West Midlands LABOR candidate for mayoral Liam Byrne unveiled seven pledges as part of his campaign last Tuesday before touring the region to get his message out on the streets.
They were based on 10,000 one-on-one conversations, ideas, thoughts or comments he had received from residents of the region over the past 12 months.
Mr Byrne, who will be releasing his full manifesto today, said he saw the common themes that people would like to implement and based the proposals on them.
Among them were the West Midlands, which received a fair share of funding from the central government. The region was the first to hit its net zero carbon target, securing 200,000 skilled green craftsmen and manufacturing jobs, and bringing back industry by turning wasteland into green manufacturing zones. He promised to double the number of trainees, which fell by 40 percent, and to retrain those who lost their jobs free of charge. Youth unemployment of 20 percent was also an inspiration for the promise.
Mr Byrne pledged to build more homes – doubling the number of affordable warm homes – to put a roof over everyone’s head and prioritize wasteland rather than green belt for development.
Another issue that people have raised concern was the future of young people in the region and Mr Byrne has made a pledge to accommodate youth workers in every neighborhood in the West Midlands. He added statistics showed that the number of youth workers had been reduced by 80 percent.
Byrne addresses criminal concerns and plans to dispatch another 450 police officers to the neighborhood. He wants to foster the community spirit by investing in grassroots sports, art, parks, green spaces, main streets, markets and festivals for a decade.
He said: “Our community spirit has been critical to getting us through the pandemic and we are in a unique situation in the West Midlands as we have Coventry as a UK cultural city this year and the Commonwealth Games are coming to Birmingham next year.
“Last year we had three ‘earthquakes’ – the Covid pandemic, the exit from the EU and a climate emergency.
“People have told me that they don’t want to go back to what we had before these events, they want more.
“We’re being changed by the central government in the short term and people have seen what Andy Burnham did in the Northwest and they want a mayor who gets the same results.”
He added that through his role as MP, people had appreciated what he had done for his constituency and that the electorate could hold him accountable to ensure he carried out his plans.
Mr Byrne visited places to embody each of the pledges, including the Coventry Transport Museum, Solihull Police Station and Centenary Square in Birmingham, as well as Walsall’s Mossley Estate, Wolverhampton’s Molineux Stadium, the Black Country Museum and Sandwell College.
Residents on the Birmingham side of Rubery as well as Rednal, Frankley, Longbridge and Northfield will be able to vote in the West Midlands mayoral election on May 6th.