Birmingham Longbridge development needs reality check
It is easy to forget in the teeth of the worst economic slump for decades that the sheer scale of the Longbridge redevelopment made this a scheme that was always going to take years to complete.
Flattening most of the former MG Rover car works and building new industry and homes would have been challenging enough by itself, but the Longbridge Area Action Plan takes in a far larger parcel of land and is nothing less than the development of an entirely new town.
Birmingham cabinet member Neville Summerfield referred to the Longbridge vision as transformational change. He was right to do so, for the hopes and fears of a community battered by poor housing and unemployment rests on the determination of the partners to push forward and deliver one of the country’s larger regeneration schemes at a time when building work in most towns and cities has all but ground to a halt.
Local councillors were at pains yesterday to try to manage expectations about just how quickly the new Longbridge can be delivered. St Modwen, the major landowner, must be congratulated for pressing ahead against all the odds – but the fact is, in the current economic situation, the timetable for completing all of the phases is likely to slip.
A certain amount of realism is required, too, about the nature of the jobs to be created. Half of the 10,000 positions promised rest on being able to attract inward investment from high-tech firms – something that seems unlikely in the current circumstances.
Birmingham is at the start of a long journey as far as the transformation of Longbridge is concerned. The private sector can only do so much at the moment – there may be a need for public bodies to provide gap funding to enable this ambitious vision to proceed more quickly than would otherwise be the case.
