Sandwell Council has published another News & Events Update, and once again there is quite a lot in it.

Sandwell Council has published another News & Events Update, and once again there is quite a lot in it.

Some of it is genuinely useful.

There is information about the council’s new telephone number, crisis payments, exam-results support, children’s activities, vaccinations, free swimming, water safety, the Local Plan consultation, Bikeability, town-centre regeneration and more.

And as I have said before, I am not interested in criticising Sandwell Council simply for the sake of it.

If something is good, say so.

If something is useful, promote it.

But being a critical friend also means asking whether the story being told quite matches the reality underneath it.

And in this latest bulletin, there are a few areas where that matters.

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ONE COUNCIL NUMBER – A SENSIBLE MOVE

From 1 September, Sandwell Council is introducing one main telephone number for many of its services:

0121 569 7474

That should make things simpler for residents, particularly those who are not online or struggle with digital services.

The bulletin even encourages people to pass the number on to anyone they know who is not online.

That is welcome.

Not everyone wants an app.

Not everyone is comfortable filling in online forms.

And sometimes people simply need to speak to another human being.

The test will be what happens when someone actually rings it.

How long do people wait?

How many hang up?

Does the callback system work?

Are problems resolved at first contact?

One number is useful.

One number leading to three quarters of an hour listening to hold music is less so.

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FREE PARKING: NICE SOUNDING POLICY, BUT WILL IT ACTUALLY WORK?

This is one area where I remain highly sceptical.

Sandwell is introducing up to two hours of free parking in selected Wednesbury and Great Bridge car parks, alongside free market-stall pitches for twelve months.

The council says the idea is to increase footfall and help struggling markets.

It sounds attractive.

Everybody likes the words:

FREE PARKING.

The problem is that Sandwell’s own evidence suggests parking charges are not the main reason these town centres are struggling.

Wednesbury’s own Masterplan identifies declining retail choice, online shopping, competition from retail parks and other centres, poor evening activity, public-realm issues and concerns around safety.

It also tells us something particularly important:

Footfall is already highest on market days.

So people are coming.

The bigger question is what they find when they get there.

Do they stay?

Do they spend?

Are there enough shops worth visiting?

Does the town centre feel safe and attractive?

Has moving the market affected pedestrian flows?

Those are much bigger issues than whether somebody saves £1.10 on parking.

Great Bridge is even more interesting.

Previous council studies actually identified ample parking as one of its strengths.

Its weaknesses included poor pedestrian connections, heavy traffic, tired public realm and the lack of integration between the traditional centre and the retail park.

Making parking free does not solve any of those things.

Neither does giving away market pitches.

If a trader cannot make enough money to justify a pitch costing around seven quid, the problem probably isn’t the seven quid.

The problem is likely to be not enough customers.

So yes, call it a pilot.

But before it begins, Sandwell should publish the baseline:

How many cars currently use the car parks?

How much income will be lost?

How many market stalls currently operate?

What is existing footfall?

What are shop vacancy rates?

What exactly will constitute success?

Otherwise, twelve months from now, almost anything can be described as a success.

More parked cars do not automatically mean more shoppers.

More free stalls do not automatically mean a thriving market.

This still looks very much like a sticking plaster on a much bigger wound.

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FIRE WARNINGS: IMPORTANT — BUT THE COUNCIL HAS RESPONSIBILITIES TOO

The bulletin again warns residents about fires and barbecues on parks and open spaces.

Quite right too.

With the dry weather and recent fires, nobody should be lighting disposable barbecues or fires on nature reserves and public green spaces.

But this is where I think Sandwell needs to go considerably further.

We have already made the case for proper, modern and enforceable byelaws across Sandwell’s parks, Local Nature Reserves and water bodies.

Not a patchwork of signs.

Not a PSPO here and an old rule there.

A proper, understandable regulatory framework covering matters including:

fires;

wildlife protection;

fishing;

vehicles and e-bikes;

damage to habitats;

water safety;

camping;

littering;

dogs;

and other behaviour that can damage our green spaces.

And those rules need to be visible and actually enforced.

But fire safety is not only about telling residents what they must not do.

The council is the landowner and land manager.

So what are Sandwell’s wildfire management arrangements for its nature reserves?

Where are the risk assessments?

Where are the firebreaks and fuel breaks where they are environmentally appropriate?

How is vegetation managed during prolonged dry periods?

Can fire appliances gain proper access?

Are vulnerable boundaries next to homes properly protected?

What arrangements exist with West Midlands Fire Service?

We cannot simply wait until smoke appears over a reserve and then post another graphic saying:

“Please don’t light fires.”

Residents have responsibilities.

So does the council.

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THE LOCAL PLAN: GOOD TO SEE IT PROMOTED — BUT CAN ORDINARY PEOPLE REALLY UNDERSTAND IT?

One thing I criticised in the previous News & Events bulletin was the absence of the Local Plan consultation.

This time it is there.

So credit where it is due.

The problem now is a different one.

The Local Plan is incredibly important.

It will help shape where homes are built, where employment land goes, what infrastructure is needed, how green space is protected and how Sandwell develops through to 2044.

But try explaining the consultation to someone who doesn’t spend their spare time reading planning documents.

Spatial strategy.

Site allocations.

Infrastructure capacity.

Green Belt.

Employment land.

Biodiversity.

Flood risk.

Blue and green infrastructure.

Planning constraints.

And just for extra fun, Sandwell already has another Local Plan which went through years of preparation and examination but still hasn’t formally been adopted, while Government has now required councils including Sandwell to begin another new-style Local Plan.

I suspect many residents will reasonably ask:

“Hang on — didn’t we just do one of these?”

And they would have a point.

Putting a link into a newsletter and saying “Have your say” is not enough.

If Sandwell genuinely wants ordinary residents involved, it needs to make the process understandable.

How about a short plain-English guide?

What is the Local Plan?

Why are we doing another one?

What can it actually change?

How might it affect my neighbourhood?

What does the council want me to comment on now?

Then produce simple information for each of Sandwell’s six towns.

Have face-to-face sessions in libraries and community venues.

Let residents speak to planning officers.

Show people maps they can actually understand.

Because at the moment developers, landowners and planning consultants know exactly how to respond to a Local Plan consultation.

The ordinary resident often does not.

A consultation can be technically open to everybody while still being practically dominated by the people who understand the system.

That is not meaningful engagement.

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CRISIS PAYMENTS – THIS IS EXACTLY THE SORT OF THING PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

One of the strongest parts of this bulletin is the promotion of Sandwell’s Crisis Payments.

Help may be available for people dealing with emergencies such as fire, flooding, domestic abuse, stolen money, essential household items breaking down or temporary gaps in income.

This is exactly the sort of service that needs putting in front of residents.

People often only discover support exists after they have already reached crisis point.

So more of this please.

Useful.

Practical.

And potentially very important to somebody reading it.

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BIKEABILITY: TEACHING CHILDREN TO RIDE SAFELY IS A GOOD THING

The bulletin also celebrates more children receiving Bikeability training.

Apparently 2,752 pupils took part during 2025/26.

I have been critical of Active Travel schemes in Sandwell.

I remain critical of some of them.

But teaching children how to cycle safely is a completely separate matter.

I have taught children to ride bikes myself.

It is a useful life skill.

It builds confidence.

And children who cycle should know how to do it safely.

Supporting Bikeability does not mean automatically supporting every cycle lane or road redesign that subsequently comes along.

We are allowed a little nuance in public life.

Apparently.

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TIPTON REGENERATION – NOW SHOW US WHETHER IT WORKS

The bulletin also reports completion of public-realm works around Owen Street in Tipton.

Improved pavements.

Lighting.

Bus stops.

Crossings.

Apprenticeship opportunities.

All positive enough.

But regeneration cannot ultimately be judged by photographs of new paving stones.

The real questions come later.

Did footfall increase?

Did businesses benefit?

Did people feel safer?

Did vacancies fall?

Did people actually spend more time in the town centre?

That is how regeneration should be judged.

Not simply:

“The work has finished.”

Completion is not the same thing as success.

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ENERGY SWITCHING – WE’VE ASKED THE QUESTIONS

The bulletin also promotes Sandwell’s Switch Together Energy scheme.

Residents are being encouraged to register for collective energy purchasing, with the possibility of receiving a cheaper tariff.

It may prove worthwhile.

But similar schemes have appeared before and then quietly faded from view.

What we rarely see is the historic Sandwell evidence.

How many people registered?

How many actually switched?

What did they save?

How long did those savings last?

How did the tariffs compare with deals residents could have found elsewhere?

And what does the scheme cost the council?

We have now submitted questions on precisely those points.

If the results are good, publish them.

That would be the best advertisement the scheme could have.

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SUMMER ACTIVITIES, SWIMMING AND HEALTH INFORMATION

There is plenty else in the bulletin worth supporting.

Free swimming.

Summer activities for children and young people.

SEND-inclusive youth provision.

Exam-results support.

Vaccination information.

Water-safety advice.

These are useful things to put in front of residents.

And this is worth remembering when criticising council communications.

A newsletter does not have to be controversial to be worthwhile.

Sometimes telling somebody where their child can swim for free is enough.

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SO WHAT DO I MAKE OF THIS ONE?

Overall, I think this is actually a better News & Events bulletin than some previous editions.

There is more useful civic information.

The Local Plan consultation is finally being promoted.

There is crisis support.

There is public-health information.

There are services and activities residents can actually use.

But there are still recurring weaknesses.

Too often Sandwell communicates:

what it is doing

before properly demonstrating:

why it should work

and later

whether it actually did.

Free parking is perhaps the clearest example.

It sounds good.

It is easy to put on a leaflet.

But Sandwell’s own evidence suggests the problems facing Wednesbury and Great Bridge are much deeper.

Likewise, telling residents not to start fires is necessary.

But the council also needs robust byelaws, visible enforcement and proper wildfire management of the land it controls.

And telling residents to “Have Your Say” on the Local Plan is welcome.

But unless ordinary people can understand what they are being asked, consultation risks becoming an exercise largely for professionals, developers and the usual suspects.

Being a critical friend means being prepared to say:

That’s good.

That needs improving.

And sometimes:

I really don’t think that is going to work.

Sandwell is certainly getting better at telling residents what it is doing.

Now I want to see it get equally good at showing us:

why it chose a policy,

what evidence supported it,

what it cost,

what residents actually said,

and eventually...

whether it worked.

That is not asking too much.

That is simply what good local government should look like.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #SandwellNews #LocalGovernment #Transparency #Accountability #CriticalFriend #Wednesbury #GreatBridge #TownCentres #Markets #FreeParking #Regeneration #Tipton #OwenStreet #SandwellLocalPlan #HaveYourSay #PublicConsultation #Byelaws #Wildfire #FireSafety #NatureReserves #GreenSpaces #Bikeability #ActiveTravel #CrisisSupport #EnergySwitching #SEND #ValueForMoney

Sandwell Council has been busy again.

Sandwell Council has been busy again.

The latest Sandwell News & Events Update, issued on 14 August 2026, landed with the usual colourful mixture of useful public information, community activities, council achievements and enough things to do to keep most of us occupied until the clocks go back.

And, to be fair, there is quite a lot to like.

There are important warnings about deliberately started fires, advice around water safety, help for young people receiving exam results, vaccination information, free swimming, holiday activities, allotments, events, healthy-living opportunities and support services.

That is exactly what a council newsletter should be doing.

Nobody needs a 94-page committee report when what they actually want to know is whether the kids can swim for free on Tuesday afternoon.

So credit where credit is due.

But regular readers will know that I tend to suffer from a terrible affliction.

I read the small print.

And occasionally I even click the links.

Welcome to Sandwell's digital newspaper

First, a little housekeeping.

I originally thought we'd discussed this particular bulletin before.

We had.

Sort of.

It turns out “Your latest Sandwell news and events update” is essentially Sandwell Council's recurring GovDelivery newsletter title rather than the name of one particular campaign.

Think of it as the online cousin of the Sandwell Herald.

The format has been around for years and generally follows a familiar recipe:

Take one part useful information.

Add two cups of council activity.

Sprinkle generously with events.

Add councillors where available.

Finish with a photograph of something wholesome.

Bake until positive.

And, generally speaking, it works.

The interesting question is not whether councils should tell us what they are doing.

Of course they should.

The question is whether they tell us how well it worked as enthusiastically as they tell us that it happened.

Safer 6: lots happened

The latest bulletin celebrates Safer 6, Sandwell's six-week community-safety campaign.

The published headline figures are impressive enough:

50-plus events.

More than 5,000 people reached.

Seven partners involved.

That's certainly activity.

And there is plenty of genuine partnership work behind it involving the council, police, fire service, community organisations and others.

But here's my slightly boring question.

What does “5,000 people reached” actually mean?

Someone walked past a stall?

Someone accepted a leaflet?

Someone had a twenty-minute conversation?

Someone reported antisocial behaviour?

Someone received support?

Someone's neighbourhood subsequently became safer?

Those are very different things.

This isn't criticism of Safer 6.

It's actually an argument for showing us more.

Because:

50 events tells us what happened.

5,000 people reached tells us the size of the audience.

But neither necessarily tells us what changed.

So perhaps future Safer 6 reports could include:

What we did → What happened → What difference it made.

That would turn a good publicity figure into useful public accountability.

Meanwhile, Griff and Cooper have entered the building

One of the newsletter's stars is undoubtedly Trading Standards detection dogs Griff and Cooper, pictured visiting Sandwell Council House.

Apparently they received plenty of fuss.

Quite right too.

Any creature voluntarily entering a council building deserves a biscuit.

And I have absolutely no objection to councils occasionally communicating through something more entertaining than “Appendix 4B – Revised Corporate Risk Register”.

Dogs get attention.

Attention gets people reading.

That's communications.

But the really interesting story behind Griff and Cooper is enforcement.

How many operations?

How many premises?

How many illegal goods seized?

What value?

How many prosecutions, closures or other enforcement actions resulted?

Keep the dogs.

Just put the scoreboard underneath them.

Food waste – surprisingly solid

The newsletter also says that an average family could be wasting around £1,000 a year in food.

My first reaction was roughly:

“£1,000? Who's throwing away the lobster?”

But the figure stacks up against national food-waste research.

So fair play to Sandwell here.

The council is also running a Food Waste Survey, which seems perfectly reasonable.

The important bit comes later.

How many people responded?

Where were they from?

What did they say?

What changes as a result?

Because one of my recurring bugbears with public consultation is the phrase:

“Residents told us…”

Whenever I see that, my inner anorak immediately asks:

Which residents?

Three?

Thirty?

Three thousand?

And were two of them councillors?

Now for the curious omission

And this is where things get rather more interesting.

At the same time that the newsletter was promoting the Food Waste Survey, Sandwell had other significant consultations running.

Including the early consultation on the new Sandwell Local Plan.

For anyone unfamiliar with local government terminology, the Local Plan is rather important.

It deals with things such as:

housing;

development;

employment land;

infrastructure;

the environment;

climate;

healthy communities;

and broadly speaking what gets built where across Sandwell for years to come.

Rather more consequential than whether I've got three suspicious carrots in the bottom drawer of the fridge.

Yet the Local Plan consultation didn't feature in this particular general News & Events Update.

Nor, apparently, did the council's live housing Asset Management Delivery Strategy consultation, dealing with areas including repairs, maintenance, building safety, investment and value for money.

To be clear:

I am not alleging anybody deliberately hid them.

They may have been promoted elsewhere.

They may appear in another bulletin.

But from a critical-friend perspective this seems an obvious communications improvement.

Why not have a permanent section in every newsletter called:

HAVE YOUR SAY

And list every major live council consultation?

No hunting around.

No discovering it three days before closing.

No requiring residents to develop the investigative skills of Sherlock Holmes combined with someone who understands the council website search function.

Just put them there.

Every time.

Friday night at the market

The bulletin also advertises free live music at the new West Bromwich Indoor Market.

Again, I don't have an issue with that.

The redevelopment specifically set out to create more than simply rows of stalls. Food, culture, entertainment and activity were part of the concept.

That makes sense.

Town centres need reasons for people to stay rather than simply arrive, purchase one cabbage and immediately catch the bus home.

The question here is value for money.

After the programme has had time to establish itself, it would be useful to know:

Does Friday-evening footfall rise?

Do traders benefit?

Do people stay longer?

Does the food offer benefit?

What does the entertainment programme cost?

Because the right question isn't:

“Why are they putting singers in a market?”

It's:

“Is putting singers in the market helping make the town centre work?”

Very different question.

Community groups: give them their names back

One thing Sandwell has done rather well in some earlier newsletters is recognising the enormous contribution made by voluntary and community organisations.

That's important.

Councils don't deliver everything.

Nor should they.

Charities, residents' groups, faith organisations, volunteers, neighbourhood organisations, sports groups and local businesses often do tremendous work.

Sometimes council communications condense all of that into:

“The council and its partners…”

Poor old partners.

Years of volunteering and they've become two words at the end of a sentence.

Where community organisations genuinely helped deliver something, name them.

It costs nothing.

And “Sandwell Council enabled local organisations to deliver great things” is every bit as positive a story as:

“Sandwell Council did everything.”

Then there's the Sandwell Herald

The printed Sandwell Herald is the bigger, glossier relative of the email bulletin.

Again, there is plenty of genuinely useful material in it.

Safety information.

Events.

Services.

Activities.

Contact information.

Community initiatives.

But its corporate tone is noticeably stronger.

The Summer 2026 edition celebrates things including Safer 6, business activity, improvements, the council's national recognition and the new Cabinet.

Nothing inherently wrong with celebrating achievement.

The slightly delicate point following the May election is that much of Sandwell's performance during 2025/26 occurred before the new Reform administration took office.

So communications need to retain a little historical discipline.

Good inherited performance doesn't suddenly become something achieved since May.

Likewise, problems inherited in May weren't suddenly created by the new administration either.

A new administration inherits both the silverware and the washing-up.

What happens next is what it can properly be judged on.

Sandwell already shows it can do candour

Here's perhaps the most encouraging thing I found.

Some of Sandwell's specialist communications are actually considerably more open about challenges.

The council's SEND communications, for example, have acknowledged that despite progress there remains “a long way to go”, as well as discussing service pressure, workforce difficulties and financial constraints.

That's good communication.

It doesn't make the council look weak.

It makes the council look credible.

Residents don't expect everything to be perfect.

Most of us have met Sandwell.

What people increasingly want is:

What's going well?

What's going badly?

Why?

And what are you doing about it?

Imagine a little section in the News & Events Update:

HOW WE'RE DOING

✅ One thing improving.

⚠️ One thing requiring improvement.

🔧 What we're doing about it.

That might do more for public trust than another photograph of someone holding an oversized ceremonial cheque.

So is the newsletter any good?

Actually, yes.

That's probably not the conclusion some people expected.

The latest Sandwell News & Events Update contains plenty of genuinely useful information.

Someone may avoid starting a fire because of it.

Someone may seek help following difficult exam results.

A family may find free activities.

A child may receive a vaccination.

Someone may discover a community activity they didn't know existed.

That's meaningful public value.

My criticism is therefore not:

Stop telling us good things.

It is:

Tell us the whole story more often.

Tell us what happened.

Tell us how much happened.

Tell us what it cost where appropriate.

Tell us what changed.

Tell us who helped.

Tell us how many residents actually responded.

Tell us when something hasn't worked.

And please, if you're asking residents what Sandwell should look like for the next twenty years…

put the Local Plan consultation somewhere between the dogs and the Motown.

That shouldn't be too much to ask.

Because good council communications shouldn't simply leave residents thinking:

“Sandwell has been busy.”

They should leave us understanding:

“Sandwell has been busy, here's what it achieved, here's what didn't work, and here's where you can influence what happens next.”

That would make a pretty good newsletter.

And I promise Griff and Cooper can still have their photograph.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #SandwellNews #SandwellHerald #LocalGovernment #CouncilCommunications #Transparency #Accountability #CommunityEngagement #PublicConsultation #HaveYourSay #SandwellLocalPlan #Safer6 #CommunitySafety #WestBromwich #WestBromwichMarket #TradingStandards #ValueForMoney #SummerOfFun #VoluntarySector #CriticalFriend

One Call-In, £7.6 Million and a Cupboard Full of Unfinished Business: Sandwell Scrutiny Goes Back to Work

One Call-In, £7.6 Million and a Cupboard Full of Unfinished Business: Sandwell Scrutiny Goes Back to Work

Budget & Corporate Scrutiny Management Board – 20 August 2026

LONG READ WARNING: This one is not a three-paragraph Facebook rant. Put the kettle on. Possibly make sandwiches. If you make it as far as the Disabled Facilities Grant, give yourself a biscuit. If you survive SEND, the HRA, FOIs and procurement as well, congratulations — you are now probably qualified to sit on a scrutiny committee.

And unlike some glossy Council publications, there are actual numbers in this.

The Budget and Corporate Scrutiny Management Board meets at Sandwell Council House at 6pm on Thursday 20 August.

Despite this being Sandwell's overarching scrutiny board — responsible for finances, information management, HR, ICT and the wider scrutiny work programme — there is just one substantive item on the agenda after the formalities and approval of the March minutes.

And it is a big one.

The Board will consider a call-in of the Reform Cabinet's 15 July decision concerning the Crisis and Resilience Fund 2026/27–2028/29.

So before wandering into the rather large cupboard marked Unfinished Sandwell Business, let's start with the matter actually on Thursday's agenda.

£7.599 million — and some awkward questions

The Crisis and Resilience Fund is Government money intended to help residents facing financial crisis while also trying to tackle some of the causes that keep dragging people back into crisis.

Sandwell has approximately £7.599 million for 2026/27.

The July Cabinet plan allocates £1.451m for housing payments, £1.335m for crisis payments, £1.850m for other crisis support, £494,000 for additional Welfare Rights staff and software, £2m for new resilience pilot projects and £469,000 for administration.

On the face of it, there are some perfectly sensible ideas here.

Prevent homelessness. Help people with debt. Maximise benefits. Improve food security. Help people into training and employment. Stop repeatedly handing somebody a sticking plaster if you can help deal with the wound.

Nothing particularly outrageous there.

Unfortunately, local government tends to become interesting when you get past the Executive Summary.

And this one gets interesting quite quickly.

The school holiday voucher row

Under the previous Household Support Fund, eligible families had received help including school holiday food vouchers.

Sandwell's July report considered continuing that system but rejected it, saying blanket provision did not sufficiently fit the new Fund's emphasis on crisis intervention and longer-term resilience.

This has now become one of the central grounds for the call-in.

It is important, however, not to turn this into political pantomime.

The Government guidance does not say councils must continue blanket free-school-meal holiday vouchers.

But — and this is rather important — it does not forbid them either.

The Department for Work and Pensions explicitly says councils should decide how best to ensure the poorest children do not go hungry during school holidays and that this may or may not involve blanket vouchers for children receiving free school meals. It also encourages councils to link provision with schools, Family Hubs and the Holiday Activities and Food programme.

So the sensible question is not:

“Are vouchers compulsory?”

They aren't.

The sensible question is:

“What evidence shows the replacement arrangement will reach the children and families who actually need help?”

How many Sandwell families previously received automatic support?

How many are expected to receive help under the new application system?

What level of non-take-up has been modelled?

What happens to the parent who isn't technically in an immediate “financial shock” but suddenly has children at home for six weeks and an extra food bill?

And what happens to those people who simply don't apply?

Those are scrutiny questions.

Welcome to crisis support. Please create an account...

The new model is largely application based.

Again, that isn't automatically wrong. DWP actually expects Crisis and Housing Payments to be mostly delivered through application-based schemes.

But the same guidance also says councils should proactively find vulnerable people who may never come forward themselves, that application methods must be accessible, and that councils must provide a non-digital offer, not merely stick a form online and wish everyone the best of British.

Now look at Sandwell's live Crisis Payments page.

It says:

“You will need a MySandwell account to apply.”

It also tells applicants that a payment or voucher can take up to 14 days, although it says applications are usually dealt with more quickly.

Meanwhile DWP guidance says that for urgent needs, authorities should aim to deliver Crisis Payments within 48 hours of a completed application and should consider what happens outside ordinary working hours.

That does not necessarily mean Sandwell is breaching the guidance.

There may be a perfectly good urgent triage system operating behind the scenes.

Fine.

Show it to scrutiny.

What constitutes urgent?

How many applications are dealt with within 48 hours?

What happens on Friday night?

What if somebody fleeing domestic abuse cannot provide the documentary evidence neatly requested by an online system?

What if somebody has no smartphone, email address, data allowance or MySandwell account?

The Cabinet report itself says face-to-face assistance will be available. Good.

The question is whether a frightened, skint or digitally excluded resident can actually find that route when they need it.

A service is not accessible merely because somewhere, in paragraph 37 of something, somebody has written the word “accessible”.

The Equality Impact Assessment that was going to happen

The call-in also points out that an Equality Impact Assessment had not been published.

More interestingly, the Cabinet report itself says:

“An Equality Impact Assessment will be undertaken.”

“Will be.”

The decision was being taken on 15 July.

That does not automatically make the decision unlawful. The Public Sector Equality Duty is more complicated than simply asking whether a document with “EIA” written on the front exists.

But it certainly generates an obvious question:

What equality analysis was actually before Cabinet when Cabinet made the decision?

Because changing from broadly automatic provision to an application-and-assessment model may affect disabled people, carers, people with poor literacy, people with mental health problems, people experiencing domestic abuse and digitally excluded residents differently.

If all that work was done beforehand, excellent.

Publish it.

Scrutiny should not need a séance to discover what evidence Cabinet considered.

Consultation — technically optional, politically rather more interesting

The report says there was no statutory requirement for public consultation.

That is correct as far as the Council's published position goes.

It says there was engagement with internal services, partners and operational stakeholders.

But the call-in points out something rather obvious.

The people whose support arrangements were actually changing apparently weren't directly consulted.

Legality and good decision-making are not always identical twins.

You can legally decide something without asking residents.

That doesn't necessarily make it wise.

Especially when the people concerned are low-income families and you are changing support shortly before the school summer holidays.

The call-in also says June's Cabinet meeting had been cancelled and argues the July decision came too late for families to make alternative arrangements. That is an allegation made in the formal call-in notice and deserves a proper answer rather than political throat-clearing.

And here's a new one: 1 July or 1 August?

This is where a little forensic reading becomes useful.

Sandwell's July Cabinet report authorised the Section 151 Officer to submit the Council's 2026/27 Crisis and Resilience Fund expenditure plan to DWP by 1 August 2026.

However, the Government's published CRF guidance says unitary and county authorities were required to send their initial delivery plan to DWP by 1 July 2026, with Section 151/CFO sign-off.

Now, before anybody reaches for the pitchforks, this does not prove Sandwell missed a Government deadline.

Perhaps Sandwell submitted an initial plan by 1 July and the August document was something different.

Perhaps DWP agreed another timetable.

Perhaps there was correspondence we haven't seen.

There may be a perfectly boring explanation.

Excellent.

Let's have the perfectly boring explanation.

Produce the plan, its submission date, the Section 151 sign-off and DWP acknowledgement.

Mystery solved.

That's what scrutiny is supposed to do.

£300,000 becomes £469,000

Here's another one for lovers of municipal arithmetic.

The January budget papers anticipated about £300,000 a year in CRF administration income/cost provision, based on approximately 5% of the Fund.

By July, the proposed administration budget was £469,000.

Separately, another £494,000 was allocated to additional Welfare Rights staffing and software.

There may again be an entirely legitimate explanation.

But £300,000 becoming £469,000 is the sort of thing a board with the word Budget in its name might reasonably ask about.

What changed?

What exactly is contained within the £469,000?

How many staff?

What software?

What publicity?

What evaluation?

What is one-off and what becomes an ongoing cost?

And what precisely does the separate £494,000 buy?

These are not gotcha questions.

They're called accounting.

The £2 million pilot pot

The Council also intends spending £2 million on resilience pilots — potentially covering food security, healthy living, financial resilience, skills and employment.

Again, perfectly worthy objectives.

But Cabinet delegated considerable authority to senior officers, in consultation with the Cabinet Member, to determine the pilots and make in-year adjustments. It also delegated development of the 2027/28 and 2028/29 expenditure plans.

So who gets the money?

Who chooses?

What are the criteria?

Are they grants or contracts?

How is performance measured?

What happens when a pilot fails?

Will councillors and the public see the outcomes?

Because “pilot project” is one of those lovely public-sector phrases that can mean anything between excellent innovative intervention and £200,000 disappeared into a PowerPoint presentation and everybody agreed lessons had been learned.

We shall see.

---

And now... the cupboard

This is where the political change in May becomes important.

Reform UK won 41 of Sandwell's 72 seats at the May election and took control of the authority. Councillor Ray Nock was subsequently appointed Council Leader from 26 May.

That means we need to be fair about what follows.

Most of the problems I'm about to discuss were not created by the Reform administration.

They existed under the previous Labour administration.

Some go back years.

Some involve national pressures as well as local management.

Some are officer and system issues rather than things created personally by councillors.

So I am not going to perform the lazy trick of sticking “REFORM FAILURE” on every spreadsheet dated before they took office.

But nor should changing the political leadership cause the Council's institutional memory to develop sudden-onset amnesia.

The paperwork doesn't reset itself after an election.

The residents waiting for repairs don't vanish.

SEND cases don't disappear.

Unspent Disabled Facilities Grants don't magically install bathrooms at midnight on polling day.

Legacy responsibility and current responsibility are different things.

Labour can properly be challenged about what happened on its watch.

Reform can properly be challenged about what it does with what it inherited.

That is the handover test.

Housing: C3 remains the large elephant in the Council flat

Sandwell received a C3 consumer judgement from the Regulator of Social Housing in October 2024.

The regulator said there were serious failings and significant improvement was required, particularly around the Safety and Quality Standard.

That is unquestionably a Labour-era legacy issue.

The Council subsequently began substantial recovery work — stock condition surveys, reducing repairs backlogs, improving safety compliance and introducing new systems — and that progress should be acknowledged. The Council itself has reported significant corrective action.

But as of this review, the October 2024 C3 remains the latest Sandwell regulatory judgement listed by the regulator.

So the question for Reform isn't:

“Why did you get a C3?”

They didn't.

The question is:

“What are you doing to get Sandwell out of C3, what remains outstanding and when should tenants expect the regulator to be satisfied?”

March scrutiny was told that around £51 million sat in HRA reserves, but crucially some of that represented deferred work including stock condition surveys, repair backlogs and a replacement housing management system.

In other words, £51m in reserves isn't necessarily a giant municipal piggy bank waiting for somebody to smash it open.

Some of it has work attached.

The real issue is delivery.

Disabled Facilities Grants: the underspend that refused to go away

March scrutiny was told that around £6.6 million of Disabled Facilities Grant funding was underspent.

This is money intended for adaptations including stairlifts, accessible bathrooms and other work helping disabled people remain independent at home.

At Quarter 3, £6.639m was forecast to slip into 2026/27.

By final outturn, it wasn't £6.639m.

It was £6.678m of an £11.639m budget slipping forward.

Yes, the papers point out that other councils have difficulties spending DFG allocations.

Fair enough.

But a national problem can still be a Sandwell problem.

And calling something “slippage” does not make the human consequences disappear.

Behind the word could be somebody unable to use their bath.

Somebody struggling upstairs.

A carer lifting somebody because an adaptation isn't finished.

An older resident unable to return home safely.

So the new administration should inherit not merely the £6.678m balance but the question:

How many people are waiting, and for how long?

That's the metric I want.

Not just money carried forward.

People carried forward.

SEND: clearing a backlog isn't the same as fixing the system

There was genuine progress before May.

The historic EHCP assessment backlog — previously reported at 523 cases — had been reduced to zero.

Good.

Credit where due.

But earlier scrutiny had also been told the EHCP 20-week completion rate had fallen to 15.65% against a 50.3% target, while average statutory assessment time had reached 57.82 weeks against a 20-week target.

The July performance report still identified EHCP timeliness and statutory assessment duration as persistent red indicators.

So “the backlog has been cleared” is true.

It is also not the whole story.

If you clear the historic queue and then people continue waiting far too long, congratulations — you have cleared yesterday's backlog while manufacturing tomorrow's.

SEND demand is also forecast to continue growing. The Council's own Sufficiency Strategy says that, based on historic demand and conversion rates, Sandwell could have more than 10,000 children with EHCPs by 2031, although it correctly cautions that ongoing reform work could change that projection.

Again: legacy pressure.

Current responsibility for the response.

The money that keeps slipping into tomorrow

Sandwell's final 2025/26 General Fund capital programme was £89.308m.

Actual expenditure was £63.304m.

That's 71% delivered, with £25.810m slipping into later years.

The HRA capital programme was £92.552m.

Actual expenditure: £62.330m.

That's 67%, leaving another £30.222m slipping forward.

Now, capital programmes always reprofile.

Planning changes.

Contractors slip.

Projects move.

Weather happens.

Things genuinely change.

But once tens of millions repeatedly move from “this year” to “next year”, scrutiny needs to ask whether we are looking at isolated project delays or a wider delivery capacity problem.

A budget isn't an achievement because somebody successfully typed it into Excel.

Eventually something has to get built, repaired, adapted or installed.

Sandwell Children's Trust: £19.792 million doesn't become history just because the calendar changed

Sandwell Children's Trust accumulated a historic deficit of approximately £19.792m by the end of 2024/25.

A three-year contract was agreed covering 2025/26–2027/28, totalling £309.072m, with arrangements intended to stabilise the Trust and recover the deficit.

The 2025/26 outturn included a £6.597m draw from reserves for additional Trust contract payments connected to that cumulative deficit.

Again, Reform didn't create it.

But the contract continues under Reform.

So scrutiny should keep watching it.

Otherwise “we have agreed a three-year contract” risks becoming local-government shorthand for “please don't ask us again until 2028”.

No.

Ask every quarter.

FOIs and Subject Access Requests: transparency apparently still takes time

This one should concern anybody who has ever tried to extract information from a public authority without first obtaining a degree in patience.

Back in Quarter 2, Sandwell was already below its 90% target for responding to Subject Access Requests and Freedom of Information requests on time.

The Council said additional diagnostics, resources and digital solutions were being explored.

By Quarter 4, SAR performance had fallen to 36%, with annual performance of 50%.

FOI performance was 70%, against the 90% target.

The Quarter 4 breakdown recorded Finance & Transformation at 0% for 14 SARs, Children & Education at 33%, Adult Social Care & Health at 31%, and Place at 45%.

The report does say work is progressing on a new system after discussions with Hackney.

Fine.

But this is Budget & Corporate Scrutiny, and information governance is specifically within its remit.

So it needs to return.

Not as another paragraph saying “work continues”.

With numbers.

Complaints and the customer journey

Quarter 4 Stage 1 complaints averaged 11.33 working days against a 10-day target, with Children and Education at 19.21 days. The report says many Children's complaints relate to SEND delays.

The Council was also receiving an enormous number of avoidable calls.

Nearly half — 48.48% of calls about repairs — were residents chasing repairs that had already been reported.

That is a fascinating customer-service statistic.

You can have a very polite person answer the telephone and still have a broken customer journey because the resident is ringing for the third time asking why nobody has fixed the leak.

Previous scrutiny also raised anonymous responses from officers, misleading MySandwell statuses and response times for councillor enquiries.

March's tracking report showed some recommendations had been hanging around since 2023 and 2024 under various descriptions of ongoing work.

New political control is an excellent opportunity to ask an old-fashioned question:

Did we actually finish any of this?

Procurement: another one that must not quietly wander off

March's Budget & Corporate Scrutiny Board considered proposals for a new Ethical and Commercial Procurement Strategy, refreshed procurement rules and improved contract management.

Members were told the final Strategy, Procedure Rules and Contract Management Framework would return to scrutiny.

That matters.

Because Sandwell is simultaneously letting and managing very substantial contracts, including housing maintenance and regulatory work.

The July Cabinet papers themselves stress the importance of compliant procurement, performance management, social value and effective contract reviews.

Good.

So bring the promised framework back.

Scrutiny has an unfortunate habit, not unique to Sandwell, of enthusiastically requesting an update and then apparently assuming the update has ascended to heaven if nobody puts it on another agenda.

Let's not do that.

---

This isn't an argument that nothing has improved

For the avoidance of doubt — because nuance is terribly unfashionable on social media — Sandwell has made genuine progress.

The Council exited Government intervention.

Children's Services achieved a Good Ofsted judgement after years of difficulty.

The LGA Corporate Peer Challenge found Sandwell significantly more stable and credible than it had been in the dark old days, while still identifying important further work around housing, transformation and organisational capacity.

The General Fund position has also been substantially more stable than in some other councils.

None of that should be airbrushed out merely because criticism gets more clicks.

But improvement does not mean scrutiny becomes redundant.

Quite the opposite.

If the Council really is improving, good scrutiny helps make sure it stays improved.

Labour's legacy. Reform's test.

And this is the key point.

Housing C3?

Inherited.

The DFG backlog?

Inherited.

SEND pressures?

Inherited.

The Children's Trust historic deficit?

Inherited.

FOI and SAR weakness?

Inherited.

Capital slippage?

Predominantly inherited.

Procurement reform begun but not completed?

Transitional.

These cannot fairly be rewritten as things Reform created after taking office in May.

But from the moment the new administration knows about them, a second clock starts ticking.

The question slowly changes from:

“Who caused this?”

to:

“Who is fixing this?”

And eventually, if nothing happens:

“Why did you leave it?”

That is where scrutiny should sit.

Not rewriting history to blame the new lot for everything.

And not allowing the new lot to blame history forever.

Thursday is a useful first test

The Crisis and Resilience Fund is different from most of those legacy matters.

This was a July 2026 decision of the current Reform Cabinet.

So Thursday's meeting provides an early test of how Sandwell's new political arrangements deal with challenge.

Will scrutiny simply hear explanations and wave the decision through?

Will it turn into party-political theatre over free school meal vouchers?

Or will members do what scrutiny should actually do — interrogate the evidence, separate fact from assertion, demand the paperwork and improve the decision where improvement is required?

I don't currently see evidence that the entire Crisis and Resilience Fund proposal should simply be thrown in the bin.

The principle of moving people from repeated crisis towards longer-term financial resilience is sensible.

But there are unresolved questions about the timing, the impact on families, equality analysis, accessibility, the apparent 1 July/1 August delivery-plan discrepancy, the 14-day public processing message versus the Government's 48-hour urgent-payment ambition, administration costs, the £2m pilots and the extent of delegated authority.

Those questions deserve answers.

And when Thursday's call-in is finished, the Board should turn around and look at the rather large pile of unfinished business sitting behind it.

Because elections change councillors.

They do not delete corporate memory.

And in Sandwell — of all places — we really should have learned by now that “we thought somebody was dealing with it” is not a governance system.

I'll be watching what happens on 20 August.

And, as ever, I'll update this when the answers arrive.

Assuming, of course, they arrive within the target response time.

Don't hold your breath.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #BudgetScrutiny #CorporateScrutiny #CouncilScrutiny #CrisisAndResilienceFund #LocalGovernment #CouncilGovernance #PublicAccountability #Transparency #LocalDemocracy #ReformUK #Labour #SandwellPolitics #Housing #SEND #DisabledFacilitiesGrant #FOI #SubjectAccessRequests #Procurement #ContractManagement #ChildrensServices #CouncilFinances #Governance #ScrutinyMatters #FollowThePaperTrail

Sandwell's September Paper Trail – A Few Things Worth Watching Before the Reports Land

Sandwell's September Paper Trail – A Few Things Worth Watching Before the Reports Land

There is an old habit in local government of waiting until a 300-page committee pack lands on the internet, usually accompanied by enough appendices to stun a medium-sized badger, before anyone starts asking what is actually going on.

So I'm trying something different.

Let's look at what is coming before the paperwork arrives.

Sandwell Council has published another Forward Plan, this one dated 4 August 2026, giving advance notice of decisions expected to come before Cabinet.

And there are already several items where I think residents, councillors and particularly those sitting on scrutiny committees should be sharpening their pencils.

Most are currently expected at the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday 9 September 2026.

This isn't an accusation that something is wrong.

It is something far more dangerous in Sandwell:

asking questions before the decision is made.

First up – how are the finances looking?

One of the big documents coming forward is the:

Q1 Budget Monitoring Report 2026/27

This is classed as a Key Decision.

Budget monitoring reports can appear mind-numbingly dull.

Forecast.

Variance.

Reprofiling.

Reserves.

Capital programme.

Another spreadsheet.

Another cup of tea.

But buried amongst those phrases is the answer to a much simpler question:

Is Sandwell actually spending taxpayers' money where it said it would, and is it delivering what it promised?

That matters particularly because previous financial reports have already highlighted substantial pressures involving SEND/high-needs funding, the Housing Revenue Account and Sandwell Children's Trust.

Earlier monitoring during 2025/26 showed significant pressure within the Dedicated Schools Grant and HRA, alongside the continuing financial implications surrounding the Children's Trust.

So when the new Q1 figures arrive, some fairly basic questions need answering.

Has the position improved?

Have new overspends appeared?

Are savings actually being delivered?

How much money is being taken from reserves?

And perhaps one of my favourites:

How much of the capital programme has actually been delivered?

Because there is a difference between:

"We have allocated £20 million to something"

and

"We actually built the thing."

Sandwell has previously had substantial capital budgets reprofiled into later years.

"Reprofiled", incidentally, is one of those wonderful council words.

In ordinary English it frequently means:

We didn't spend it when we said we were going to.

Let's see what September brings.

Treasury Management Outturn 2025/26

Another Key Decision is the Treasury Management Outturn for the last financial year.

Don't switch off.

Treasury management sounds like something conducted by three accountants in a locked cupboard beneath Oldbury Council House.

It isn't.

It deals with things including borrowing, investments, debt, interest and how the authority manages enormous amounts of public money.

I want to see:

- total borrowing;

- cost of borrowing;

- investment returns;

- compliance with prudential indicators;

- changes in debt;

- borrowing connected with the capital programme;

- and whether assumptions made when the budget was approved actually turned out to be correct.

If interest costs have increased, let's see them.

If borrowing has increased, explain why.

If investments performed better than expected, wonderful – tell us.

Transparency shouldn't only apply when the numbers are bad.

Housing Compliance Policies

Now this one immediately gets my attention.

Cabinet is expected to consider Compliance Policies, again as a Key Decision.

And there is some important history here.

Sandwell's Housing Improvement and Transformation Programme was developed following the Regulator of Social Housing's C3 regulatory judgement, which identified serious failings in the landlord service.

Previous scrutiny papers recorded issues including extremely poor historic asbestos survey compliance, electrical safety work, a repairs backlog and inadequate information about the condition of the housing stock.

The improvement programme itself specifically included:

reviewing compliance policies and procedures;

improving systems and data;

external and internal assurance;

staff competence;

and better controls to identify non-compliance risks.

So this isn't administrative housekeeping.

It goes directly to the question:

Has Sandwell now got proper control of housing safety and compliance?

When the papers appear I want to know exactly which policies are being approved.

I also want to know:

What remains outstanding?

What is still red or amber?

Are statutory inspections genuinely up to date?

Have historical gaps been completely resolved?

What does external assurance say?

And crucially:

Can Sandwell now evidence compliance properly rather than simply saying that it believes properties are compliant?

There is an important difference.

Community Safety Strategy 2026–2030

Another significant item is the proposed Sandwell Community Safety Strategy 2026–2030, also identified as a Key Decision and expected at Cabinet on 9 September.

This should be interesting.

Because residents don't experience "community safety strategies".

They experience:

antisocial behaviour;

drug dealing;

illegal motorcycles;

shoplifting;

town-centre disorder;

fly-tipping;

criminal damage;

street drinking;

car crime;

and neighbourhood problems that sometimes seem to bounce endlessly between organisations.

So when the strategy appears, I hope we don't receive 70 pages of worthy aspirations accompanied by photographs of people pointing at flipcharts.

I want measurable outcomes.

What are the baseline figures?

What are the targets?

Who is responsible for delivering them?

Where are the hotspots?

What happens when targets aren't met?

How will councillors see ward-level performance?

How are West Midlands Police, Sandwell Council and other partners actually going to be held accountable?

And perhaps most importantly:

Will residents be able to tell whether the strategy has worked?

Because publishing another strategy is easy.

Making Great Bridge, West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Smethwick, Oldbury, Tipton and our neighbourhoods demonstrably safer is the difficult bit.

West Midlands Regional Care Cooperative

Another September item seeks approval for Sandwell to accept Department for Education funding on behalf of the West Midlands Regional Care Cooperative and lead on elements of that work.

It too is designated a Key Decision.

This one deserves careful reading when the report arrives.

There may be very good reasons for Sandwell taking the lead.

But any time Sandwell Council becomes accountable for funding or activity being delivered across a wider regional partnership, I want clarity over:

who controls the money;

who carries the financial risk;

what Sandwell's liabilities are;

what happens if another partner doesn't deliver;

how performance is monitored;

and whether the Council is simply acting as an accountable body or taking on wider responsibilities.

Regional partnerships can achieve things individual councils cannot.

They can also create accountability arrangements resembling a plate of spaghetti.

Let's see the report.

Funeral Services Contract

Cabinet is also expected to consider a Funeral Services Contract, another Key Decision.

Again, this may prove completely straightforward.

But funeral and bereavement services are sensitive public services and contracts need proper scrutiny.

I'd want to know:

what is being procured;

the contract value and length;

whether there are extension provisions;

how quality will be measured;

whether prices or charges to residents could be affected;

what previous contract performance has been like;

and what safeguards exist should the contractor fail.

Procurement reports have an unfortunate tendency to concentrate heavily on procurement.

Residents are generally more interested in the service they actually receive.

And Then There's The Fully Exempt One...

One item on the Forward Plan concerns approval to write off legacy arrears relating to premises.

The Council identifies it as a Key Decision, and Modern.Gov presently indicates that the matter is anticipated to be fully exempt.

Now let's be very clear.

The fact that something is considered in private does not mean there is anything improper about it.

Councils legitimately have to protect commercially confidential information and other information falling within statutory exemptions.

But secrecy does create a corresponding responsibility for particularly robust internal governance.

If the public cannot see the details, elected members need to be absolutely satisfied about:

the amount being written off;

why the debt became irrecoverable;

how old it is;

what recovery action was undertaken;

whether mistakes contributed;

whether officers followed the correct debt-recovery procedures;

and whether there are lessons preventing the same situation occurring again.

"Legacy arrears" could describe a perfectly sensible accounting clean-up.

It could also describe money that should have been collected years ago.

Until we see whatever information can lawfully be made public, we simply don't know.

And that is precisely why questions matter.

Now Comes My Bigger Concern – Scrutiny

This is where the diary becomes interesting.

Cabinet is scheduled to meet on:

Wednesday 9 September 2026.

Budget and Corporate Scrutiny meets on:

Thursday 10 September.

Children's Services and Education Scrutiny meets:

Monday 14 September.

Safer Neighbourhoods and Active Communities Scrutiny meets:

Thursday 17 September.

See the potential problem?

Most of the main scrutiny meetings take place after Cabinet.

That doesn't automatically mean these matters haven't been or won't be scrutinised beforehand.

Some policies go through earlier scrutiny meetings, working groups and consultation.

But it does reinforce something I have raised previously.

Scrutiny is most useful BEFORE a decision.

The Council's own scrutiny arrangements recognise that boards should regularly consider the Cabinet Forward Plan and adjust their programmes when important new matters emerge. Previous Sandwell scrutiny reports explicitly describe scrutiny as member-led and say work programmes should remain fluid so emerging issues can be examined in a timely manner.

That is exactly what should happen now.

There is little point in holding a magnificent scrutiny meeting on Thursday explaining everything that Cabinet approved on Wednesday.

That's not scrutiny.

That's a post-match discussion.

The Forward Plan Should Be An Alarm Bell

This is why I intend to pay far more attention to Sandwell's Forward Plan.

Not because every item represents a scandal.

Most won't.

But because this is where we get an early indication of what is coming.

And that's when residents, opposition councillors, backbench councillors and scrutiny members can start asking questions.

Before decisions.

Before contracts.

Before millions are committed.

Before the press release announcing that everything is marvellous.

The Council has recently been through Government intervention, regulatory problems in housing and a lengthy process of rebuilding governance and assurance.

That means scrutiny should not be regarded as an irritating obstacle to getting things done.

Good scrutiny helps stop things going wrong.

And good councillors shouldn't be frightened of it.

Whether they're Reform, Labour, Green or Independent.

What I'll Be Watching For

When September's reports are finally published, I'll be looking particularly at:

Q1 FINANCES

Are pressures worsening? Are savings real? Are reserves being used? Is capital delivery slipping?

TREASURY MANAGEMENT

What happened to borrowing, debt, investments and interest costs?

HOUSING COMPLIANCE

Has Sandwell genuinely fixed the weaknesses exposed by the regulator, and can it prove it?

COMMUNITY SAFETY

Are there measurable targets rather than another collection of ambitions?

REGIONAL CHILDREN'S SERVICES FUNDING

Who carries the money, risk and accountability?

FUNERAL SERVICES

What does the contract cost and what protections exist for service quality?

LEGACY ARREARS

What information can legally be released and how did the debt arise?

And underneath all of them:

Who scrutinised it before Cabinet?

That's the question I think we should begin asking every time.

A Different Way Of Watching Sandwell

I'll continue following the Forward Plans and forthcoming committee papers and highlighting anything I think deserves closer examination.

Sometimes I'll find a genuine red flag.

Sometimes the report will answer the questions perfectly adequately.

And occasionally – I live in hope – we may even discover something Sandwell Council has done rather well.

I'll report that too.

But the important thing is that residents should not need to discover major decisions several weeks after councillors have approved them.

The information is there.

The trick is knowing where to look.

So consider this the advance warning.

September could be interesting.

And somewhere inside Sandwell Council House, I suspect somebody is already preparing the appendices.

Lots and lots of appendices.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #ForwardPlan #CouncilScrutiny #LocalGovernment #CouncilFinances #PublicMoney #Housing #CommunitySafety #SEND #Governance #Accountability #Transparency #WestMidlands #SandwellPolitics #ReformUK #WatchThePapers #BeforeTheDecision

 

710 Pages. One Cabinet Meeting. Is This Democracy… or an Endurance Test?

There's confidence.

There's optimism.

There's wishful thinking.

And then there's believing that elected councillors can properly scrutinise 710 pages of reports, challenge officers, understand every financial implication, ask intelligent questions and make informed decisions... all before one Cabinet meeting.

Welcome to Sandwell.

On Wednesday 15 July, Sandwell's Cabinet will meet to decide the future of services affecting every resident.

Housing.

Roads.

Schools.

SEND.

Anti-social behaviour.

Council finances.

Regeneration.

Pride in Place.

Housing contracts.

School capital.

Corporate performance.

Millions upon millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

All wrapped up in a 710-page agenda pack.

Not a typo.

Seven hundred and ten pages.

If you fancy having a look yourself—and I genuinely admire your optimism—you can find the agenda here:

Sandwell Cabinet Meeting – 15 July 2026 Agenda

Bring coffee.

Possibly an oxygen tank.

War and Peace? Lightweight.

To put 710 pages into perspective...

You could read George Orwell's 1984.

Then Animal Farm.

Have a sandwich.

Walk the dog.

Cut the grass.

Come back...

...and you'd probably still have another risk register or appendix to get through.

I've seen fewer pages in university dissertations.

I've bought shorter Haynes manuals.

The old Argos catalogue was less intimidating.

At this rate Cabinet Members won't need tablets...

...they'll need forklifts.

Transparency? Or Death by PDF?

Whenever residents complain that councils aren't transparent, the stock answer usually goes something like this:

"Everything is publicly available."

Technically...

Yes.

So are the complete Hansard archives.

Publishing information isn't the same as making it understandable.

Uploading 710 pages to a website doesn't automatically make a council open.

Sometimes it just makes it harder for anyone to see what's actually happening.

It's a bit like hiding a needle...

...inside another needle...

...inside a haystack.

Let's Be Honest... Nobody Can Properly Read This

Here's the uncomfortable truth.

No Cabinet Member can realistically:

• read 710 pages;

• understand every legal implication;

• digest every financial risk;

• challenge every recommendation;

• compare every appendix with previous reports;

• carry out ward casework;

• answer residents;

• attend meetings;

• hold down a job;

• have something resembling a family life...

...and still turn up fully prepared to debate nineteen substantial reports.

Not Labour.

Not Reform.

Not Conservatives.

Not Independents.

Nobody.

If anyone says they've absorbed every page cover to cover in the time available, they either possess superhuman powers...

...or they're bluffing.

This Isn't Scrutiny. It's Survival.

Cabinet exists for one reason.

To scrutinise.

To challenge.

To test assumptions.

To ask awkward questions.

To say:

"Hang on... have we actually thought this through?"

Instead, meetings increasingly risk becoming:

Approved.

Approved.

Approved.

Noted.

Delegated.

Approved.

Next item.

By page 642 even the strongest councillor is probably wondering whether they accidentally enrolled on an Open University degree in municipal administration.

Meanwhile... Buried Somewhere Around Page 300...

Hidden amongst the mountain of paperwork is something rather inconvenient.

The Council's own performance report.

And guess what?

It's hardly a glowing report card.

Dozens of performance indicators remain red.

Housing is struggling.

Customer services are struggling.

SEND remains under pressure.

Complaints remain high.

Some indicators have stayed red quarter after quarter.

These aren't opposition figures.

They're the Council's own figures.

Yet instead of seeing an overwhelming focus on fixing those problems...

...we get another action plan.

Another strategy.

Another framework.

Another transformation programme.

Another governance structure.

At this rate Sandwell produces more strategies than Netflix produces documentaries.

The Great Delegation Machine

Another phrase appears so often in these reports that it deserves its own loyalty card.

"Delegated Authority."

Approve the principle...

Delegate the detail...

Report back later...

Maybe.

It's becoming Cabinet Bingo.

Tick them off as you go:

☑ Approve

☑ Delegate

☑ Endorse

☑ Framework

☑ Transformation

☑ Partnership

☑ Review

☑ Action Plan

House!

Now, delegation has its place.

No council could function without it.

But there comes a point where residents are entitled to ask:

Exactly what is Cabinet deciding... and what is being quietly handed over afterwards?

Because if every major decision ends with "delegated to officers", what exactly is the democratic value of Cabinet beyond approving the cover sheet?

Quantity Isn't Quality

Somewhere in local government a strange myth has taken hold.

That the thicker the agenda...

...the better the governance.

Rubbish.

A 710-page agenda isn't evidence of openness.

It's evidence of a system drowning in its own paperwork.

Good governance isn't measured in kilograms.

It's measured by whether elected Members have enough time to understand what they're voting on.

Here's a Crazy Suggestion...

Split the agenda.

Hold another Cabinet meeting.

Prioritise genuinely urgent business.

Publish proper executive summaries.

Give Members the chance to actually read, think and challenge.

Because if decisions affecting hundreds of millions of pounds can't justify an extra meeting...

...what exactly can?

The Bigger Problem

This isn't about whether the reports are good or bad.

Many of them contain worthwhile proposals.

This is about whether the process itself is fit for purpose.

Democracy doesn't become stronger because you've uploaded more PDFs.

It becomes stronger when elected Members have the time, confidence and information to properly scrutinise what's put in front of them.

Right now, it feels as though scrutiny is being buried under paperwork.

Not deliberately perhaps.

But effectively.

And there's an old saying...

If you want to hide something, hide it in plain sight.

Or, in local government...

Hide it somewhere around page 487.

One Final Thought

If I handed a university student 710 pages on Monday and expected a properly researched dissertation by Wednesday, they'd laugh.

If I handed a barrister 710 pages the day before a trial, they'd ask the judge for an adjournment.

If I handed a surgeon 710 pages before an operation, you'd probably ask for a second opinion.

Yet somehow we expect councillors—many with full-time jobs, businesses, caring responsibilities and hundreds of residents relying on them—to digest 710 pages of highly technical reports before making decisions affecting every household in Sandwell.

Then we wonder why public confidence in local government isn't exactly soaring.

Good governance isn't about seeing how many reports can be crammed into one meeting. It's about giving elected Members the time, information and confidence to properly challenge decisions before they're made.

If we genuinely want stronger democracy in Sandwell, we need stronger scrutiny—not simply bigger agenda packs.

Because at the moment, this doesn't look like robust local democracy.

It looks like a speed-reading competition sponsored by the printer toner industry... with accountability buried somewhere between Appendix 14 and Annex C.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #Cabinet #LocalGovernment #Democracy #Scrutiny #Governance #Transparency #Accountability #Housing #SEND #Regeneration #CouncilFinance #CommunityVoice #LocalPolitics

Armed Forces Day In Sandwell: Lovely Photos, Warm Words — Now Where’s The Follow Up?

 

Armed Forces Day In Sandwell: Lovely Photos, Warm Words — Now Where’s The Follow Up?

There has been plenty of chat in Sandwell over the weekend about Armed Forces Day.

Lots of photos. Lots of councillors pictured. Lots of comments. Lots of “proud to attend”, “honoured to support”, “we remember”, “we value”, “we stand with” and all the usual polished phrases that get trotted out when there is a flag, a camera and a convenient opportunity to look statesmanlike for Facebook.

And to be clear — Armed Forces Day matters.

It is right that serving personnel, vterans, reservists, cadets, families and the wider armed forces community are recognised. It is right that people turn up. It is right that Sandwell marks the day properly.

But now comes the important bit.

The follow up.

Because support for the armed forces community cannot just be a weekend photo opportunity with a brass band and a buffet of buzzwords.

It cannot be a councillor selfie in the sunshine, followed by silence until the next civic event rolls around.

It cannot be haphazard meetings, mealy-mouthed statements, and management-speak so thick you need a bayonet to cut through it.

Sandwell Council has an Armed Forces Covenant. This is not new. It was adopted years ago. It is supposed to mean something. It is supposed to ensure that members of the armed forces community are not disadvantaged when accessing services, and that special consideration is given where appropriate, especially for the injured and bereaved.

Fine words.

But Sandwell has never been short of fine words. We have had pledges, charters, visions, strategies, boards, frameworks, roadmaps, action plans and enough “partnership working” to sink a small frigate.

The question is simple:

What has actually been done?

Not what was said.

Not what was posed for.

Not what was placed on a webpage and left to gather digital dust.

What has been delivered?

Sandwell’s own Armed Forces Covenant talks about a Partnership Board, chaired by the Mayor, meeting every three months. It talks about an action plan. It talks about making sure the aims of the Covenant are being followed.

So where are the minutes?

Where are the agendas?

Where are the action logs?

Where are the reports?

Where are the outcomes?

Where are the Key Performance Indicators?

Where is the evidence that this is more than a civic badge pinned to the Council’s lapel once a year?

Because if meetings have been held, the public should be able to see what was discussed, who attended, what decisions were made, what actions were agreed, and what actually changed as a result.

If the meetings have not been held, then the Council needs to say so.

If the action plan exists, publish it.

If it does not exist, explain why.

If there are KPIs, show them.

If there are no KPIs, then how exactly is anyone measuring effectiveness?

“Engagement” is not a result.

“Raising awareness” is not a result.

“Continuing to work with partners” is not a result.

“Valuing our veterans” is not a measurable outcome unless it is backed by housing support, employment pathways, welfare advice, health referrals, school support, proper signposting and real casework that makes a difference to real people.

In March 2026, Sandwell Council passed a motion called “Going for Gold: Sandwell’s Commitment to the Armed Forces Community.”

That motion called for Sandwell to work towards Gold Award status under the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme. It called for employment policies to be reviewed. It referred to guaranteed interviews for suitably qualified veterans. It mentioned support for reservists, military spouses and partners. It called for a clear Armed Forces Employment and Engagement Strategy. It called for a dedicated Armed Forces Covenant Partnership Officer. It also called for an update report to Cabinet and Full Council within six months, and for scrutiny oversight.

Good.

Now deliver it.

No waffle. No fog machine. No twelve-page report written in officer-speak that says everything and nothing at the same time.

Sandwell’s new controlling Reform group now has a chance to show whether this was just another Council chamber speech, or whether they are serious about follow-through.

Many councillors have been happy to be pictured this weekend. Many have made public comments about Armed Forces Day. Good. Now back it up.

Ask the questions.

Demand the papers.

Publish the evidence.

Scrutinise the Covenant.

Find out what has been done since adoption.

Find out whether the Partnership Board has met every three months as stated.

Find out who attended.

Find out what decisions were made.

Find out what actions were completed.

Find out what outcomes were achieved.

Find out whether veterans and armed forces families in Sandwell actually know what support is available.

Find out whether frontline housing, welfare, education, employment and customer service staff understand the Covenant.

Find out how many people have been helped.

Find out how many were missed.

Find out what failed.

Find out what needs fixing.

And most importantly, make it public.

Because the armed forces community does not need empty civic theatre. It needs proper support, proper access, proper recognition and proper accountability.

A parade is welcome.

A ceremony is welcome.

Respect is welcome.

But respect does not end when the flags are packed away.

If Sandwell Council, senior officers, elected councillors and the controlling Reform group mean what they said this weekend, then the next step is obvious.

Bring forward the full Armed Forces Covenant review.

Publish the Partnership Board records.

Publish the action plan.

Publish the KPIs.

Publish the progress report.

Name the responsible councillor.

Name the responsible officer.

Set out the Gold Award roadmap.

And let scrutiny do its job.

Because warm words are easy.

Photos are easy.

Turning up for Armed Forces Day is easy.

The harder bit is making sure veterans, serving personnel, reservists, cadets, families, widows, widowers and those injured through service are not left fighting through council bureaucracy when the cameras have gone home.

That is where the real commitment is tested.

And Sandwell now needs to prove it.

Not next year.

Not at the next photo call.

Now.

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