Business News
Street on the Commonwealth Games… I still believe what I believed when we were bidding – that this will be a phenomenal opportunity for us to promote Birmingham and the region around the world. It will also be a phenomenal opportunity for young people to
Back on the mic: mayor tackles burning issues
West Midlands mayor Andy Street was back on the mic to discuss the hot topics on the region’s agenda in an in-depth interview with Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce chief executive Paul Faulkner. The interview – in which Mr Street gave his thoughts on transport plans, electric battery gigafactories, the Commonwealth Games and the forthcoming mayoral election – was broadcast in two parts on the Chamber’s podcast channel. Here, Chamberlink provides a snapshot of the mayor’s views..
Street on his 20-year transport vision… There was a simple message in using the London-style map and it was very deliberate to use that. It was trying to send a message that went ‘why should it be that
Londoners have a world-class public transport system and we do not?’ The other message was we’ve got to be ambitious. It is about 150
miles of metro, eight new lines and all those new railway stations. We’ve started to get on with it – the diggers are in the ground in
Dudley, planning permission is in for Moseley and the diggers are in the ground along Five Ways to Edgbaston. We’re making it happen already but we’ve got to build on that.
Street on his first term as mayor… Putting any individual things aside, I think we have now established this role. I hope I’ve done it in a relatively non-partisan way. I don’t go to
London and say ‘I’m the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands’. I am a Conservative, I’m proud of it and I’ll stand as a
Street on gigafactories… Anything that uses a battery will need this centre to make one and, if we don’t have one in the UK, we will be at a huge disadvantage compared to other countries. That’s why I’m lobbying very hard to get one in the UK and, critically, for it to be in the West Midlands. We will be the place that uses this stuff, given the strength of the automotive industry.
8 CHAMBERLINK March 2020
Conservative again - but I’ve tried to represent the whole region and I’ve also tried to do it with unity behind me. When I can go and say all the leaders – cross-party, with the business community’s support as well – agree with this, that’s very powerful.
• Listen to the full interview with Andy Street in two parts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, Google Podcasts and on the latest news section of
www.greaterbirminghamchambers.com
come and participate in the sporting events and all the other things that will hang off it. The transport plan for the Games is coming together and we’re
still hoping to get some new cash from the Government for a business expo, so there are lots of things that we’re getting on with. I’m as positive as I ever was.
Street on 5G technology… This is an area where we’re at the cutting edge. We won the competition 18 months ago to be the national
‘testbed’. It means that about 16 per cent of people in Birmingham and Solihull can already get 5G signals if they have the right device. We’re also beginning to see some really practical examples of
where the technology has been tested. If you go to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry with the Vodafone 5G lab you can start to see examples.
Street on skills gaps… It is still a huge issue but we are making real progress – and it is certainly a team game in making that progress. There were 26,000 new jobs in the mayoral area last year, so that
is new opportunities for lots of people. It is no surprise that when you think of the sectors that are
growing the fastest – construction, digital – that’s where we hear the constant story of the skills shortage. This region had the worst qualifications of the whole country
back in 2007, which coincided with a very lean part of our history. What’s happened over the last decade is we’ve improved the
relative qualifications of people in this region faster than other areas. That’s down to our universities and improvement in many of our
schools, but it’s also down to the further education colleges working on the skills required for our growing sectors.
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