As you read this, the Commonwealth Games baton is making its way across Europe. A trip that began earlier this month, its 294-day journey around the world will come to an end when it is handed to the Queen at the games’ opening ceremony next July. Cast in part in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, the baton symbolises the power of collaboration. But for city council leader Ian Ward it represents more than that. It marks the beginning of a golden decade for Birmingham.
It’s a bold claim. Totemic projects are one thing. And from the Commonwealth Games to HS2’s arrival in 2026, Birmingham is not short of them. But it hasn’t always capitalised so successfully on opportunity. This time, Ward says it will be different.
Speaking from PwC’s new offices at Paradise, Birmingham’s largest new development, he may be right. Blue-chip occupiers seem to share his confidence. The accountancy giant is one of the covetable occupiers to have expanded or arrived in the city recently. HSBC is another. So is Goldman Sachs, whose staff were told by West Midlands mayor Andy Street last month that their arrival in the city was like signing Ronaldo.
“For some time now I’ve been describing this 10-year period through to 2030 as a golden decade for Birmingham,” says Ward. “Before the pandemic we were already attracting record levels of investment into the city and the factors that existed prior to the pandemic that were attracting that investment still exist as we go into recovery.”
Next door, a room full of investors are hearing from council officials about plans to better connect neighbourhoods in this highly walkable city and remove the obstacles that get in the way of their vision – literally, in the case of some roads and buildings.
“What we what we’re expecting out of today is huge levels of interest in the opportunities for investment in development here in Birmingham,” Ward says. “And I would expect that following on from today’s meeting, what we will get is real traction.”
People-led investment
On paper, the city region makes a compelling case. The West Midlands draws more foreign direct investment than anywhere outside of London and the South East, according to the Department for International Trade. It’s home to one of the youngest populations in Europe, with 32% under the age of 25. And its universities educate 160,000 students and produce more than 55,000 graduates each year.
With all the talk of levelling up, could it become a poster child for the policy? Interim council chief executive Deborah Cadman thinks so. “You can’t have strong, stable economies without strong, stable communities, and we’re interpreting and translating levelling up to be exactly that,” she says. “If we want to level up Birmingham as a place, then we’ve got to invest in infrastructure but also invest in people as well. That’s what we mean by people-led investment.
“We’ve put out a very clear challenge to those people who want to come and invest in the city. We will welcome investment. We will welcome those long-term strategic partnerships with investors and developers. But it’s got to be done with people and communities at the heart of it as well.”
There are early indications of support from Whitehall – Birmingham is home to a branch office of the new Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and other departments are expanding their footprint in the region too – and seemingly an acknowledgement that combining public and private sector investment can create places, jobs and address some of society’s entrenched problems.
“The civil service and government, through the department, can really touch, taste and feel both the opportunities of the city, but also the needs as well,” says Cadman.
“Some of our wards are in the highest levels of deprivation across the country. We’re not just presenting Birmingham’s needs as asks of government. We’re saying we can really offer you something different for the UK by operating in a different way with our investors and developers. If you look at levelling up aspirations, it is about housing, it’s about transport, it’s about the green economy. It’s about attracting global investment. One of our offers to government is, ‘we can join up the dots for you in this place’.”
Ward helps join those dots: “Almost half the children in the city grow up in poverty, and I think that is probably the most awful statistic of all the range of statistics that describe the city of Birmingham. And so if levelling up is to be more than a slogan, it’s got to be something that really impacts the lives of those children growing up in Birmingham.”
The rise of Digbeth
To fully capitalise on its promise, the council needs to better play to its strengths. It is, after all, the 20th largest landowner in the country. “That gives us a huge asset that we can use to work with developers to ensure that we get the right developments in the right place,” says Ward, “creating places where people would choose to live, work and play, and creating new communities right across the city.”
Domestic and international investors are encouraged. In the summer the council signed a joint venture contract with Lendlease to deliver the £1.9bn redevelopment of Birmingham Smithfield, creating 8,000 jobs and 3,000 homes. The Commonwealth Games is coming – “It’s not just 11 days of sporting activity, it’s the 11 generations of legacy benefit,” says Cadman. But the game-changer is HS2. Due to open in 2026, Ward sees that as the most significant project on the horizon.
“I would like to see it going north of Leeds, Newcastle and right up into Scotland, connecting up Edinburgh and Glasgow as well, because it will connect the major cities outside of London. Just in England, it will create connectivity of 8m people and bringing those people closer together will drive economic growth. It is really important that Birmingham is at the centre of a network of high-speed rail, not on the end of one line coming out of London.”
A stone’s throw from HS2’s Curzon Street station is Digbeth, one of the city’s most exciting opportunity areas. Peaky Blinders’ creator Steven Knight is eyeing a site for a film studio there, and the BBC is considering moving from the Mailbox to the site.
“Digbeth has the potential if we get that development right – and it has to be about amplification of what’s already there, not gentrification – to become a really special part of Birmingham, as special as the Jewellery Quarter and no doubt as internationally renowned as the Jewellery Quarter as well,” Ward says. “That, for me, is probably the location that currently has the most interest. But as we go forward, we’ll see more and more interest in more outlying parts of the city as well.”
The Future City plan is being developed and a walk around the city centre with Cadman and her team hammers home the scale of their ambition. The council has proven it’s not afraid to develop on the green belt and it suggests it’s bold enough to tear down even the most iconic buildings if they don’t suit its vision. “We’re consulting with people,” says Cadman. “We want people’s ideas. We want to use that process as the start of more strategic relationships with our partners, investors and developers.”
And as for Cadman herself, she is currently interim chief executive of what is Europe’s largest local authority. Might that become permanent? “My response to that is I’m chief executive until I’m not.” That response – clearly well practised – coupled with the scale of the challenge in Birmingham, suggests she won’t be going anywhere soon.
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