12th December

Station Closures and Expensive offices

The consultation on plans to close Dudley, Stourbridge and Halesowen police stations in the evening has been extended to January 15. That gives us an extra month to put pressure on the authorities to reverse this decision. We’ve had nearly 2,5000 people sign the petition against the closures so far and it’s increasingly clear that people aren’t convinced with the argument that this will have no effect on public safety.

Last Thursday I went down to the Police Authority in Birmingham and argued that there were specific, local reasons why Dudley police station should not be closed in the evening. We’ve got a brand new £30million College campus opening which will bring lots more young people into the town centre in the evening. We’ve also got big plans for the redevelopment of the town centre and a number of bars and cafes are currently being refurbished. Much of this work is based on driving up trade and activity in the evening.

I think it’s fair to say that were it not for the need to save £126million, West Midlands Police would not have put forward this proposal. But surely there are other areas they can save money without closing front desks? Does the Police Authority, for example, really need to be based in big, expensive offices right in the middle of Birmingham? I bet I could find them some cheaper offices in Dudley.

And this is an important point – government and public services in general should be moving out of central London to the regional centres like Dudley, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich. We should be using public spending to support employment and to support the economy in town centres like Dudley. And we should go further than that. Why have we still got all of these central Government departments still based in overheated London and the South East? I’d move Government civil servants up to the regions. Let’s have the Department for Business in the Black Country so they can get a better understanding of the challenges facing businesses in this area.

Black Country Funding

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely the Government would have the courage to take these steps. Time and again recently our area has got a raw deal from central Government. The latest blow came last week when I learned that the Black Country will miss out on £500,000 after the Government changed the way it distributes funding to local area.

Instead of basing the funding for local enterprise partnerships on unemployment levels, which is normally used, the government has invented a completely new measure based on average earnings. It means areas with higher incomes will get more funding so while we’ve lost out on half a million, wealthy areas down south like Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire will see their funding increased.

We’ve got more than our fair share of the country’s unemployed and low-skilled and we should be getting more of our fair share of the funding provided to tackle these problems.

Christmas Card Competition

One of the nicest things about my job is judging the Christmas card competition we run every year. At around the end of November my desk becomes covered in brightly-coloured cards designed by kids at local primary schools and I have the difficult task of choosing a winner.

The standard was higher than ever this year, but the one that stood out above all others was from eight year old Lucy Harris of Milking Bank Primary school. She drew a brilliant picture of Santa and Rudolph flying above Dudley Castle. The card will soon be will be finding its way through the letterboxes of thousands of people across the country, including the Queen.

The winning design and runners-up have received prizes that have been donated by local businesses - including tickets to an England football match and tickets for the Black Country Museum and Dudley Zoo. On Monday morning I had the pleasure of going down to Milking Bank to congratulate Lucy and present her with her prize.