Action Briefing Aug 2005 - Sept 2005
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Local Works for Sustainable Communities

Regular readers of Action Briefing will recall the Sustainable Communities Bill from last year. Not to be confused with the Government's definition of 'sustainable communities', the Bill introduces a method of genuinely devolving power over local services and economies to a local authority and community level, to the benefit of society and the environment.

Campaigners under the banner of 'Local Works' have the unenviable task of promoting the Bill's ambitious targets to the upper echelons of central government while at the same time taking the message into communities with a series of public meetings, the most recent in Moseley, Birmingham.

Despite an interesting line-up of speakers, including Lynne Jones MP (Labour, Selly Oak), Stuart Masters (Green Party), Phil Beardmore (Birmingham Sustainable Energy Partnership) and Charles Secrett (Local Works), it occurred to some of us that the Moseley meeting was structured in a rather 'top down' fashion: just the speakers followed by questions from the audience, with no emphasis on what local people could actually do beyond writing to their MP (who was, in any case, present). OK, so most public meetings are structured in this way, but we wondered if the Local Works campaign shouldn't try to better reflect the structure of the Bill it trying to promote.

We suggested to Local Works that future meetings could leave time for local people to give thought to what they would want for their own communities if the Bill became law, as well as to commit to supporting not only the campaign but its aims of promoting local economies, services and facilities, environmental protection, social inclusion and participation. Local Works told us that the primary purpose of the meetings is to persuade MPs to publicly back the Bill, but that they would give our ideas some thought. Because the Bill is so ambitious, it makes sense to me to use the campaign to catalyse other local action, and avoid putting all our world-transforming eggs into one political basket as it were.

Yardley Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has recently expressed an interest in the campaign, so the next Local Works meeting will be at South Yardley Library, 7.30pm-9.30pm on Thursday 29th September. Local Works are looking for volunteers to help publicise the meeting by putting posters up, spreading the word and getting other groups on board; the local branch of any one of the myriad of organisations who are supporting the Bill would be a great place to start. If you can help, call Stephen Shaw at the Local Works office on 020 7833 9898 or e-mail steve@actnetwork.org.uk. For more information on the Bill and its supporters, visit www.localworks.org.

Karen Leach

Take Action
Bills are reintroduced to Parliament at the start of each new parliamentary session as Early Day Motions (EDMs) which MPs can sign to show their support for the Bill. This year the Sustainable Communities Bill is reborn as EDM 641 but no Birmingham MPs have signed it to date (4th Aug), so now would be a good time to get writing to your MP, especially if you are also planning to write to them about the Climate Change Bill (EDM 178).