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THE policing operation in support of the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham has been declared a huge success.
Assistant Chief Constable Sharon Rowe, who headed up the operation, said:
“Beginning on Sunday with a large protest march by ‘Right to Work’ campaigners, the event was always going to present significant policing challenges. Officers facilitated a peaceful march as it made its way through the city centre at the same time as up to 14,000 delegates arrived for the start of the conference and a major security operation got underway.”
Up to 2,000 police officers were involved in the operation on Sunday, with approximately 700 deployed throughout the course of each day of the conference.
Over the four days there was only one arrest made (a person not associated with the conference) for an offence of drunkenness.
Extra police officers were on hand to police Birmingham’s main night time economy area in and around Broad Street adjacent to the ICC venue. With the hotels at full capacity, the area was busier than usual but again trouble-free.
ACC Rowe continued: “This event has been months in the planning. Working with Birmingham City Council, Marketing Birmingham, the ICC, the Hyatt, and many more partners, this really was ‘Team Birmingham’ at its best. Each of us added an essential element to the smooth, safe and successful running of the event; the outcome was great synergy, cooperation and understanding of each other’s role.
“The conference has once again put Birmingham and the West Midlands under a national and international spotlight, and from a policing perspective demonstrated how West Midlands Police successfully manage major events and the associated security, as well as balance people’s rights to protest while maintaining local policing delivery and keeping disruption to an absolute minimum.
“We are proud to have been able to play our part in this event and I am proud of the way our officers and staff helped make it an outstanding, safe and secure conference.”
Birmingham Media Highlights: Conservative Party Conference
FT: Brum lifts its sights beyond austerity
In Brummagem for the Tory shindig. Having 12,500 visitors in town is a relief for the recession-bruised city, filling hotels and restaurants. You can rely on Birmingham to milk the occasion. Mike Whitby, leader of the Con-Lib city council (in power since 2004, a forerunner of the national coalition), hosted a first-night reception and Brummie propagandists are popping up everywhere.
Unabashed by the austerity ahead, the council has just published its Big City Plan – the most ambitious in the UK, it says – to develop the city centre over 20 years. It identifies five areas for transformation and hopes to generate 50,000 jobs and £2.1bn annual growth.
Well, it is good to know where you want to go. The present reality is that the council, the UK’s largest local authority, is facing an expected £330m cuts over four years and has put 26,000 staff, its entire non-schools workforce, on notice that they are at risk of redundancy if they do not accept changes to terms and conditions. As Eric Pickles, communities secretary, drily put it at the reception: “You’re expecting a difficult [financial] settlement and I can deliver that.” He promised councils little money but extra powers, short of being able to raise their own armies.
Brum’s services are likely to be hived off to management teams and its community centres run by volunteers. Mr Whitby even hinted recently at flogging off the National Exhibition Centre and International Conference Centre to Arab investors. He later rowed back and said they would remain in council hands, but some councillors believe such a move would be no bad thing.
Some developments are going ahead, such as the £600m revamp of New Street station and the £190m library. But some private projects have stalled. The recession’s impact on the West Midlands may have eased with manufacturing’s recovery, but Birmingham’s unemployment rate remains 13.5 per cent compared with 7.9 per cent nationally.
On a brighter note, a £65m runway extension at Birmingham airport looks set to go ahead. Birmingham hopes to be one of the first to use “tax increment financing”, funding projects with anticipated rate revenues. Further ahead, it will be the first stop from London on the high-speed railway. But in the short-term, the city of Joseph Chamberlain – the 19th-century Liberal mayor who made it the world’s best-run municipality – faces one of its biggest tests.
Daily Mail: Features images from Dance performance at Conference
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Earlier today day three of the Conference began with an unusual routine by a contemporary dance troupe.
The male and female dancers, wearing simple grey ‘dresses’ and socks, performed on stage in front of the Tory logo.
FT:Tory Impresarios add variety to conference
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We had the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s brass quintet, playing Bach, Elgar and Gershwin. Lovely! We had the mayor of London. Magnificent! (Boris Johnson’s intonations have now become faintly Churchillian, with heavy downward emphases: “I say to the UNIONS … this is blatantly POLITICAL …This strike will not SUCCEED …”)
Channel 4, Jon Snow Blog: Reflections on Birmingham
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And Birmingham has risen to the occasion too…efficient security, well mannered ushers and security staff. The menace of the car which so blighted the city centre of yesteryear is gone – instead there’s a predominance of pedestrian streets.
I walked a mile from the conference centre, uninterrupted by the internal combustion engine, in order to get the battery in my watch replaced. A brilliant depot called the Watch Hospital did it in a trice.
By the way, now that the British Waterways quango is to go, who will sustain the magnificent canal system here?
I shall board the train to Euston after Channel 4 News tonight with mixed feelings.…relief to be going home, sorry to be leaving something altogether anthropologically intriguing behind.
The Blue Blog: A warm welcome to Birmingham
The stage is set, the security cordon is going up, and posters across the city welcome the Conservatives to Birmingham. There’s a real pulse of excitement here ahead of the Party Conference which opens on Sunday.
Birmingham BIDs – Fringe Event (feat. Guardian Society and www.thesocialissue.com
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Birmingham, for example, has three BIDs, which collectively generate around £2m of private sector investment into city centre public areas each year. Birmingham’s BIDs certainly seem successful, winning national plaudits for their nighttime economy and the cleanliness of the city centre streets. Crime figures in the Broad Street BID area, for example, have been dented since the launch of the scheme, from 1,300 incidents in 2005-6 to 995 in 2008-9 and public satisfaction is high.
More info from the Guardian
More info from the Social Issue
BBC Birmingham Online: Birmingham hosts Conservative Party Conference
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On the first day, Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to BBC WM about high-speed rail, law and order and industry and said it was “good to be back” in Birmingham.
BBC Birmingham Online: Birmingham welcomes the Conservative conference
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Ali from Moseley
“I think it’s a good thing, it’s good for the economy as it helps the hotels and other businesses. I live near Cannon Hill Park and they close the roads regularly when there are events on, so you just have to put up with it sometimes. I think it’s a good thing to have a major event in the city.”
Jennifer works in Birmingham Central Library, she said: “I think it’s excellent profile for the city, we are the second city so it’s brilliant that we’ve got the conference here. Yes it’s slightly inconvenient but it does mean extra investment for the city as local and city-wide shops are going to benefit from the conference.
“Politics tends to be London centric, so for me, the fact that it’s in Birmingham is a very, very positive thing, it’s an opportunity for us in Birmingham to show the Conservative party just how well we are doing.”
Politics Show: Patrick Burns Blog
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No wonder the city’s hotels have been fully booked for weeks. With some 14,000 delegates and 2,000 more of us media types, this event is on a truly epic scale. In addition to the formal business in the conference hall itself, there are no fewer than 450 fringe events in the surrounding hotels and restaurants.
Politics will be all the buzz in the cafes and bars of Broad Street, the heart of Birmingham’s ‘entertainment mile’.
When the Tories were last here two years ago, Marketing Birmingham say it had an “economic impact” of £28m. There are confident predictions that this figure will be surpassed this time, now that the era of the ‘new politics’ has dawned.
FT: Brum booms to sound of egos landing
The Birmingham Symphony Hall has the loftiest ceiling of any conference venue. But even these soaring heights were barely enough to contain some of the egos that arrived there on Tuesday.
De Havilland: Conservative Fringe – For Goodness Sake: In an age of progressive austerity, can private philanthropy replace public subsidy for the arts?
Significant cuts to the arts would not be offered to the Treasury as an easy option in the Spending Review, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey assured Conservative delegates today. Addressing a Conservative party conference fringe meeting organised by the A.
Birmingham welcomes delegates to the Conservative Party Conference
Birmingham partnered up with national thinktank Centre for Cities on Sunday, 3rd October, to welcome senior politicians, media and businesses to the Conservative Party Conference.
The reception guests heard speeches by Cllr Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council and Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP. Secretary of State. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
The event was attended by over 200 guests, including national media and senior business figures, all of whom were treated to a phtographic exhibition by Steve McCurry which has received world-wide acclaim.
