Government awards grant to boost town centres

The government is making £3 million available to help areas hardest hit by the recession find creative ways to reduce the negative impact empty shops are having on the high street.
Coventry, Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall councils are each being given a grant of £52, 632.
The councils will use the grants as they [...]

Inward investment: record high for West Midlands

In the period 2008 to 2009 the West Midlands region received 117 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, a record high since records began in 1991 (shown by the blue line in the graph below).

Black Country Observatory seeks secondee to manage the team

Our colleagues at the Black Country Observatory are currently advertising for a secondee to cover the maternity leave of the Observatory’s senior manager, Delma Dwight.
The secondment will be for six months, starting from 1st October 2009. The closing date for applications is Friday 31st July. Interviews will take place on Tuesday 11th August.
Get more details [...]

Sandwell Health’s Other Economic Summit

When: 9th & 10th July 2009
Where: The pUBLIC, West Bromwich
How much: £50
More info: Download flyer (PDF, 95kb)
In the tradition of Sandwell Health’s Other Economic Summit (SHOES), this event will be examining how local issues can impact on world health and how global issues affect us.

How is the Black Country performing?

How can we tell whether real progress is being made towards achievement of the Black Country’s aspirations?
The aspirations are set out in the Black Country Vision and the  Black Country Strategy for Growth and Competitiveness (PDF, 72kb).
The answer may lie in the newly developed Black Country Performance Management framework, which consists of 24 key indicators that measure achievement of the Black [...]

Understanding our local populations

At the Observatory’s recent event to launch the State of the Region dialogue on population change, Richard Wilson from Sandwell PCT spoke about some of the problems with population data. However, with help from quotes from David Brent to Albert Einstein, Richard argued that these problems should not lead to ‘data paralysis’ where problems with data become reasons [...]

Latest gross disposable household income estimates indicate metropolitan West Midlands is UK’s poorest sub-region

The 2007 Regional Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) (Word, 411KB) estimates are released today by the Office for National Statistics.
Indexed GDHI per head (where UK=100) for the West Midlands in 2007 was 90, stable in comparison to the revised 2006 index value of 90.
GDHI per head in the West Midlands rose from £12,700 in 2006 to [...]

Jobseekers allowance claimant statistics give cause for concern in Birmingham

Four of Birmingham’s parliamentary constituencies are listed amongst the five worst in the UK in terms of the proportion of the resident working-age population claiming Jobseekers allowance, according to figures for December 2008 released by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The constituencies are Birmingham Ladywood (9.9% up 1% year-on-year), Birmingham Hodge Hill (8.3% up 1.5%), Birmingham Sparkbrook & [...]

Black Country recession updates

Our colleagues at the Black Country Observatory have produced the first Black Country Recession Intelligence report which can now be downloaded from the Reports section of their site.
These reports are being produced on a monthly basis by the Observatory as part of  a ‘Black Country Recession Intelligence Group’ comprising of representatives from the Black Country [...]

Making information more accessible

How to make complex information available to a wider audience and how to make it more easily understand? Those were questions being considered in Coventry this week.
On Tuesday 20th January, Coventry City Council hosted a meeting designed to share ideas on how regional partners were using software to make their information more readily available.
The main [...]

West Midlands local development annual monitoring reports

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires local planning authorities to regularly monitor planning policies that affect the planning and development of their areas.

Each council is required to produce an Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) which is published in December to assess the effectiveness of policy in the Local Development Framework.
These show whether the progress [...]

West Midlands produced 3rd strongest regional growth in England, according to latest GVA per head figures

The 2007 Regional and 2006 Sub-Regional Gross Value Added (GVA) data are released today by the Office for National Statistics. Indexed GVA per head (where UK=100) for the West Midlands in 2007 was 86.0, a marginal decrease from the revised 2006 index value of 86.1. GVA per head in the West Midlands rose from £16,300 [...]

2008 Black Country education barometer published

The Black Country Observatory has published the Black Country Education Barometer 2008 today.
The report indicates that Black Country schools are starting to close the gap with the national average GCSE performance.
There was a 6.6% increase in the percentage of Black Country pupils achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (compared to 4.2% nationally) and an 8% rise in [...]

Heart of enterprise: West Midlands feature in the Guardian

Wednesday’s Guardian newspaper included a special supplement to the Society Guardian all about the West Midlands, Heart of enterprise. If you missed it, all of the articles are available online.
The supplement includes commentary by Ian Austin MP, who re-iterated points made during his inaugural speech as Regional Minister for the West Midlands at the Observatory’s [...]

Questionnaire on benefits of local information systems

This questionnaire is part of a research project, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government, to investigate the way users of local information systems benefit from the data and statistics the systems provide. The aim of the questionnaire is to obtain information about how you use the system and the way it helps [...]