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.
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