The Same Promise, The Same City, The Same Question

Birmingham has heard this before. Big money, bold promises, and “communities at the heart”. Heartlands didn’t deliver what was promised. Why should this be different?

Birmingham has been here before. Different room, different faces, but the same language. Billions promised, transformation assured, communities placed “at the heart”. Growth, inclusive of course. Opportunity, vast and imminent.

This week’s Cabinet discussion on the proposed Mayoral Development Corporation and Mayoral Development Zone was presented as a bold and necessary leap forward. A £10 billion opportunity. A vehicle to unlock potential. A structure that will finally deliver for the most deprived parts of the city.

You could almost hear the echo. Because if you have been around Birmingham long enough, you have heard it all before.

Cast your mind back to Birmingham Heartlands. That too was a grand project, a strategic intervention designed to rebalance the city, to bring jobs, and to turn derelict land into engines of prosperity. And to be fair, something did happen. Sites were developed, buildings went up, and investment arrived in pockets. You can stand today at what is now called Fort Dunlop and point to visible change.

But look closer. The original Fort Dunlop is gone, demolished and replaced in memory by a rebranded warehouse that inherited its name but not its substance. Keep the name, change the reality, sell the story. That alone tells you something about how regeneration in this city works.

And beyond the buildings, the harder question remains. Did Heartlands transform the lives of the communities it was meant to serve? Did it lift whole areas out of deprivation? Did it create a sustained pipeline of local employment that changed the trajectory of East Birmingham? No, not in the way it was promised. It delivered improvement, but it did not deliver transformation.

Now we are told this time will be different. This time there is scale, alignment, and leadership. A Mayor, a Corporation, a Zone, a structure that will cut through delay and deliver at pace. But listen carefully to what sits underneath. This is not just about regeneration. It is about power.

Under this model, planning powers may move away from elected councillors. Planning fees, developer contributions, and the small but significant levers of local control could sit instead with a new body. A body led at the top by an elected Mayor, but populated beneath by appointed boards, officers, and structures that most people will never see.

And here is the problem. You can vote out a councillor. You can challenge them, hold them to account, and remove them if they fail. You know who they are. But how do you hold to account a structure? A board you did not elect. An officer whose name you do not know. A decision made somewhere between a strategy paper and a delivery framework.

Some voices in the chamber did at least reflect that concern. Councillor Roger Harmer, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on Birmingham City Council, warned that schemes like this too often benefit those who drive into the city each day, while local residents are left behind. Councillor Robert Alden, Leader of the Conservative Group on Birmingham City Council, raised concerns about the transfer of planning powers away from elected members and reminded colleagues that Birmingham has known real prosperity before and could again, but only if that prosperity reaches its own people.

Those are not ideological objections. They are grounded ones, rooted in experience.

Others were less restrained. Councillor Majid Mahmood, Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport at Birmingham City Council, delivered a lengthy and rather dreary contribution praising the alignment between the Labour council and Labour mayor, presenting the scheme as further evidence of things being firmly under control. If anything, it raised a different question. If you were the Mayor, would you really want to lean too heavily into that association right now?

Birmingham City Council remains mired in financial difficulty, service failures, and polling that suggests many of its councillors may struggle to retain their seats at the next local elections. Yet here was Mahmood, extolling the virtues of the very administration that has overseen a prolonged bin strike and a steady erosion of public confidence. It takes a certain level of political resilience to deliver that message with a straight face.

Let us be honest about what is being proposed. This is a trade. Speed and scale in exchange for local control. Centralised decision making in exchange for coordination. Fewer voices in exchange for fewer delays. You may decide that is worth it. That the city needs to move faster and act more decisively. That is a legitimate position. But let us not pretend it comes without cost, because once you strip power away from local democratic structures, you do not easily get it back.

Even in the meeting itself, the warning signs were there. Concerns about who benefits. Questions about heritage and who protects it. Warnings about financial risk and the loss of planning income to a council already under strain. And answers that were not answers. Planning powers still undecided, key details still to be worked through, yet the direction of travel already fixed.

Birmingham once paid wages that rivalled London. It has known prosperity before. The issue has never been whether the city can grow. It can. The issue is always the same. Who benefits when it does?

Heartlands was not a failure, but nor was it the success it was sold as. It built things, it improved places, but it did not fundamentally change outcomes. Now we are told a new structure, with more power and less direct accountability, will finally deliver what the last one could not.

Maybe it will. But experience suggests caution. Because if you do not change who holds power, who benefits, and who is accountable, you tend to get the same results, just faster and on a larger scale.

This is not a rejection of regeneration. Birmingham needs investment, growth, and ambition. But it also needs honesty. This proposal concentrates power, distances decision making, and reduces direct democratic oversight. That may deliver speed. Whether it delivers fairness, whether it delivers for local people, and whether it delivers what was promised before remains an open question.

Because Birmingham has been here before, and it did not quite turn out the way it was sold.