Teaming up to promote Birmingham's image
The council invests £2 million a year toward Marketing Birmingham’s running costs plus a further £6 million over a rolling three-year period to help subsidise major events at the NEC and ICC. Locate in Birmingham, however, a far smaller organisation, makes do with a £1 million annual budget.
Mr Rami said the current funding arrangements of Marketing Birmingham and Locate in Birmingham raised questions about the use of scarce resources.
Hospitality and leisure events, the staple of Marketing Birmingham, are worth about 10 per cent of the local economy, while inward investment and attracting new businesses to the city accounted for a far higher percentage of wealth creation.
“Locate in Birmingham resources are £1 million looking at 90 per cent of the economy and we are £8 million looking at 10 per cent of the economy. That doesn’t seem to be a very effective alignment,” he added.
Mr Rami said: “We are very conscious of the public funding pressures that are on this kind of activity in every city at the moment. We want to try to align these activities more effectively to provide better value moving forward.
“The private sector are very keen to see a better alignment. We need to get more bang for our bucks.”
He stressed that bringing the two organisations together was not the first step towards cost-cutting and getting rid of jobs. There will be initial savings, but only through moving from two offices to one office.
Birmingham Chamber of Commerce chief executive Jerry Blackett said: “This is an important step bringing together a couple of agencies that in the past have not complemented each other.
“This is a hugely welcome step because the marketing of Birmingham, the presentation of the city, needs to be joined up more. I am looking for a much stronger message to describe what sort of business city Birmingham is and wants to be.
“I look forward to more organisations rallying behind both Marketing Birmingham and Locate in Birmingham so that they can bring on board private sector players as well. This will send a positive signal to the private sector.”
Coun Whitby is challenging the new set-up to deliver a step change in the marketing of Birmingham.
Describing the co-location as “the first step towards a rationalisation”, he added: “Over the next five years the real challenge is to get the success that Birmingham has achieved into the national psyche.
“There is a constant aggravation about why are we failing to get our message over in the UK.
“By sharing the same offices we hope that Marketing Birmingham and Locate in Birmingham will be able to bounce ideas off each other. There should be a lot of synergy between the two.
“The most important thing is to make sure that both organisations work more effectively together than they do at the moment,” the council leader said.
