Dear Patchers — last August, a vital service that launched during the pandemic was forced to close its doors. Baby Aid Birmingham was the biggest baby bank in the city, but after four years, the struggle to find the cash to continue proved to be too hard. Or so it seemed — The Dispatch recently received a tip-off that suggested there was more to the story. Read on to find out more. Before that, your Brum in Brief.
Brum in Brief
💼 Birmingham City Council’s cabinet met on Tuesday to discuss the city’s most pressing issues. These included the state of the council’s finances and the up-to £152m Perry Barr homes project debt that taxpayers will be repaying over 40-years, at £8m-£9m per year. Next month, the council will set another cost-saving budget for 2025-26 which is expected to contain £153m in cuts and another 10 percent rise in council tax. Labour councillors were enthusiastic about their progress, with Rob Pocock describing the city as being “a long way on the road to recovery”, but the opposition members were more critical. Conservative leader Robert Alden cautioned the cabinet not to be “too celebratory” about their recent due diligence, as proper scrutiny ought to be standard practice. He also pointed out that the council had not done enough to become more efficient and that the savings target for next year had increased by 130% since March. The council tax hike, he said, was another “double whammy on Birmingham residents of higher council tax for fewer services”.
💸 Former-council leader and economics professor John Clancy explained to a room of people at the Birmingham & Midland Institute on Tuesday night, what he argues is the real reason for Birmingham’s financial crisis. Namely, the £1.2bn handed by Birmingham City Council to the West Midlands Pension Fund over the past decade — that’s not money that went to local government employees but to investment managers. Clancy was summarising the work he and Professor David Bailey wrote about in their three-part blog post about this “absolute scandal” in December. They are calling on that money — which they claim would wipe the council’s debt and stop the need for cuts — to be repaid.
🎸 Black Sabbath, who formed in Aston in 1968, will be awarded the Freedom of the City of Birmingham, in recognition of the heavy metal band’s service to the city. On hearing the news, Ozzy Osbourne said he was honoured and shocked, adding: “My only regret is that my Mom and Dad are not here to see what I became. Birmingham Forever!” The decision is set to be signed off next week, with a posthumous honour also going to the poet and activist Benjamin Zephaniah.
🥘 Simpsons, the Michelin-starred restaurant founded by renowned chef Andreas Antona, is up for sale. Andreas announced he was resigning after 50 years in the industry but will continue to work part-time at his other establishments, The Cross at Kenilworth and Soko Patisserie in Solihull. "Following a lot of soul searching, I’ve realised there is never a good time to retire, but when something from within is telling you to reevaluate and enjoy life, family, friends, travel and golf — you need to listen,” he said.
✍️ Following our story about the fierce competition to get into King Ed’s grammar schools, The King Edward VI Foundation reached out to say it does not encourage or promote tutoring in preparation for the entrance test. A spokesperson said: “We believe that intensive coaching or tuition is not in the long-term best interests of children. Familiarisation papers, which are available free of charge via a link on our website, are useful in that they show the types of questions that appear on the entrance test and how to fill in the answer sheet, but we ask parents not to put undue pressure on their children.”
A shock letter & a silent councillor: what really happened at Baby Aid Birmingham
On the face of things, the demise of Baby Aid Birmingham (BAB), a pandemic-era charity that grew to become a lifeline to 250 Birmingham families a month, is a classic tale: a community organisation trying to make a difference on a shoestring budget but ultimately failing to balance the books.
When the baby bank announced its “sudden closure” in August last year, this was the story. Birmingham Live reported that “a lack of funding” had been the reason for BAB’s downfall. With a heavy heart, David Barker, a city councillor for Brandwood and Kings Heath and one of the organisation’s two founders, said “we’ve pushed it as far as we can go.”
However, recently The Dispatch received a tip-off. Contrary to what had been reported, failure to secure funding was not the reason Birmingham had lost a vital service. We were told it was down to financial mismanagement on the part of one of the city’s elected representatives.
The person responsible for the baby bank’s finances was Sparkhill councillor and cabinet member Nicky Brennan. But Brennan hadn’t flagged any financial issues to the other staff. In fact the issue had only come to light when an unpaid bill for thousands of pounds dropped through the letterbox, after which Brennan stopped responding entirely to her fellow directors attempts to communicate with her.
