Hello and welcome to my first Campaigns Digest! Hats off to Joe Peacock for an amazing three years as Campaigns Support Worker, and also thanks to Jake for covering the crucial weeks between me and Joe!
It’s been a busy first couple of months, with actions and events on both the national campaigns, having our say on issues through lots of consultations, as well as a really positive meeting with Councillor James McKay, the Cabinet Member for Green, Safe and Smart City.
Energy & Climate Change
Our latest action for the Clean British Energy (CBE) Campaign was a “Green is Working” stunt we organised in Birmingham City Centre, highlighting the potential for green jobs. Our next events are renewable energy photographic exhibitions, a great opportunity to take the CBE campaign into the community and lobby our politicians. See the Green is Working article for more information about this.
Biodiversity
Our Comedy Gig “There’s Something Funny in the Honey” was an outstanding success. Over 170 people attended and we raised hundreds of pounds for bee-friendly wildflower planting projects in Birmingham. If you want to know just how much of a success it was, you can read a review here.
However, this isn’t the only thing that’s been buzzing recently, with stalls at the Martineau Gardens Autumn Event and the Kings Heath Skill-Share and Family Fun Day. We were also at the Conservative Party Conference, handing out apples to delegates with “pollinated by bees” stickers on them.
The Bee Cause is going into hibernation for the winter, which you’ll bee glad to hear means a break from all these terrible puns, but watch this space as the bees will be swarming back in March!
Transport
We’ve been pretty busy on the transport front recently, giving evidence to on canals and cycling to one of the Council’s scrutiny committees, as well as submitting our response to the national Draft Aviation Policy Framework. If that wasn’t enough, our meeting on our new local campaign decided that we will look into local transport and air pollution issues, and so we’re already hard at work researching for that!
Recent big news was Birmingham City Council passing a motion in favour of 20 mph speed limits on Birmingham residential roads; as this is something we’ve campaigned on for many years, needless to say that we’re pretty pleased.
Planning
Recently Stirchley ASDA was turned down for planning permission, a credit to all those campaigners in the local community who got involved in trying to stop the development!
The other big news is that Birmingham City Council are looking at how they can build tens of thousands of new homes in the city, apparently needed to accommodate the city’s growing population, including building on greenbelt in the Sutton Coldfield area. Naturally, we have our own views on this, and you can be sure we’ll be submitting them in our response to the consultation on the plans.
Waste
On the waste front, we’re doing a bit of research into the Council’s wheelie bin proposals and what they mean, including what other local authorities have done and what impact it had. Also Friends of the Earth’s new national campaign, Make it Better, has been launched, taking a very important look into the sustainability of how products are made.
