Balsall Common and Berkswell

The team at The Jubilee community space is piloting a community cinema idea which they hope will become a regular feature in the local calendar.

Their debut film for the project is Churchill starring Brian Cox.

Tickets are already on sale at Balsall Common Pharmacy, which is open an impressive 100 hours per week.

Date: 21st April 2018
Price: £6 (includes a glass of wine or soft drink)
Time: 7 pm
Venue: The Jubilee, 225 Station Road (to the rear of Costa), Balsall Common, CV7 7FE

For movie info at IMDB visit: imdb.com/title/tt2674454/

Balsall Common teenager Mikey Akers earned the Pride of Birmingham’s Stephen Sutton Award in recognition of the inspiring work he does raising awareness for verbal dyspraxia, a little known neurological speech disorder, with which he was diagnosed when he was 2-years-old.

The neurological condition and the challenges it presents are wide-ranging. In Mikey’s case, this was a condition which left an otherwise intelligent boy feeling isolated at school due to the immense difficulty the condition caused learning to verbalise his thoughts.

The catalyst for Mikey becoming an inspiration to others dates back to the time he penned a poem, ‘I Am the Boy’, which underlined to his family how he really felt about his condition. It became the inspiration for Mikey’s Wish, a charitable project that raises awareness for the condition and funds for related causes:

I Am the Boy – by Mikey Akers

I am the boy who has so much to say
I am the boy who says it my way
Not always proper, not always right
With my brain I must put up a fight
The words don’t come easy, they hide away
When I find them some sounds go astray
It’s not ‘cos I’m stupid, it’s ‘cos I am me
I am the boy with Verbal Dyspraxia, you see
I have one desire, I have one wish
And that is that there was more awareness of this!

mikeyswish.com

Learn more about Mikey’s story and his Stephen Sutton Inspiration Award at the Birmingham Mail:

Inspirational teenager Mikey Akers named Pride of Birmingham winner

The spectre of a new town-sized development “around Balsall Common” looms as Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council considers the content of the Greater Birmingham Strategic Housing survey final report.

The report highlights the settlement as one of four potential locations for major housing development to tackle the national housing crisis and now also sits against the backdrop of National Government’s aggressive new plans to solve the housing crisis.

Housing Secretary Sajid Javid has spoken belligerently about local Planning Authorities failing to keep up with demand:

“At the moment there is nothing in the system that checks to see they are actually delivering. There’s no comeback or sanction and that is going to change.”

Javid told The Guardian newspaper:

“We have a housing crisis in this country. We need a housing revolution. The new rules will no longer allow ‘nimby’ councils that don’t really want to build the homes that their local community needs to fudge the numbers.”

Heat Map Showing New Town Development ‘Around Balsall Common’

Greater Birmingham Strategic Housing survey final report

Solihull Council is currently considering a report which highlights Balsall Common as one of four favoured locations for major development in the Greater Birmingham region.  It states:

“This area is free from nationally significant constraints.”

It’s a description which suggests there is a strong chance of major development.  With National Government’s aggressive new stance on housing policy this will undoubtedly pile pressure on Solihull Council in terms of accommodating the proposals.

Tell Us What You Think

Hop over to the Balsall Common Facebook page and let us know your thoughts:

Footnotes

In a report which mentions Balsall Common more than 20 times, here are a selection of notes from the Greater Birmingham Strategic Growth Study: