An article in the Solihull News came as a bit of a surprise the week before last. It announced the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) was putting its two ambulance stations in the borough up for sale. It appeared as if a Press Release had been pushed out so that the sale could be promoted in the hope

There have been a number of reminders in the past couple of weeks of what ails our society, none more so than the disgraceful response to the death of Margaret Thatcher. No matter what we believe about the damage she did to Britain and the extent to which she made Britain great again, two things

It was a Monday afternoon when our Management team sat down and discussed a challenge we had been set for the first time. We were called upon to run some events in North Solihull to engage the local community with a new government funded initiative. Just one problem, they had to be planned, advertised and staged within

I am working with some of our community colleagues in Chelmsley Wood, notably the CHiP group, to secure a community led future for Alcott House, the only building in the North Solihull Regeneration Zone that is more than a century old.

The Council own it and did use it for offices, but disability access regulations make

Across the VCS, and also most of the public sector, there is an emphasis on supporting those in need at whatever stage of their lives, and whatever holds them back. We look to deliver support, to break through barriers, to provide companionship, to open up new horizons, to fulfil the potential of other people’s lives.

Two events

Seven years ago, when SUSTAiN was set up initially as a consortium of local infrastructure providers, the message was all about how things were going to change in the years ahead. The programme that central government were funding was then called ChangeUp.

Well, most of this has come true and more changes are on the horizon.

So,

Two very concerning figures attracted my attention last weekend.

The first was that over a decade the percentage of non-retired households taking more money from the state in benefits, allowances, health and education services than giving to it via taxes and national insurance had increased from 29% to 39%. These findings came from an Office for

I have learned a new term, Transport Poverty. It may have been around for a while, for all I know, but I first came across it last week.

Put simply, as I now understand it, it’s about the impact on people’s lives of not being able to get about on the one hand, and on the

There is significant debate on the national stage at present about whether the provision of VCS infrastructure services, ie support services to frontline charities, communities and social enterprises etc, should be ‘demand led’ and if so how and whether provision of such services should be a ‘free market’. So, here is a local contribution to

If the riots and looting in the streets weren’t bad enough, there were two items in my Sunday paper this week that also depressed me.

Firstly there was a front page column explaining that some Councils were planning to use the Localism Bill to ban smoking in parks lest children see adults smoking.

Three things struck me