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Welcome to Liam Byrne's website. Here you can find more about Liam's campaigns to build a community we're proud of, how to get in touch and what you can do to help.
View Liam Byrne: Fighting for a FAIR deal for YOUR family in a larger map

Welcome to Liam Byrne's website. Here you can find more about Liam's campaigns to build a community we're proud of, how to get in touch and what you can do to help.
View Liam Byrne: Fighting for a FAIR deal for YOUR family in a larger map
Nick Robinson’s documentary on the formation of the Tory Liberal government tonight contains a staggering admission from Nick Clegg – that he’d changed his mind about cuts before the election, but chose not to share this with the electorate.
The Guardian has the story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/29/nick-clegg-changed-mind-cuts
This shows Nick Clegg simply misled voters. He’d clearly decided before the election that David Cameron was his partner of choice.
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As local resident will know, the Tories aided and abetted by the Lib Dems cut nearly £30 million from our local school-building programme. We have a few schools still going ahead – and one of them is a new Saltley school, not renewed on any major scale since 1928!
Liam and Saltley pupils plant a tree from Prince Charles
Here’s the update I’ve got on plans, overseen by the amazing head, Anne Cole…
Mrs Cole
Our Ref: HT/MAC/jmc
14th June 2010
Mr Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA
Dear Liam
Thank you for your recent letter and interest in the Saltley BSF project. In response to the specific questions you have raised:
1) The Building Schools for The Future programme is seen by the school as fundamental to providing the local community with the school it deserves to meet the educational requirements of local children in the 21st century.
Saltley School was originally built in 1928 and many of the school buildings and classrooms are outdated and in need of major repair works. Classrooms generally are too small with 30 pupils being taught in rooms as small as 35m2 (against a government recommended size of 56m2).
The School’s smaller gym is not fit for purpose and will be demolished whilst the School’s largest gym is prone to flooding every time it rains heavily. A key part of the plan is to provide a new Sports Hall to cater for the needs of the pupils and the community.
All of the specialist teaching areas urgently require modernisation and new equipment.
We can also create a purpose built dining hall to replace the current modular building.
The BSF project also allows for Saltley School to admit an extra form of entry of pupils per year. This is required to address the deficit of local school places due to the rising local population in this area.
2) The school is now applying for planning permission having agreed the 1:200 designs of the refurbished/remodelled school. Financial Close is scheduled for the end of 2010 and building work will start Dec 2010 / Jan 2011.
The school has been planning this project for over 4 years with full consultation with parents, pupils, staff and the local community.
The school has also been active in helping shape the Birmingham BSF project as a whole by helping select the preferred bidder and acting as schools representatives throughout the sample scheme programme. Saltley’s Business Manager was part of the FM working group that drew up the Birmingham BSF FM contract which was rated in an independent gateway review by 4Ps as ‘The best FM contract in the country’. Work is ongoing in this area with Birmingham Schools Representatives working with BCC and Catalyst to ensure that the schools achieve the best value for money possible through the BSF process.
3) We envisage the new Saltley School being a state of the art teaching facility with equipment and facilities to meet 21st century learning.
The ICT investment will mean that local children, from one of the top 1% deprivation index areas, will have access to some of the best ICT facilities in the country.
The school will be modernised to be fully DDA compatible allowing us to cater for pupils with disabilities for the first time.
4) Our vision is incorporated into the BSF Output specification , part of which follows:
We wish at Saltley School to be regarded as an exemplary centre of Excellence in Education, dedicated to nurturing a strong sense of purpose, ambition and confidence throughout the entire school community.
Pupils at Saltley will strive to achieve and exceed challenging academic, personal and social targets though a culture of enterprise, innovation and creativity.
Staff at Saltley will promote the highest standards of spiritual, moral and ethical development to enable our pupils to become Global Citizens.
We will develop and nurture high quality teaching and learning in an inspirational environment.
An improved lunchtime experience for all the school is a priority and a vibrant, airy, light dining area with appropriate spaces for queuing and serving will encourage pupils and staff to enjoy healthy meals in a safe and sociable environment.
Saltley’s specialism, science, will pervade all other curriculum areas and be possibly linked to ICT and Maths.
Curriculum areas, on a cluster basis, will be capable of delivering the curriculum, initially through traditionally based, departmental models, but will also be adaptable and flexible enough to respond to the inevitable changes in curriculum needs and the consequent changes in pedagogy these will bring.
A priority is the security of the site to ensure the health and safety of staff and pupils. This is of particular importance because of the extensive nature of the site.
The newly refurbished building will also enable expansion for post 16 provision and the architects are indicating the possible location on the site master plan.
The final building will inevitably be a compromise which is limited by:
a) The available funding
b) The outdated recommendations of BB98 (ironic for a 21st Century building!)
c) The constraints of refurbishing a 1928 building
However we are confident the many hours of detailed work we have put into the plans will produce a massively improved school which we eagerly anticipate.
We enclose a draft copy of the Planning Design Access Statement for your interest which we feel neatly summarises Saltley’s BSF project.
Yours sincerely
Anne Cole
Headteacher
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One of the projects we have been campaigning against is the proposed Medium Secure Unit in Bordesley Green.
I wrote to Ian Cumming, the Chief Executive of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority. He told me that:
The full business case is being developed by the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust (BSMHFT) and will be considered by the Foundation Trust Board in March 2010. The Trust have made an application to Monitor by Birmingham and Solihill Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust to extend its Tier 2 borrowing limit by £33 million for the purposes of building the Yardley Green unit and this has received the necessary approval. Monitor is the financial regulator of Foundation Trusts and forms its own assessment on the financial viability and risk profile of major investments – this is not the responsibilty of the Strategic Health Authority. The decision as to whether to finance, build and run such a unit rests with the Foundation Trust Board.
I’m now pursuing the local trust for answers. Watch this space for more…
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Liam Byrne MP today thanked the Big Lottery Team for awarding the Bromford & Firs over £1 million in long term funding for good causes on the estates.
The MP met Lottery chief executive Peter Wanless at the Commons last month and was briefed on the final details at his Hodge Hill office last Friday.
The money is part of a new scheme called ‘Big Local’ and is the only award in Birmingham. The money is available for investment in ideas nominated by local residents over 5-10 years.
Liam said;
‘This is a fantastic lottery win for the Bromford & Firs. We’ve been building up the strength of residents’ groups with our meetings and surveys for 5 years and today we got our reward. This is one more victory for people power. The Big Lottery Fund could see the Bromford and Firs needed investment and recognised we have the strength to use the money wisely.
“We’ve been fighting hard for the investment the Bromford needs. We’ve won £10 million for a new health centre, over £1 million to blow up the old tower blocks, and today we’ve £1 million for transforming the quality of life on the estate. It is nothing less than the local residents deserve.”
Byrne has been building up a network of social entrepreneurs in Hodge Hill dedicated to transforming the community through his Hodge Hill 2020 plan. Today’s news follows an award of £85,000 last month from the Heritage Lottery Fund to begin work transforming Ward End.
Liam Byrne also announced today the date for his next ‘Community Funders Conference’ bringing together charitable funders like UnLtd and Big Lottery Fund with local groups.
The conference will be held on 8th October at the Beaufort Sports & Social Club, Coleshill Road.
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I’ve attached some work released by the David Miliband campaign on Friday showing just how the fast cuts to public sector jobs could push up unemployment to 18% in some parts of the country. Back to the kind of Ghost Towns we had in the 1980s.
Leaked Treasury figures showed that the impact of deficit reduction would be the loss of between 1.1m and 1.3m jobs (500,000-600,000 in the public sector and 600,000-700,000 in the private sector).
The government expects 2.5m jobs will be created over the same period. So to deliver net job growth of 1.34m by 2015/16, there would need to be between 2.44m and 2.64m additional new jobs (all in the private sector).
That would mean by 2015/16 there being 25.31m private sector jobs, up from 23.36m today. OBR is predicting 2.5m jobs over five years, with 2.5% growth (average annual). After 1980s recession it took 8 years to do this with 3.5% growth and after 1990s recession 11 years with 3.1% growth [source: TUC]. Job Loss data
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Labour’s team was out and about on Tarry and Gowan Road on Friday night for our weekly street surgery. We’ll be taking action on residents’ complaints about rubbish and speeding.
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