Agenda item

Top Valley School

 

Councillor Campbell asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Children’s Services:

 

Pupils who left Westglade School for Top Valley School in 2009 heard on 5^th July 2010 that the planned rebuild of the school was to be delayed. As they take their GCSEs next term and leave the school, what benefit have they had from the Conservatives promise in this Chamber on 11^th October 2010 that the money would be found?

 

Councillor Mellen replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Campbell for her question. I’m grateful for the question, because it does highlight what has been a particularly damaging result of the current Government’s ideological pursuit of a market driven approach to education. As a consequence of this approach the losers have been the many thousands of children in England and several thousands here in Nottingham, who have had to endure a significant period of their education in substandard school buildings, or worse, have had to accept unacceptable delays in securing any school place. Council will recall that one of the first actions taken by the Coalition Government when it assumed power in 2010 was the suspension of the Building Schools for the Future Programme and the Primary Capital Programme. Nottingham had benefited hugely from these programmes and we have seen rebuilds and major refurbishments of many of the city’s secondary and special schools and a programme of major refurbishment of some primaries.

 

However, the abrupt suspension of the programme by the Secretary of State for Education left a number of city schools that were scheduled to be rebuilt and had begun the exciting process of planning and designing their vision for 21^st century educational environment in a real state of despondency and frustration. Pupils, governors and teachers, who had every expectation of enjoying an inspirational learning environment, were left not knowing what the future held and as Councillor Campbell reminds us, in the case of pupils and teachers at Top Valley Academy and indeed Trinity School, Westbury School and Fernwood School, that remains the case today.

I believe the major reason for the suspension of the programme was to ensure that the Secretary of State was in a position to immediately and directly fund his free school programme, which has generated a lot of publicity, most frequently negative, but very few additional school places in areas of need and, to date, not a single mainstream school place in Nottingham. Alongside the free school programme, the Government did, however, say it would also review the overall allocation of schools capital and its review was launched in July 2010. It reported its findings and announced the replacement for Building Schools for the Future, a new programme called the ‘Priority Schools Building Programme’ in October 2011 and announced the eligible schools in May 2012. We have three of those schools in Nottingham, one of which is Top Valley.

 

Now, the Priority Schools Programme has not really lived up to its name. Has Top Valley School had the same priority as giving licences to hundreds of free schools across the country? No.

Has the Priority Schools Building Programme had the same priority as cutting millions of pounds from this Council’s resources and asking the poorest to contribute an increasing amount to their Council tax? No.

 

Has the Priority Schools Building Programme had the same priority as giving the richest in our society a tax cut? No.

 

Is the Priority Schools Building Programme a priority, are the pupils of Top Valley a priority for this government? Clearly - no.

 

So I’m afraid Councillor Campbell, the pupils promised new buildings under the Priority Schools Building Programme at Top Valley Academy and at two primary schools desperately in need of capital work – Glenbrook Primary in Bilborough and Springfield Primary in Bulwell will have to continue to wait. It is now nearly two years since the announcement was made and four years since the BSF was cancelled and not a single brick has been disturbed at any of the three schools. The DfE have not given a definitive date by which the work will be completed at the three schools other than it could be between 2015 and 2017. In the case of Top Valley it seems unlikely to be the latter. So for a school that is deemed to be a “priority” based upon its poor condition it seems likely that it will have taken over 7 years for it to be brought up to scratch as a learning environment.

 

In contrast Lord Mayor, providing places for Nottingham children in school buildings fit for this century is a priority for this Council. Members may be interested to note that since 2010 and before 2015, the collaborative work undertaken by the School Organisation Team in Children and Families and the Major Programmes Team in the Development department will have delivered a primary school expansion programme through new builds and refurbishment at the following primary schools:

 

Welbeck School in the Meadows, making use of a disused family centre.

Blue Bell Hill School in St Ann’s - expanding the school.

Sycamore School in St Ann’s - expanding the School.

Ambleside School in Aspley - expanding the school.

Djanogly Northgate in Berridge ward - expanding the school.

Scotholme School in Berridge - expanding the school.

Middleton School in Wollaton - expanding the school.

Southwold School in Leen Valley - adding an extra classroom.

Robert Shaw in Leen Valley - expanding the school and adding a nursery.

Berridge Primary in Arboretum ward - adding some primary places in Key Stage 1.

Forest Fields School in Berridge ward - making use of a former college building.

Dunkirk School in Dunkirk and Lenton - bringing back into use a former school building. Rufford School in Bulwell - expanding the school.

Riverside School in the Meadows - expanding the school.

Rosslyn Park School in Aspley - expanding the school.

Heathfield School in Basford - temporarily putting temporary classrooms on the site in lieu of building a double-sized school using a former secondary school site –

 

A number of further expansion projects are currently at the appraisal stage and on track for delivery before 2017.

 

In this time the Major Programmes Team has also delivered the final phase of BSF prior to its abandonment by the Government, completing Farnborough School, Bluecoat (Wollaton Campus), Nottingham Girls’ Academy and Rosehill Special School. What this demonstrates to me is that the Coalition Government has failed on any promise to deliver an efficient and effective alternative to the Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programmes,  that it so derided. Instead, it has been down to the efficiency, skill and expert knowledge of local government to do what we can with limited and decreasing resources when what is really needed is a comprehensive school building programme. Meanwhile, this Government has tinkered at the margins with a handful of free schools established across the country (often where there is no actual demand) and a “priority” school building programme which has left Nottingham with its three most urgent priority schools, in the poorest condition, completely untouched at the time that we have rebuilt, upgraded or expanded 14 primary schools, 3 secondary schools and 1 special school.

 

Sadly, Councillor Campbell, my answer for the former Westglade pupils shortly to take their GCSE’s at Top Valley Academy is that they have seen no benefit from the Government whose promises to them have not been kept.

 

Signs of breast cancer

 

Councillor W Smith asked the following question to the Portfolio Holder for Adults and Health:

 

Could the Portfolio Holder for Adults and Health comment on the recent report which stated that more women from socially deprived backgrounds die of breast cancer than those from more affluent areas. As this is thought to be due to late diagnosis, could he say what is being done to encourage women in Nottingham to be more aware of the signs of breast cancer?

 

Councillor Norris replied as follows:

 

Thanks Lord Mayor and thank you Councillor Smith for her question. Colleagues will know that Councillor Smith is a tireless advocate and activist in tacking breast cancer in the city and her efforts are much appreciated. The report to which she refers came out at the end of last year and related in particular to the east of England and we’re looking at the moment to make sure the joint strategic needs assessment, the evidence base on which we build our health policies, is up to date and relating to that research; but we know in the meantime – we know from our joint strategic needs assessment and we will know as members from interactions on our estates and in our ward – that where there is poverty, where there is deprivation, we are likely to see late diagnosis.

 

This manifests in two particular ways. Firstly, an awareness of symptoms and secondly, knowing what to do when you see those symptoms, making sure you present to a GP and keeping those appointments if you make them. So we are doing a few things to make sure we support our community to know what is going on and also to know what to do about it. Firstly, we are participating in the Change Makers for Cancer Awareness programme, which is encouraging earlier identification of breast cancer as well as lung and bowel cancers, which are also priorities for us. This is targeted at the poorest geographies because we know that is where presentation rates are likely to be at their lowest and relies on a peer to peer approach, again, because we know that some of the methodologies that we might use traditionally in public health, whether poster campaigns might not reach quite as well as than on a peer to peer basis.

We have also been building on the great work of the East Midlands Cancer Network who have developed what they feel, again, on a peer and user based model, a leaflet and communication campaign that is built on what has worked in the past for those hardest to reach. We have made sure and we have funded to make sure that those leaflets will be in every GP surgery to try and make sure that people are aware of the symptoms and aware of what to do.

 

We are going to be having a big push in mid-February as part of the national ‘Be Clear on Cancer’ campaign which is about raising awareness about cancer in the over 70’s, (one in three diagnoses of cancer is in women over the age of 70) to make sure that people check for their whole lives and once they have checked and think that they might have an issue they know what to do about it. We also know that it is not just about late diagnosis in this city, we also know that it might be about lifestyle factors that might be triggers for cancer, whether that is maintaining a healthy weight, maybe an individual’s relationship with alcohol or with smoking, we know that we need to target these factors and this very much touches across all the work we do in Public Health which is about making sure that people have full awareness of what they are doing and their lifestyle choices. Not so that we can stand here and pontificate and say that they ought to do things differently and make it an article of faith, but instead make sure that people are making fully informed choices about their bodies and then after that, if people are in problems or they have concerns and have checked and feel lumps or they don’t feel well, or blood in their stools they know what to do about it, they know to look for those things and once they have established that, they then know how to access health services and how to get that timely treatment so that they can be treated as effectively as possible. Thank you very much.

 

Unemployment figures in Nottingham

 

Councillor Edwards asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Jobs and Growth:

 

Could the Portfolio Holder tell us the latest on unemployment figures in Nottingham, and tell Council how many people in Nottingham are working on part time, zero hours or temporary contracts, or for less than the minimum wage?

 

Councillor McDonald replied as follows:

 

Thank you Councillor Edwards for your question and I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate unemployment in this Chamber because helping get the people of our city into work is our single biggest priority for this Council for this term and I believe that helping Nottingham people get to a position where they have the skills to compete for work remains the greatest long term challenge that this city faces. It is a challenge that I believe that this Council is rising to meet whilst this Government is falling short by some considerable distance.

 

So, let’s take the headline figures first, the latest unemployment rate for the city measured by Jobs Seekers’ Allowance claimants in December 2013 is 5.2% compared to a national rate of 2.8%. On that measure, unemployment in Nottingham has fallen in Nottingham for 10 months in a row, 16.4% in total in the last year and is at the lowest it has been for almost five years. Its performance when measured against other core cities looks pretty good, comparison with regional and national figures is actually not a proper comparison, although I know Councillor Culley has a question to the Deputy Leader on that issue, the comparison is not a proper comparison because deprivation levels are greater in Nottingham and national employment figures are measured in a different way. It is how we fair against comparable cities that matters. I also believe that as a Council we can take some credit for what we have done on unemployment over the last few years through Council initiatives like the Employer Hub, the Apprenticeship Hub, the Nottingham Jobs Fund, and Jobs Fairs and through other initiatives we have placed almost 3,000 people into work over the last 2 years. Particularly in relation to apprentices where we are performing substantially better than the national average.

 

Just last week we ran an event in the city’s Creative Quarter to match young people from the north of the city to apprenticeship opportunities in the Creative Quarter and Councillor Chapman will be pleased to know that there were young people from his ward. In a single afternoon we created 20 apprenticeships and we have created hundreds more in the Creative Quarter and we have created thousands more across the city. In particular, and I think this is very telling Lord Mayor, we are generating jobs in Nottingham in the private sector, a Centre for Cities report out today shows that Nottingham created 8,900 jobs in the last few years, some way ahead of all its comparator cities for its size.

 

Moreover, we have done so in a period in which, because of the Government’s cuts to our budget and to budgets across the public sector the city has lost 6,400 public sector jobs. Further still, that report shows that our employment rate rose higher than any other core city, but Lord Mayor, headline figures, particularly headline employment figures can often be misleading so I am pleased to get the opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that sit behind those figures because none of us should rest easy in believing that Nottingham’s employment problems have been solved. The true position is that Nottingham continues to suffer from some of the same structural economic weaknesses in its labour force that the UK economy suffers from generally and they are weaknesses that this Coalition Government has done very little to address in any meaningful way. For example, long term unemployment continues to rise, long term youth unemployment is rising quickest of all, the Government’s response to this – the Work Programme – has so far failed to have any impact whatsoever. It is a shameful, shameful position in what is fast becoming a national generational crisis in relation to youth unemployment and has so far barely registered on the list of priorities for this Government and the pitiful responses so far through the Work Programme have seen success rates as low as 3%.

 

It is actually the Government’s failure on this issue that led the Council to introduce the Nottingham Jobs Fund, it is why we are working with our colleges to develop a single curriculum for FE provision in this city, it is why we have made job creation and skills development central to our economic plans and it is why we are now rolling out a community youth employment strategy to tackle long term youth unemployment in this city and get our kids back to work. That strategy will put 1,000 unemployed young people in our city through work readiness programmes with one to one support to get them into work. Working with partners to connect the provision across the city, this Council is stepping in to solve the problems in this city that this Government is failing to address.

 

The problems don’t end there and therefore nor can the responses. We know that nationally, part-time work is rising and the number of part-time workers seeking full-time has gone up by a substantial number nationally, I think the figure is around 10% and that is a worrying statistic as it continues to speak to weaknesses in the UK economy in generating not just employment but high quality, meaningful and full-time employment that gives people and families the means to survive and pay their bills. We know that 26% of Nottingham residents, over 33,000 people in work, are in part-time jobs and many of them would like to be in full-time jobs and many of those people are women who are far more affected by this issue than men and that’s why all the placement and apprentiship schemes that the Council supports through its schemes are full-time positions and is why all of the apprentiship positions are paid at above the national rate in Nottingham with our support and why in order to address the issue of female unemployment particularly, we are now focussing directly on other sectors like the care sector.

 

Again, it is this Council putting in place policies to address issues this Government should be tackling and is failing to tackle. Councillor Edwards asks specifically about zero hours’ contracts and the minimum wage. We don’t have figures for zero hours’ employment in Nottingham because the Office for National Statistics doesn’t produce them, but it is the case that minimum wage and zero hours’ contracts are a problem nationally, we have plenty of evidence that it is also happening in our city and where it is happening we are tackling it. It is why this Council does not use zero hours’ contracts and it is why this Council has committed to paying the living wage. It is also why next month we will be taking to our Executive Board a new Procurement Strategy that specifies that we will not purchase goods and services from companies that use zero hours’ contracts, fail to pay proper wages or do not allow their employees to join unions. Just as we pay the living wage, we will ensure that our suppliers also pay the living wage.

 

Meanwhile, this Government has done absolutely nothing to address this issue or to tackle employers who use zero hours’ contracts or pay workers with low pay. Once again, this Council are addressing issues in this city that the Government has failed to deal with. Lord Mayor, there are a variety of other statistics that show us a more complicated picture in relation to unemployment; for example, unemployment data only affects those on Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA), there are 40,000 benefit claimants in this city and only 11,000 are JSA claimants. Sickness related benefits account for over 15,000 of the overall figure and that is a worrying figure and I know my colleague Councillor Norris could speak at length about what it says about the overlap between economic deprivation and health deprivation and it is something that we need to continue to tackle robustly in this city.

 

So below the headlines Lord Mayor, the position is stark in some areas, yes unemployment is falling in some areas in Nottingham but there remains a national problem with long term unemployment, low paid work, part-time work and poor terms and conditions. This Council is doing, I believe, the right things to tackle those issues – it is focussing on apprenticeships, it is focussing on sectors that will generate a variety of different kinds of work, it is using its own procurement strategy to drive up standards but most of all it is using the levers it has to create economic growth in this city through its growth plan because it is only through structural shifts in our economy that we can ultimately start to address the questions that Councillor Edwards highlights. By moving our economy away from a traditional employment sectors and towards high knowledge based, high skilled economy sectors. The Council has a good record on all of these issues and while we are at the start of a long journey to create a new economy in our city we have the right policies in place.

 

Meanwhile, this Government has nothing like our growth plan, it has no credible plan for growth at all, it has presided over a dramatic fall in living standards, it is the single biggest cause of public sector job losses in the last few years, it has done nothing on pay and conditions and it has failed abjectly to address the shameful issue of long term youth unemployment. Instead, it seems intent on slashing green business regulations when Europe is doing the opposite and I have to say, my experience of dealing with small business is that they are less concerned with over-regulation and more concerned with a lack of access to finance, business support and access to skilled workers.

 

Lord Mayor, the unemployment story then in Nottingham is complicated but overall it is the story of failure at governmental level on all of the labour market indicators and they have wasted money and poor policies have failed to address some serious and deep seated problems, like youth unemployment, part-time employment and poor pay and conditions. A very good job then, Lord Mayor, that cities like Nottingham are leading the way when the Government is failing. If only this Government would give us more powers, more responsibility and more control of funding we could do a lot more

 

Business rate revaluation

 

Councillor Saghir asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

Could the Deputy Leader comment on research that suggests that retailers on some of Britain’s most deprived high streets are subsidising stores like Burberry and Chanel following the Government’s two-year delay on business rate revaluation?

 

Councillor Chapman replied as follows:

 

Thank you and can I thank Councillor Saghir for his question and I trust that he’s not wearing either Chanel or Burberry. Research conducted by Bill Grimsby, the ex-Chief Executive of Wickes which is one of my favourite shops, concluded that luxury retailers in London’s top central shopping street alone will be saving alone £66 million over two years as a result of the postponement by the Government of the business rate revaluation. This is just a small part of London. Stretched across the most affluent areas of the UK, in particular the south east, we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds, if not billions of pounds of advantage to some of the better off retailers.

 

This is because since 2008 rental values and turnover elsewhere outside of London and the south east have dropped. Leeds -31%, Bristol -25% and in Nottingham around about -27%. The report concludes that not only will postponement force many retailers to pay artificially high bills which are often over 30% of their overall cost but it will also exacerbate significant hurdles which already exist to investing and struggling high streets.

 

So, the contrast between the luxury end retailers, the ordinary retailers and in particular those marginal retailers on our estates and along the arterial roads that lead into the city. There is also another factor and this factor is the contrast between the south and the midlands and the north. This is one of a whole raft of measures which are disinsentivising the northern and midland economies. It is particularly interesting that this question should be asked on a day when the report on the centre of cities has emerged saying that London is actually snaffling the vast majority of growth in this country and distorting the gap between the north, the midlands and the south east. It has been helped very much by a whole plethora of Government initiatives, for example, council grant settlements. The poorer the area the more northerly, the more you are likely to lose. The new homes bonus, the poorer the area the more northerly, the more likely you are to lose. Council tax support which we will be discussing later, the poorer the area the more urban, the more northerly, the more you are likely to lose.

 

Business rate devolution – the poorer the area, the more northerly, the more you are likely to lose. All the rhetoric from Government is about rebalancing the economy, all the behaviour is about increasing the gap which is precisely what is happening and now we have business rate revaluation postponed which could potentially have saved Nottingham’s businesses 20% of their rate costs. That 20% might have allowed some of them to start paying the living wage which is what we are told is what the Government would like to happen but again all of its actions are going in the opposite direction. So, indeed, we are not all ‘in it together’ or at least we are all ‘in it together’ provided that you are not poor, provided that you are not urban, provided that you do not live in the north or the midlands and provided that you are not a small business. Thank you.

 

Rate of unemployment

 

Councillor Culley asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

While I’m sure the Deputy Leader will have welcomed last week’s encouraging news on unemployment, with the city achieving its lowest unemployment rate in five years, I am also sure that like me he will be concerned that unemployment is falling at a slower rate here in Nottingham than it is regionally and nationally. Could this have any relation to the anti-business policies of this Council such as the Workplace Parking Levy and increasing city centre parking charges, and will further such policies such as the proposed Late Night Levy not further stifle growth?

 

Councillor Chapman replied as follows:

 

Thank you very much Lord Mayor. The underlying assumption of this question just illustrates how facts and ideological differences don’t mix very well. The prejudices behind the question are, workplace parking – bad, parking charges generally – bad, night time levy – bad. The conclusions these prejudices lead to is that anything at all suboptimal in their ambit must be as a result of the prejudices and these factors.

 

All I can say is that is a good job that this approach has not applied to medical science otherwise we would all still be applying leeches, so, in answer, I would say that how welcome the reductions in unemployment are and I don’t care who takes credit for it, whether it is the efforts of the City Council or the voluntary sector, initiatives of the private sector, the genius of George Osborne or the natural economic cycle taking its course. What is important is that it is happening, though we should not be complacent. Long term unemployment is not moving in the right direction. Nevertheless, we should be grateful for what mercies are on offer. I also want to offer some reasons for the variations between the city and the surrounding areas.

 

First and I think it has already been mentioned earlier, like all cities the skill base is lower than its hinterland. It is historic and it relates to the type of industry we used to specialise in and the fallout from the industrial revolution and that takes a long, long time to reverse. Second, there is a recurrent problem with city statistics to do with the boundaries and they lock in much of the conurbation’s deprivation and distort the impression. Third, benefit reforms have led in cities to more single parents and people with disabilities moving onto Jobs Seekers’ Allowance and onto the unemployment statistics disproportionately affecting this city and as I said, all cities.

 

These are inconvenient facts for Councillor Culley and certainly, if you want to believe that Workplace Parking is the source of all evil. They are not definitive but probably more realistic than the misconceptions Councillor Culley is trying to conjure up. However, a more scientific test is to compare similar local authorities to Nottingham where this is no Workplace Parking Levy and even these comparisons disadvantage Nottingham because none of them are as tightly bound as we are. Nottingham, with Workplace Parking, the annual change is -16.4% decrease in unemployment. Birmingham, without Workplace Parking, the annual change is only 14.2%. Sheffield, with wider boundaries that Nottingham is 17.8% so is within the ambit of Nottingham. Liverpool, without Workplace Parking, the annual change 15.6%, less than Nottingham.

 

If we look at the conurbation, which is the real comparison because more of the cities have boundaries more akin to our conurbation and the cities provide most of the jobs for the conurbation then Nottingham is in the top half of the core cities in terms of its fall in unemployment and none of them have Workplace Parking. There is stronger evidence still that our employment rate is the 6^th best of UK’s major cities, which was in the report today. We have also heard that we have created almost 9,000 private sector jobs recently. If that is not definitive evidence that the Workplace Parking Levy has made very little difference, and don’t forget that makes us the 5^th most effective city in the UK in terms of private sector job creation, if that is not definitive evidence, then I don’t know what is. So you could argue that without the £750 million investment in trams and other transport infrastructure enabled by the WPL we would be further down the league, but there is not enough evidence to justify that conclusion entirely so, unlike Councillor Culley, not being a believer in statistical leeches, it is not an argument I would want to use without more research. Thank you.

 

NET Phase 2 compensation claim

 

Councillor Morley asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation:

 

With the news that Wilkinson is lodging a claim of around £6 million from the City Council for the loss of its Beeston store due to NET Phase 2 works, can the Portfolio Holder reassure the Council that this claim will not be the first of many? Furthermore, can she assure us that compensation for this type of claim is factored into the project’s budget and does not threaten to further burden the tax-payers of Nottingham?

 

In Councillor Urquhart’s absence, Councillor Collins replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Morley for her question. There is nothing new about this claim and as Councillor Morley would have known had she asked the officers managing the tram project. It has always been anticipated that the Wilkinson building along the NET Phase 2 route would need to be compulsorily purchased and provision was made within the overall budget to meet those costs.

 

The owners of the buildings that have been compulsorily purchased are able to claim what they consider to be a fair sum in compensation however, the final figure will be subject to negotiation and if agreement cannot be reach an amount will be independently settled.

 

Investment in Nottingham

 

Councillor Culley asked the following question of the Deputy Leader:

 

With the Government releasing £3 million of ERDF funding to support works in and around the Creative Quarter, the focus of the City Deal which will see over £45 million of Government investment, will the Portfolio Holder join me in welcoming this Government’s massive investment in Nottingham?

 

Councillor Chapman replied as follows:

 

Of course I welcome the money, the main thing is to try and get our economy going and if we can get Government help, all the better and we have worked very hard with ministers and with one or two quite decent ministers, like Greg Clark MP. Anything that compensates for the £100 million taken out of the local economy as a result of the disproportionate RSG is of course welcome. Before we get too excited, I think we need to break this £45 million down. Twenty five million pounds of it is not grant, it is a loan expecting a higher rate of return from local business who take out the loan so, it is not grant and the money will be repaid.

 

A further £8 million TIF money is provided, not by the Government, but by the City Council. Three million is ERDF and that is not Government money, the clue is in the ‘E’ which stands for European, from the EU who seem to like giving the city money to invest in business when the Government doesn’t actually do it on business, training and infrastructure. What we are left with after that is £10 million from the Government which again, is welcome but which, according to Councillor McDonald, him and Councillor Collins have had to fight tooth and nail to extract over the past few months. So, that £10 million versus the loss of £100 million in grant to this authority does not look terribly impressive.

 

Moreover, in terms of the infrastructure requirements in both training and R&D which has also been cut nationally, the sort of long term investment with higher multipliers you really need, this is breath-taking in its lack of ambition, £10 million. It is nothing Councillor Culley, we are a major economy, we are one of the world’s top ten economies so in order to try and get us going, and we are the 8^th or 10^th city of the country - £10 million is not impressive. As we all know, money is not the total solution but it helps if you have it but, my God, it impedes if you don’t.

 

What is important in the end is the devolution of powers and what we desperately need is local control over 2 areas, skills and employment funding, as Councillor McDonald implied earlier, and business support, neither of which are being delivered sufficiently by Government, not just by the Government but by the last government as well. With those two tools we could really make progress. However, there is also one other thing which is holding back progress in this city, particularly in the Creative Quarter and that is broadband rollout. If you want investment which is going to have a whacking great payback, disproportionate to the amount of money you put in, it is the rollout of broadband, which is not happening. It is not happening because BT have a monopoly and before the last election were told by Mr Cameron that their monopoly would be broken up, in fact the opposite has happened. BT has got closer and closer to Government to the point where their ex-Chief Executive has been made a Conservative Lord. Indeed, this closeness means that the Government is not putting enough pressure on BT and BT is not doing enough, not just for this city but for any city. It is holding back growth in this country and there is far too cosy a relationship between Government and BT. It is not healthy for us and it is not healthy for our economy.

 

That is a message I would take back and if there is anything you can do within your Government to try and get them to take BT on then it would be very, very helpful to the city and its economy. If you have that influence I hope you will exercise it. Thank you