehill Mill re-opens as a working water mill

Sarehole Mill re-opened today, after £400,000 was spent during the winter de-silting the mill pond, re-roofing, installing flour milling equipment and getting the 1850 bread ovens working again.

The mill is now milling flour for the first time since, well, at least 1960, if not earlier. The bread ovens haven't baked bread since 1860.

What was a static museum has now been transformed into a working museum and you can tell the difference straight away with all the smells, noise and vibrations of an operating water mill. The water wheel is now turning full pelt - before it turned slowly with a trickle of water. Now water gushes through this wheel.

10 volunteer millers now work on the site and hopefully, once they sort out the consistency of the flour, they'll start baking bread - a kitchen for preparing the dough has also being installed.

For some background see my earlier blog entry at http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/sarehole-mill-moseley-to-start-milling.html

Why I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths this Thursday 14th February

Why I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths this Thursday 14th February

This Thursday, 14th February, between 10am and 12noon I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths at protest against Birmingham City Council’s recent decision to cancel the Heritage Lottery bid for phase 1 of the restoration of the baths AND its announcement that once the current boilers break down or the buildings have a structural fault they will be permanently closing the building to swimming. Readers of my blog will know that both the boilers and the roof of the building are on their last legs and probably won’t last longer than 2015.

I will be wearing an Edwardian swimming costume, since Moseley Road baths are the last completely intact and operating Edwardian swimming baths in Britain. Statutory listed Grade II* - less than 10% of listed buildings have such a high listing – these baths are not only important to Balsall Heath, but are of national importance.

I was Cabinet member for Leisure, Sport and Culture for Birmingham City Council from 2009 to 2012 and led on the Council’s Heritage Lottery bid for these baths. In March 2012, I persuaded my Cabinet colleagues to commit to allocating £3million of 2015/16 capital money from the Council’s budget, which would be used as match funding against a bid for £5million from the Heritage Lottery fund.

The total cost of this phase 1 of the restoration of Moseley Road baths would have been £8million (£3million from the Council; £5million from the Heritage Lottery Fund) and would have done the following:

• Permanent repairs to the exterior fabric of the building with a life of 25 years – so basically a complete re-roofing to stop any water ingress 
• Complete re-wiring and new machinery (eg new boilers) for the pool. We would be particular keen to install a combined heat and power system in the boiler house. This would heat all the buildings along Moseley Road and help to regenerate this corridor. 
• Pool 2 maintained as a community swimming pool 
• Pool 1 boarded over and used for community use. 

In December 2012, the new Labour administration announced that the Heritage Lottery bid was been withdrawn and there would no longer be any plans to restore the baths or even to keep them as swimming baths. Further, the Labour administration has repeatedly claimed the £3million allocated never existed. This is total rubbish. The Cabinet report allocating the £3million was counter-signed by the Chief Financial officer who is not allowed to sign financial reports if the financial details do not add up or the monies are non-existent. The money would have come from the 2015/16 capital budget which amounts to £1,000million per year and £3million within that budget would have been set aside for Moseley Road baths.


Please feel free to join me at this protest. You don’t need to lock yourself up. Just be there and show support.

Councillor Trickett and her fictitious claims over the closure of Moseley Road baths

Councillor Trickett and her fictitious claims over the closure of Moseley Road baths

Councillor Trickett appeared on yesterday’s Adrian Goldberg show on Radio WM where she tried to justify the closure of Moseley Road baths. 

The link to the broadcast can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p013s3mz Councillor Trickett's interview starts at 1hour 35minutes 



She makes the following two significant claims in her interview that are completely fictitious. These are:

Claim 1: “Firstly there was never any funding for Moseley Road baths. There had been a very vague commitment by the previous administration. Yet no money had ever been identified. “

Claim 2: “no money had been put aside. No bid had actually been work on. They hadn’t even done the costings of the actual works. We had to start on that a fresh in May.”

Let’s deal with Claim 1.

Below are the key pages from the 21 page Cabinet report that allocated £3million from future capital resources for a Heritage Lottery bid. The report was approved by Cabinet on 5th March 2012. I have highlighted the relevant points to note:



Notice that recommendation 2.5 which says “Cabinet is requested to agree to allocate up to £3m of resources for improvements to Moseley Road Baths, to be funded by a review of the capital programme, subject to a successful application for Heritage Lottery Fund grant, as described in Appendix 1 para 1.3.6. “


Notice that the recommendation says “funded by a review of the capital programme”. So that’s where the money will come from: the Council’s Capital programme. And how much is the Council’s annual capital programme? Just over £1,000million per year. Yes, £1,000million per year and we were going to shuffle things around and allocate £3million. And when did we need this £3million? In 2015. The Heritage Lottery bid would take two years to complete AND Sparkhill baths would be open in 2015. 

In short: The Cabinet agreed to allocate £3million from future capital resources on 5th March. The Chief Finance officer was happy that there was plenty of leeway within the 2015/16 capital budget of over £1,000million to accommodate this.

Councillor Trickett and others from the Labour Party have been playing with semantics about which capital budget this £3million was coming from. This is academic, since in the drawing up of the 2015/16 budget, the £3million for Moseley Road baths would have been accommodated within a capital budget somewhere.

So how the hell can Councillor Trickett claim “there was never any funding for Moseley Road baths” when there is a Cabinet report agreeing to the allocation of £3million from a £1,300million budget in 2015 

Let’s look at claim number 2 

She claims that (a) no costings for works required for Moseley Road baths had been done by May 2012 (b) absolutely no work had even started on the Heritage Lottery bid by May 2012.

Both this claims are completely fictitious.

A complete structural survey was completed on Moseley Road baths in Spring 2007. The survey was part of much broader historic survey which would form the basis of a Heritage Lottery bid. The historic element looked at the historic importance of the baths from a national context. The structural survey went through the building with a fine tooth comb looking at what needed fixing or restoring and calculating the cost to put right. The total cost of restoration came out at between £17m to £20m. The variation in cost was due to the level of modern facilities one wanted at the baths. 
Getting the Heritage lottery to fund a huge amount of a £17million bid was completely out of the question – this was made clear by the Heritage Lottery team. Also, with the 2012 Olympics draining the Heritage Lottery of finance, any sizeable bid would have to wait until after 2012. 
For this Heritage Lottery bid we, after advice from the Heritage Lottery, to break down the total restoration of the baths into phases. Phase 1 would cost £8million (£5million from the Heritage Lottery; £3million from the Council). 

Work took place within the Council during 2011 to work out how much the bid should be – the £8million was calculated using the 2007 structural survey costings (plus allowing for inflation) and the intention was to ‘stop the rot’. £8million will stop the rot in the building and give the building another 25 year minimum of trouble free swimming. 
In the lead-up to the 5th March 2012 Cabinet meetings, I had meetings with both the Chief Financial Officer and the Cabinet member for Finance, to ensure that they were supportive of £3million being used as match funding AND that there was lee-way within the 2015 capital budget to allocate £3million for Moseley Road baths. 
Once Cabinet gave approval on 5th March 2012 for the £3million allocation, work started on the Heritage Lottery bid in earnest. Work couldn’t start before this date, if the Cabinet decided not to approve any money for match funding in a Heritage Lottery bid. 
So it is completely fictitious for Councillor Trickett to claim “No bid had actually been work on. They hadn’t even done the costings of the actual works. We had to start on that a fresh in May.” Alot of work had happened in the weeks and months prior to May 2012. 

As my blog is repeating showing, the words ‘truth’ and ‘Councillor Trickett’ do not go together.

What Labour were saying a year ago about Moseley Road baths

What Labour were saying a year ago about Moseley Road baths

I have to hand it to the local Labour Party for their ability to say one thing in local elections and do the complete opposite in power. This is no better shown in their attitude over Moseley Road baths.

A year ago, they were criticising me, as Cabinet member for not getting Moseley Road baths re-opened asap and for a "sticking plaster approach" to moseley Road baths. See cutting from their leaflet last February.

Well only 9 months into the Labour adminstration, they have cancelled the Heritage Lottery bid to restore the baths - they are dishonestly claims that no money was ever identified to do this. This is utter rubbish. They have also made it clear that the days of Moseley Road baths as a baths are numbered. Once the boilers break down or another fault developes on the building that it - CLOSURE.

Birmingham MP appears in 'Lincoln' film

Birmingham MP appears in 'Lincoln' film

Followers of my blog will know that two days ago I explained how Birmingham, England, MP, John Bright persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to make the complete abolition of slavery in the USA a central theme of the American Civil War. See my blog at http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-birmingham-mp-who-persuaded.html 

I managed to see Steven Speilberg’s ‘Lincoln’ film last night and was surprised to see John Bright MP appear in the film – not as an actor, BUT as a photograph.

Abraham Lincoln’s White House office contained two portraits: Over the fireplace hung a painting of President Andrew Jackson. The room also included a photograph of John Bright MP, which in numerous photographs of the office can be seen on the fireplace mantle. See photograph below.



Reading reports of the making of Steven Speilberg’s ‘Lincoln’, I do know that he has tried to be as accurate as possible and this has included the layout of President Lincoln’s office. As a result, John Bright’s photograph can be seen in the background, on the fireplace mantle, whenever action takes place in the office. See screen shot below.

The Birmingham MP who persuaded President Lincoln to abolish slavery

The Birmingham MP who persuaded President Lincoln to abolish slavery

Many of us will visit our local cinemas in the coming weeks and watch Steven Spielberg’s film ‘Lincoln’. I haven’t yet seen the film, but I am confident that they will not show how a Birmingham MP (and that’s Birmingham, England, not Birmingham, USA) persuaded him to make the ending of slavery completely, a central issue of the American Civil War.

When the Civil War began, Lincoln’s stance was that slavery could continue in the Confederate states, but any new states would be slavery free. Indeed, Lincoln prohibited his Generals from freeing slaves in captured states. In 1861, Lincoln sacked Major General John C. Frémont, the commander of the Union Army in St. Louis, for freeing slaves in captured terriorities.

It was John Bright who persuaded President Lincoln to harden his stance on abolishing slavery. On 22nd September 1862, eighteen months into the War, Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation, where every slave in the USA would be freed as of 1st January 1863.

Indeed, John Bright’s friendship with President Abraham Lincoln was so important, that when President Lincoln was assassinated, on his body was found a newspaper article about his presidency by John Bright. In Lincoln’s study were two portraits, one of which was a photograph of John Bright. And today, just inside the main entrance of the White House is a bust of John Bright, which was found by Jackie Kennedy in the 1960s in the basement and put back on display.

John Bright never corresponded direct with Abraham Lincoln. Instead John’s letters to US Senator Charles Sumner were widely read across the US Senate, including by Lincoln. It was through this correspondence that John Bright persuaded Lincoln to make the abolition of slavery across the entire USA a central platform of the Civil War.

On 23rd October 2009, a statue to John Bright MP was unveiled inside Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The statue was jointly unveiled by Councillor Ernie Hendricks who campaigned for this statue to be put back on display; Bill Cash MP whose great grandfather was a first cousin of John Bright and Stephanie Hightower, President of the USA athletics and field team.

This statue was original unveiled in 1888 and an exact replica exists in the Parliament, London. After decades of being in a Council storage facility, this was restored and cleaned ready for the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Bright in 2011. It is back in its original position in the Museum at the top of the main stairs.

Lincoln described John Bright as “the friend of our country, and of freedom everywhere”. It was John Bright who also stopped Britain from supporting the Confederates in the US Civil War. How much John Bright was considered a hero in the Unionist states is shown in the following paragraph from Harpers Weekly, a US political magazine, on 22nd March 1862:

“JOHN BRIGHT VERSUS JOHN BULL

It is not surprising that the name of John Bright, whenever it was mentioned at the great meeting at the Cooper Institute on Washington’s birthday, was hailed with a tumult of applause. Thoughout our difficulties of the last year John Bright has been one of the few men in England who has truly saw and frankly stated te scope of this rebellion. When Great Britain flamed into rage at the Trent affair, John Bright laid his finger upon the arm of John Bull, and begged that old person not to make himself ridiculous by losing his temper in advance of the occasion, but to wait and hear whether an insult was intended, or whether it was an accident.”

The Trent Affiar was a diplomatic incident between the Union states and Britain, which resulted in British forces mobilising on the Canadian border ready for an attack on the Union states. History shows that john Bright successfully calmed the hawks in London.John Bright was not perfect. He did support giving the vote to women. Neither did he support Home Rule for Ireland, instead believing in reform in Ireland. He also believed that trade unions prevented free trade.

I believe that John Bright should be forgiven for these faults. These views were common in his time. John Bright should be remembered as the man who pushed forward the boundaries of progressive politics: giving the vote to working men; making campaigning for peace acceptable and most importantly contributing to the freeing millions of black slaves in the USA.