Transport
Birmingham City Council now has a new cabinet member for transport, Councillor Huxtable, so the group is looking forward to engaging with him in constructive dialogue about the kinds of improvements we feel are needed.

Interest from communities all over Birmingham continues to grow in our 20's Plenty campaign and a video has now been posted on YouTube to show what people think about it. Hopefully, as part of the process of engaging with people about In Town Without My Car Day this year, there will be more opportunities to talk about the measures needed to make the streets safer for cycling and walking, too.

The new government seems to have taken a step back from plans for High Speed Rail, but we are monitoring developments and will continue to present our vision of the best way to invest in the transport system in austere times.

Birmingham City Council have refused our Freedom of Information request on the report detailing how they justify spending £16m of taxpayers' money on moving the A45 in order to allow the runway extension to go ahead at Birmingham International Airport. However, we are still investigating the best way to challenge this and ensure the closest scrutiny is paid to all “state aid” to such environmentally damaging projects.

Local Shops and Food
Thanks to the massive efforts of groups like ours, there is now a private members bill on sustainable livestock going through the House of Commons. Now we have to ensure that all our local MPs will vote for this in November, so a summer of getting people to “Join the Moovement”, as the campaign is now called, lies ahead. Open Farm Sunday in June provided another opportunity for our campaigners to see what issues farmers have and explain to them what we're doing to try and improve the situation. Congratulations should go to Jubilee allotments who have finally opened after much hard work and we hope more inner city areas will get access to sites for growing food soon.

We are continuing to monitor developments with supermarket planning applications and are helping a group in Weoley Castle oppose the Asda application, that has come back again, on the edge of Woodgate Valley park.

Energy and Climate Change
As you can see from the main article in this month's newsletter, the group have now put together a comprehensive response to the city council's climate change action plan. This will continue to form a basis for feeding into the review of the action plan and dialogue with the new cabinet committee, who are looking at climate change action.

We have also been talking to senior figures about BCC publicly supporting local carbon budgets to ensure all councils have a legal responsibility to act on reducing their CO2 emissions and are given support to do so.

Crafting/Recycling
The Happily Ever Crafter Group continues to attract new people in to take part in practical and fun activities. The Moseley Swap Shop, which happens every fourth Saturday of the month alongside the Farmers' Market, has been continuing the good work of spreading a message of re-using and not buying new stuff all the time. With BCC now developing a total waste strategy, the group needs to step up its waste campaigning to take advantage of this opportunity to influence policy and ensure resources aren't wasted by being thrown away or burnt.

Faith and Climate Change
The award-winning Faith and Climate Change Project has continued its impressive engagement work at the Birmingham Climate Change Festival on June 5th and the Solihull Green Fair. Training is taking place to engage people with energy audits over the summer.