Have your millions invested into Coventry and other parts of the W Mids contributed to the transport £171.1 m overspending and "eye-watering ... substantial financial breach" of your own regulations? And what, exactly, does an affordable home look like? Solar, v energy efficient?
Saturday, 31 December 2022
Thursday, 22 December 2022
Dear Colin and Coventry friends
NOT QUITE THE WAY TO BUILD A MORE SOCIALLY JUST AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY!
Dear Colin and Coventry friends - who must all stand up to Brum that gets its way in continuing to destroy the UK's last, supposedly safeguarded, 120 Kms Black Country Mainline railway between Worcester and Derby.
AND A REPLY, PLEASE FROM EITHER COLIN OR GEORGE (preferably both) WOULD BE WONDERFUL!
At a time of more people suffering poverty than we have probably seen for 70 years, our government of the people, for the people by the people, is splashing out on the most monumentally expensive High Scam 2; £15 billion for eight lines and 150 miles of trams replacing or duplicating buses as passenger numbers have fallen; and, Sprint buses going on routes already blessed with Platinum buses and trains and, next, trams planned to come out to Solihull from Brum city centre, too!
Just one extravagant transport project is well over half a billion pounds for 10.7 Kms of tramlines, with most of that on and breaking up the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby.
Our truly sick, unsustainable society is letting the poor go to the wall as more of them become dependent on food banks and more have difficulty paying food and energy bills. It is immoral and foolish to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money on replacing buses and trains with light rail trams, very light rail trams and ultra light rail trams. Give the money to the poor or, at least, give them Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) that I've had for nearly 15 years rather than wasting it on destroying yet more of our urban railway network.
There are very much more responsible and socially just and obvious ways to get car commuters to leave their precious vehicles at home and commute by bus, train and tram. Such as that contained here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CGNnFpMczaJO53xi0vrSHvdJLmVv_1Uebr_nFh0PeT4/edit?usp=drive_web
High Scam 2 is a fraudulent project when the thing has to go so fast through little ol' England it can only stop, outside of London at two airport stations before terminating in Manchester. Only some trains will call at Curzon St and Crewe. Yet, the misleading, dishonest website makes one think that every other city will somehow benefit, too!
All the intercity stations like Coventry that will be bypassed by High Scam 2 will see no improvement and, quite likely, a poorer service with fewer intercity trains.
With best wishes
from Adam Tranter
Morning Tim,
I don't recognise many of the characterisations you make in your email on transport schemes, but I did want to follow up on the cycle route following our discussions outside the lifts in Summer Lane.
After discussing with Black Country Transport (BCT), to the best of my knowledge the situation is as follows:
Over the summer, BCT began the development of a business case for work to upgrade the Smestow Valley path between Dudley and Wolverhampton, building on earlier feasibility work. Site visits were made to the sections of the path within Wolverhampton and Dudley.
Also at this time the Black Country Local Walking and Cycling Infrastructure Plan was in preparation. The sections of this route within Wolverhampton and Dudley were included in a long list of desirable schemes and subject to assessment by various criteria set out in the Network Planning section of the BCLCWIP. Owing to the 5-year timescale for delivery of the BCLCWIP and the resource and other constraints governing the number of schemes that can be progressed simultaneously, the two top-scoring routes for each Highway Authority area were selected for further development, to be progressed in the near future. The Dudley section of this route fell into the top 2 for Dudley and so this will be developed in the coming year with a view to delivery in successive years. The Wolverhampton section did not fall into the top two for Wolverhampton so at this stage it is not a priority for development. However, having been included in the BCLCWIP increases the likelihood the route will be developed in the medium term.
In the meantime, a Heritage Lottery Fund application is in progress with a view to making minor improvements to the route in Wolverhampton. An update on this has been sought by officers.
So that you understand the process, routes have to be on a Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) in order to have the best chance of securing funding from Government.
Sustrans manages the National Cycling Network and allocates route numbers. As previously explained, they are currently reviewing all routes because some do not meet the standards people would expect from pieces of national infrastructure. I'd suggest, in my own opinion, that allocating a NCN number to the Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway, as you describe it, wouldn't add any benefit and frustrate people further that the route is not to a quality that's useful.
People need a variety of cycle routes for journeys - including quiet routes, off-road and segregated cycleways on main roads. Generally, funding is prioritised from Government for routes that are going to deliver benefits for the most number of people to help deliver "modal shift" - hence, priority to some of the A road corridors which will benefit from bus and active travel priority. But, as mentioned above, that doesn't mean other routes will be ignored.
So, in summary:
- The route is now in the right strategy documents to secure future funding
- Some parts of the route are being prioritised for progression
- Others parts are earmarked for funding bids in medium-term
- A funding bid for minor improvements has gone in to Heritage Lottery Fund
- An NCN number would not add value, but confusion
I'll continue to keep an eye on the development of this route, following our conversation.
Best,
Adam Tranter
Cycling & Walking Commissioner
Monday, 19 December 2022
to Mike Bird on opposing Metro extensions
Dear Cllr Mike,
Hundreds of millions spent on Metro and Walsall has gained NOTHING in 40 years of endeavour.
Please insist that further extensions are scrapped, immediately.
You were brilliant in speaking out in the Board meeting on Friday.
Please speak out, privately to whoever at 16 Summer Lane.
Our Edinburgh Conservatives have been quite superb over the years in opposing their two tram projects on grounds of cost. They are right. And you are right, too Mike.
Remember, although I am an eco-socialist, I voted for Andy Street for Mayor on both occasions - 2017 and 2021.
Best wishes
Financial Scandal at WMCA as the poor suffer for the CA's greedy, selfish and luxurious expenditure
WMCA is in a financial hole because of overspending on transport projects, especially Metro
EXTRACT FROM CAPITAL PRESSURES REPORT presented to the WMCA Board on 16 December 2022:
"4.2 The total value of the immediate and early warning matters equates to £171.1m. It is expected this maximum exposure can be mitigated to £85.9m subject to the effectiveness of specific mitigations WMCA intend to deploy.
Page 92
"4.3 The sums outlined above excludes the costs to address the Dudley to Brierley Hill element of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro extension which will be the subject of a specific report in the February’s WMCA Board. This report will address the funding position for the Extension following an earlier report which agreed a number of funding options which would be pursued to support this scheme’s delivery in full. Once the Board has determined its preferred way forward for this scheme and further work is completed on the early warnings a fuller picture of total financial pressures can be presented."
The "fuller picture of total financial pressures" on suspended transport projects might amount to hundreds of millions of pounds. Perhaps, double the £171.1 m, above.
EXPLANATION:
WMCA is in a financial hole because of overspending on the most grossly extravagant, wholly unnecessary Metro tram projects to entice car commuters out of their motors and onto public transport like trams to replace/duplicate buses and trains.
During more than forty years of work on a 200 Kms Metro tram network they have succeeded in destroying two mainline railways and, two and a quarter mainline stations. The quarter is platform 4 at Snow Hill that cannot be used because this former mainline between Brum and Shrewsbury was turned into a tram line! This first incompetent, idiocy runs from Snow Hill station to Wolverhampton St George's Square. Not even to the bus station, would you believe, let alone to Low Level station that is now a conference and events centre! The tram opened in 1999. One wisecracker perceptively called it "a solution looking for a problem".
The second official insanity is the railway "of national strategic significance" that is the 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby which is being broken up into heavy rail at either end, with light rail and very light rail in the middle!
If our top politicians had returned these two mainlines for use by commuter, regional and intercity trains that had been so successful for 100 years, there would not be what one prominent member of the Board called on the 16 December:
"eye watering ... substantial financial breach" of their own regulations!
Sunday, 18 December 2022
Our incompetent politicians, senior officers and trade union/faith leaders
Dear Philip - very good of you to engage and to disagree.
WE ALL HAVE FEET OF CLAY AND EVEN BLOOD SOAKED HANDS DOWN THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Very many thanks for your email that gives the conventional, official, 'our side is wholly right, our No 1 Sworn Enemy since 1945 is wholly wrong' line. I feel, sins of commission and omission are not confined to one side and we all need a little repentance and forgiveness from time to time!
Do you also call the Ukraine war, 'The War of Dignity', like the 'Revolution of Dignity' that started it in 2014?
I think we all need to try and see into the mind of Putrid, to stand in his shoes, and attempt to understand decades of our side ruling the roost, of missing opportunities to be less expansionist at his expense - as he sees it. He also wants his own sphere of influence, just as we do. Pity that Putrid is going about it in all the wrong ways, just as we do - called human nature that means humanity will, very likely, have great trouble in outliving the 150 million years of dinosaurs in charge on Earth!
Never mind. Our wars and arms trading to fuel them are all good for employment and economic growth. The more the merrier, I say. Live it up today and to hell with tomorrow; the philosophy of too many but certainly not your good self, Philip!
Would you feel able to help over this, please?
This piece, below is about the cross party, financial scandal that your government has been complicit in with enthusiastic funding since 2010 and has never opposed even when you were the official Opposition from 1997 - 2010.
A SCATHING BUT SAD DENUNCIATION OF OFFICIAL ACTIONS (my weekend email to an Express and Star reporter):-
Our incompetent politicians, senior officers and trade union/faith leaders have left the poor out in the cold with a forty year old obsession with Metro trams that destroyed two mainline railways and their stations. The first was Snow Hill, Brum to Wolverhampton, when the tram was put on the mainline railway to Shrewsbury/Crewe in 1999, when the tram opened. We heard on Friday that this has cost hundreds of millions of pounds leaving an overspend of £171.1 million in the WMCA transport budget, mainly on tram projects that should never have started, incomplete.
The Dudley Tram has destroyed the former, highly successful for 100 years Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Co line and destroyed the recently intact but unused 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby railway "of national strategic significance"
The Dudley Tram, aka Wednesbury Brierley Hill Extension or WBHE is also due to obliterate the only public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, a nature site and part of the 23,000 sq metres of land designated for housing but wasted for decades. This is called High Plateau between Next, Primark, M&S and the Dudley No 1 Canal. Obliterated because a 400 metre concrete and steel viaduct will carry the tram on a standard gauge double railway track, over the steep, high canal embankment and my guerrilla garden developed since the 1990s.
Cost for the viaduct and two canal bridges, alone must be in the order of £100 m when the tram could stay on the mainline railway from Dudley town and then connect with Stourbridge Jct and the national railway network.
THE EVIDENCE
The route of the tramline:
This shows the 120 Kms Black Country Railway and the missing middle section:
The official leaflet showing the grossly extravagant, financially irresponsible and totally unnecessary scheme:
Railways in our area and railways converted to tramway idiocy:
The scandal of trains and buses sidelined and even destroyed to give top priority to extremely expensive Metro trams:
Your photographer meets me at the clock tower, here - please. 1 pm on Wednesday, 21st. Road is called 'Embankment'. Everything on the other side of the road, up to the towpath, gets the massive viaduct treatment:
Thanks, Lisa for any write up you can do, please. Mark Andrews can vouch for me. He has written pieces over the years that have included what so simply and obviously needs to be done and quoted me.
Tim (Weller) 0791 380 4363
PS bonus of 3 photos, 2 cartoons to entice:
PPS: Only one wonderful trade unionist has supported me over the years. Excellent man and train driver, Dave has now resigned from ASLEF, with its hopeless, do nothing, Deputy/Assistant who shares his surname with me!!
Best wishes
Tim
"£171.1 million eye watering substantial financial breach"
Thanks, Chris. I certainly don't understand high finance. Way over my head!
However, I was there in person and stayed for the whole meeting and beyond, lobbying to get Cllr Mike Bird, Leader of Walsall and others to scrap Metro extensions immediately. I was also giving out our 9 Action Points when I could. Dan Essex has now sent out the smarter copy of Bob's via Royal Mail and internal delivery to members on the WMCA Board and Overview and Scrutiny Committee. More to go but I've run out of Bob's copies!
Did I mishear this?: "£171.1 million eye watering substantial financial breach"! Who said that?
Ian Ward spoke of "a risk" but did not explain what that risk was. Do you know, Chris?
From my rushed notes, I have: Ian also spoke of £17.8 m immediate scheme funding re-allocated. The E&S has £17.43 m though. Will have to re-read, more carefully the Capital Pressures report later in the weekend. I want to listen to the recording, too, to check what I thought I heard!
Once upon a time, one railway union boss wanted to help the nurses!
Once upon a time, one railway union boss wanted to help the nurses!
Recognising that they had real muscle, this man in a TV interview that I saw last decade, actually expressed his intention to get the nurses higher pay rises! Does anyone else remember hearing this very fine intention to strike for the nurses? What selfless disregard for their own pay and rules of working and putting others, much more disadvantaged than themselves, first! So admirable, they must get 19% themselves as well as the nurses.
WHO WAS THAT FINE MAN?
Thursday, 15 December 2022
WMCA Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Hi Cathy - and copied to Laura Shoaf to correct any inadvertent misrepresentation, here.
I hope to attend and observe tomorrow's Scrutiny Committee meeting.
I wonder if tomorrow you might feel able to make any reference to the matters that are of great concern to me, in the earlier email, below that I sent you in November.
Laura's "passive provision" phrase was reaffirmed when being interviewed by Transport Correspondent, Peter Plisner. It was recorded and televised by the BBC in one of their 'Midlands Today' programmes in the second half of the last decade. Passsive provision for heavy rail to return has been a very long standing ambition of both Centro and Dudley MBC since the 1990s. It magically enables track sharing between trams (both light rail and very light rail), freight, and commuter/regional trains all on the same, one set of double tracks, 24 hours a day!!
I do fear that your ambition is being quietly sidelined in the face of the multiple crises now confronting the region and nation. Or, is passive provision impractical, anyway and was only ever introduced as a sop to those of us who have wanted the middle section of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway to be competently finished with the trains that had been so successful for about 100 years? This was when the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company ran trains from Oxford and Worcester over the last two centuries. The first GWR company ran the service from Dudley to Derby, I believe and the line has been safeguarded/mothballed ever since with every motorway, road, canal crossing in place but all unused despite road/motorway congestion and poor air quality leading to 60 mph speed limits!
In addition, senior officers at 16 Summer Lane, including Laura, have all consistently maintained that trams are the catalyst for freight trains only, to return "in the 2040s at the earliest", as Network Rail has proclaimed for decades and technically safeguarded by Order, I understand.
What passive provision, exactly, is being made? Only standard gauge track? And how practical is it? Am I correct in what I have written here?
Best wishes
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
Where, exactly is the contradiction? We are ALL united!
How does withdrawing support for High Scam 2 (dishonest claims eg, outside of London it stops at only two airports, with only some trains stopping at Brum and Crewe!), Metro and Sprint extensions contradict 'Action Point 8: Pause Tram Development' that says
"New growth of this network (trams) should be paused and the money diverted into upgrading the current regional public transport system, including the opening of new routes."
Tuesday, 13 December 2022
written Oct 2016 re Jeremy Corbyn
Because of Scotland, they cannot hope to win under any leader, so they might just as well have a leader that is "decent, honest and principled", as everyone says he is.
7 S's for a less sick, selfish, unsustainable society!
For our discussion tomorrow evening, please. I want feedback - criticism or support - not apathy/acquiescence/boring! Tim
- SOLAR powered, highly energy efficient apartments at Smallbrook Queensway and 23,000 sq m High Plateau at Merry Hill.
- SUPPORT John Christophers' proposal for the 1960s concrete arc of shops,offices and homes.
- SCRAP wasteful multi-modal public transport of heavy rail, light rail and very light rail (HR, LR, VLR).
- STICK to TRAINS returning to the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway, Kings Heath/Moseley Railway, Sutton Park Railway.
- STOP extensions to HS2, Metro and Sprint.
- START the 2 year experiment on Hagley Road of nearside bus lane, Fare-Free Public Transport, green lights for every approaching bus and ROAD PRICING penalty for thoughtless car commuters.
- STRENGTHEN CAZ to take in more thoughtless car commuters who must use bus/train/tram to commute.
to Bob Sleigh - Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society
Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society is letting the poor go to the wall as more of them become dependent on food banks and more have difficulty paying food and energy bills. It is immoral and foolish to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money on replacing buses and trains with light rail trams, very light rail trams and ultra light rail trams. Give the money to the poor or, at least give them FFPT (that I've had for nearly 15 years) rather than wasting it on destroying yet more of our railway network.
Monday, 12 December 2022
The non contradiction
Thanks for drawing the contradiction to my attention. It is all about priorities. For over 40 years the emphasis has been on rebuilding the tram network on the railway network as is the case with the Dudley Tram, phase 1 to Castle Hill. And, the priority has been using urban railway lines for roads and for every kind of building imaginable. Rather than
"and the money diverted into upgrading the current regional public transport system, including the opening of new routes."
which sounds like this week's Midlands Connect proposal, below that needs NO promotion by us; I would like to suggest that the money for Metro extensions should be used to rebuild the railway network as Andy Street wants for both the Camp Hill line and the Sutton line - both finished with stations and then the commuter trains back. I think we should encourage Andy/TfWM on the right things and dissuade them from the wrong.
From press releases from the WMCA, Andy/TfWM are also doing their best to keep bus fares as low as possible. We simply need to constantly praise where we can and nudge TfWM towards FFPT and the bus priority and the car commuter road pricing penalty that I'm asking for.
The £15 billion to 2040 for 150 miles of Metro plus some rail upgrading was the figure in January 2020 when it was announced. This week, Midlands Connect had a big day in Brum and announced:
- "The plans outline up to £1.5 billion of new and improved infrastructure, to be completed between 2025-2030
- Space for up to over a hundred additional trains on the network every day
- Will cut journey times for thousands of commuters - between Birmingham and Hereford journeys will be slashed by up to 13 minutes
- Proposals improve access to high-speed services at HS2 at Birmingham Curzon Street
- Improvements to the Cross-city Birmingham line would enable trains to arrive every ten minutes
On 5th December, we launched the Outline Business Case for the Midlands Rail Hub, a piece of work years in the making. The plans will revolutionise rail travel in the Midlands, and the wider UK. "
See you later. Tim
NOT QUITE THE WAY TO BUILD A MORE SOCIALLY JUST AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY!
At a time of more people suffering poverty than we have probably seen for 70 years, our government of the people, for the people by the people, is splashing out on the most monumentally expensive High Scam 2; billions on trams replacing or duplicating buses; and, Sprint buses going on routes already blessed with Platinum buses and trains and next, trams to come out to Solihull!
There are very much more responsible and socially just and obvious ways to get car commuters to leave their precious vehicles at home and commute by bus, train and tram.
High Scam 2 is a fraudulent project when the thing has to go so fast through little England it can only stop, outside of London at two airport stations before terminating in Manchester. Some trains will call at Curzon Steet and Crewe. Yet, the website makes one think that every other city will somehow benefit, too!
All the intercity stations that will be bypassed by High Scam 2 will see no improvement and, perhaps, a poorer service.
Brutalist concrete building
I spoke to Gary Davis/Davies this morning at 16 Summer Lane when we met for the WMCA Investment Board. I asked him if he knew John Christophers, which he did. I wondered what he wanted to be done with the long arc of the 1960s concrete building in Smallbrook Queensway. The city council is considering a planning application and John Christophers has an alternative plan.
In addition, does he want trams or trains on the decades of wasted, unused or, partly used double-track railway lines in Birmingham?
Should Metro and Sprint extensions continue to be progressed?
And his reasons, please.
Sunday, 11 December 2022
to Liz Clements - Public funds for public good
Dear Liz
Public funds for public good and the lowest possible GHG emissions
ROUGH RULE OF THUMB:
£1 in price = 1 lb in weight of GHG
I am still insisting that green jobs do NOT come from extensions to High Scam 2, Metro trams or, Sprint buses simply because these are luxury, wealth-flaunting, highly extravagant and thus high GHG emitting projects.
They mean destroying yet more urban railway lines for light rail (LR) or very light rail (VLR) trams to go on them. We end up with heavy rail (HR), LR and VLR to make for more changes between the different modes and a slower public transport journey.
They are a distraction from concentrating on the urgent need to free up road space and to save GHG by extending Fare-Free Public Transport to you youngsters and to bring in road pricing for car commuters.
The money could be used for strictly enforced bus lanes on every nearside lane with traffic light priority: green for approaching buses and red for cars in the outside lane, to discourage car commuting and to free up road space.
All the high falutin, flash projects mean there is less money for the more basic, urgent projects to update our buildings to solar power and to the highest energy efficiency standards.
Am I right, Liz or have I got things hopelessly wrong? I would still love to meet you in person to get your thoughts, please.
Best wishes
to Jackie Homan, Hd of Environment
Dear Jackie
I'm sure it was your good self, wasn't it, with the two men at the table when I came over to you in the School of Architecture?
I am bothered that you all have such great ideas and clearly know what to do but - funding is always the problem.
What, exactly, please did you say to me? I just cannot now remember it. I want so much to think about what you said! Please help. I think you were countering something like this from me:-
"I want the taxpayers' billions on military warfare, on Trident renewal, on war on countryside/nature and the extensions for High Scam 2, Metro, Sprint to be diverted, with all the workers reskilled and redeployed, into rigorous retrofitting of every building in the land! Well, actually some of that money must be used for trains on railway lines not yet used, would you believe, for brand new energy inefficient buildings!"
This was my response to what I read, here:
Many thanks if you can tell me, please or, just give me your side of the case. Or, comments on the above document?
Best wishes
Concessions for climate and conscience
Lower our aspirations
Live in a smaller space
Live with less travel
Make concessions to climate to win all the big prizes
Concessions to have a clear conscience in your daily living.
Old bods like me do more after a lifetime of finite fossil fuels burnt.
Set a fine example to lead from the front.
to Bob Whitehead re unsustainable W Midlands
Dear Bob - and invitation to John Christophers in case he might like to join us on Tuesday evening.
70 YEARS OF CITY COUNCIL DESTRUCTION, AND NEGLIGENCE AND IDIOCY!
You seem to be the person who has come the closest to understand what I am getting at!!
You wrote, " ... the money diverted into upgrading the current regional public transport system, including the opening of new routes." Those new routes, I think should be your own local railway line through Kings Heath, mine through the Black Country and the Sutton Park line. The lines are already in place or safeguarded, in my case in the Black Country but are not fully used!
For decades I have been toiling away pointing out to the authorities that they first need to build a sensible unsustainable West Midlands where perfectly good transport infrastructure and buildings are NOT destroyed or mothballed/overlooked. And, where building sites are used to house the badly housed.
My futile attempts to kick up a fuss about the destruction of our railway lines in Brum and the Black Country has been ongoing since the 1990s. Yet, the UK's only remaining, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
is still being broken up into heavy rail (HR), light rail Metro trams (LR), Very Light Rail (VLR) and, possibly ultra light rail Stourbridge Shuttle (ULR). Incredible!
When it comes to housing, we are still building well below best energy efficient standards and, overlooking building sites, like the massive 23,000 sq metres at Merry Hill Shopping Centre that has been wasted since the canal was straightened in the 1990s, I believe was the decade. 23,000 sq m designated for housing at High Plateau since, at least, 2020 as here:
On High Plateau, I'm suggesting solar powered, very high energy efficient apartments for the badly housed, including some of this year's record 40,000 small boat migrants. Any chance of WMCC going along with that?
BACK TO TRANSPORT:
Transport infrastructure destruction has been continuing for 70 years when it started with the total obliteration of the Midlands tram network in the 1950s and continues with the Dudley tram on the nationally important mainline railway to this very day!!
More here about the merry dance we've all been taken on:
FIRST, get a sensible, unsustainable, non-green transport and housing practice!!
Best wishes
Friday, 9 December 2022
to retrofitting Richard
It was great to meet you in person this afternoon. You have done enormous amounts of great, detailed work and are much respected. Well done.
I'm a proper old grumpy grandad that has been around in Brum, non stop, for exactly 54 years. I think I've uncovered the biggest and longest running financial/transport scandal in UK history but no-one else thinks so! However, I'm wanting exactly what you want as regards home retrofit and read and agree with every word of your/our resolution for our Tuesday meeting.
I want the taxpayers' billions on military warfare, on Trident renewal, on war on countryside/nature and the extensions for High Scam 2, Metro, Sprint to be diverted, with all the workers reskilled and redeployed, into rigorous retrofitting of every building in the land! Well, actually some of that money must be used for trains on railway lines not yet used, would you believe, for brand new energy inefficient buildings!
My delight and personal contribution is gate crashing Dudley's committees and the CA's Board meetings, when open to the public, with our propaganda. They all have a few bright ideas but no funding for what they want to do. Incredible!
Retrofitting to counter climate is relegated to the ... ? SIDELINES!
There is a resolution submitted by Richard Hatcher on this item.
“The West Midlands Combined Authority’s ‘Five Year Plan’ aims “to retrofit 292,000 homes by 2026 to stay on course for net zero”. “The WMCA estimates the investment required to 2026 to fund the Five Year Plan as … £3,853million.” “The WMCA has brought in c. £11m of retrofit funding, amongst a wider total of £67.66m won by our constituent local authorities.” It doesn’t say for how many homes. And now the WMCA are bidding for Government grants worth around £40million to retrofit over 2000 homes.This would enable an average of £20,000 per home. So the £11m funding already secured by the WMCA plus the new bid would retrofit approximately 2,500 homes. To put this is context, there are 235,512 fuel poor homes in the West Midlands according to the WMCA’s ‘Five Year Plan’. 2,500 homes is about 1% of that.
There will be more Government grants available for home retrofit, but they will be nowhere near the sums needed to fund the CA’s plans. But the WMCA’s ‘Five Year Plan’ relies not on Government funding but on “developing investable propositions to stimulate the market”. The problem is that this investment is simply not forthcoming, as the WMCA report ‘Environment Behaviour Change Update’ on 9 March 2022 explains: ‘“Energy infrastructure spending is not aligned with local economic priorities which is proving a significant barrier to business investment.” In short, the market won’t invest in retrofit on a large scale because they don’t think there’s enough profit in it.
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) is “an industry network with a mission to radically improve the sustainability of the built environment, by transforming the way it is planned, designed, constructed, maintained and operated.” In October this year it published a 26 page document – the ‘UKGBC Response to Net Zero Review: Call for evidence’, which is very critical of Government policy: “Current rates of renovation will need to increase by around 7 times if we are to meet the Government’s target of upgrading as many homes to EPC Band C as possible by 2035.” The report concludes that “It is critical that Government therefore introduce and support a large-scale, transformative domestic retrofit strategy and programme that is fully coordinated with local authorities, industry, consumers and other relevant stakeholders, and does not disadvantage lower-income households.”
The WMCA itself acknowledges the failure of Government policy: “Current funding provision is sporadic, piecemeal and usually short-term”. But the actions it wants from Government fall far short of what is urgently needed – there is no call for a huge increase in Government funding to get the retrofit industry to work to achieve the WMCA’s retrofit targets on behalf of the people of the West Midlands.
The WMCC therefore calls on Mayor Andy Street to publicly demand full Government funding for home retrofit and to campaign for it, mobilising popular pressure on Government. This would gain overwhelming public support.”
High Plateau and National Brownfield Institute
ALSO SEE EMAIL below this one. Mark is a developer whom I met at the National Brownfield Institute on Wednesday. This is also intended for Dudley Council's regeneration chief, Cllr Simon Phipps for his action, please.
On Wednesday, at the WMCA Board meeting, I first said it was brownfield and then said it must be a green field site with Merry Hill Farm being there until the 1970s! No-one knows.
It must be a mixture of both but it is still desperately needed for solar powered, highly energy efficient apartments for the most badly housed, including small boat migrants. ONS, in this month's latest figures show that half a million people left these UK shores but one million arrived. Therefore, net gain of 504,000 plus the record figure of 40,000 small boat asylum seekers in 2022, alone!
Simon, please get the money from the CA to find out how the ground at High Plateau needs to be prepared for low cost, residential apartments. And who owns the land? PLAN HERE:
Thanks so much. Tim
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2022 at 21:10
Subject: High Plateau, Merry Hill Shopping Centre
To: Mark Grady <mark.grady@ldl.org.uk>
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2022 at 21:10
Subject: High Plateau, Merry Hill Shopping Centre
To: Mark Grady <mark.grady@ldl.org.uk>
Hi Mark
Thanks so much for your interest and help this afternoon.
This is the Dudley Council plan of 2020 that shows High Plateau:
The Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro extension (WBHE) will be completed to Dudley Transport Interchange (new bus station) but the section to Brierley Hill is Phase 2 and is awaiting funding - since July/August of this year. Perhaps, £100 m for the 400 metre concrete and steel viaduct that lands on top of High Plateau above my guerrilla garden landscape enhancement scheme. I am trying to save my 'garden' and High Plateau, so I do have ulterior motives!
Please would you be so good as to send me one screen shot that could prove to Paul Davis/Davies (and others) that the top one third of the site might well be contaminated from the Round Oak steel works and therefore brownfield. I mistakenly told him, after first saying it was brownfield, that all of it must be farmed by Merry Hill Farm. THANKS!
Or, could you ask the WMCA for funding for ground investigation with a view to building solar powered, low cost, highly energy efficient apartments for the most badly housed, including migrants? This is always my top priority everywhere, to save nature. The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries, I keep on hearing on Radio 4.
Or, do a FoI request for the conclusions of the ground investigation survey on the canal embankment on the north side of High Plateau (south of Level Street)?
Or would you meet me on site? And the owner is all important, of course.
Four options. I'm not expecting everything - just something, please!!
to Isobel Seccombe
Dear Cllr Isobel
I was at the beginning of the Wellbeing Board meeting this morning but missed your good self. However, I did see you on the big screen in Rm 116 at 16 Summer Lane. I am an old codger who is well past his best but, I remain concerned for you much younger people.
I am a green lobbyist from the West Midlands Climate Coalition and wanted to give you your copy of our Nine Action Points that start with even you, Isobel in case you have not joined the world wide mass movement to build a safer, healthier and fairer world:
As a council leader over very many years in our region, you are a vital person to influence in our attempt to get you decision makers to make the more sensible financial decisions to build a more socially just, sustainable and much lower fossil fuel dependent society.
This is an email I sent you on 31 July 2018:
I sent you this on the 7 September 2018:
"Thanks so much, Isobel for your decency in replying.
"However, as very much one of our Midlands' VIPs and regional leaders, now that I have brought this scandal to your attention, I think you have a moral duty to personally follow it up and find out for yourself what is going so seriously wrong.
"If you now do nothing, you are implicated and are as guilty of negligence as your colleagues like Roger Lawrence, Bob Sleigh and Andy Street who should be doing something but, it seems, do not.
"Tim
"SENSIBLE THINKING?
2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations over the completed 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby
or, 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."
"SMART POLITICIANS?
£343 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms. All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure). Or, stupid politicians?
"SMART RAILWAYS?
Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?
"Tim Weller Independent candidate for the 2020 Mayoral election"
Best wishes
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