It seems I’m having a high profile week, by my standards anyway. A photo of me and some of my colleagues from the Birmingham Women’s Aid event was in the Birmingham Post last week. Typically I didn’t see it, so I’m going to head over to Central Library later to see if I can track down a copy. And today, I’ve been talking to the press about this blog – the Great Barr Observer have tracked me down online and hopefully are going to do a piece on it.

I’ve also been writing a press release today as we are going to get 23 Police Community Support Officers working in our area in the next couple of months, which is excellent news. They’re not exclusively working in Kingstanding of course, but Kingstanding will be very much a focus for this initiative, as we are a ‘priority neighbourhood’.

The central Kingstanding Police beat is one of the busiest residential beats in the West Midlands, and visible police presence (or the lack thereof) is one of the issues that is constantly being raised with us as Councillors. The PCSO’s have to be out on the beat for 80% of their time, which should help to address some of those concerns and forge better links between the police and the community. The first five PCSOs start work next week, so we’ll be able to see how things progress over the next few months until they are all in place.

I had a meeting this morning to discuss recommendations for the You Are Your City scrutiny review I’ve been working on. It’s been a very interesting review, and the working atmosphere has been quite amiable for the most part. We even had a minor breakthrough in relations between the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties this morning when we joined forces in arguing against the use of a semi-colon in the phrase You Are Your City; Clean and Safe. On issues of grammar at least we were in agreement. Obviously my grammatical ability today far outstrips my mathematical ability; I made the mistake of saying that 4.6 million pence was the same as 4.6 million pounds at one point – a clear reminder of the need to engage my brain before opening my mouth from time to time!