Our message to the new cabinet team for transport

Filed under: Statement

We sent this by email to the new cabinet team for Transport at Birmingham City Council on Friday 5 June 2026, shortly after their appointment.

We have since received a positive response agreeing to a meeting shortly.

Congratulations on your appointment – request for meeting

Dear Councillors Rob Grant and Izzy Knowles,

Congratulations on your appointment as the Cabinet Member and Deputy Cabinet Member with responsibility for transport.

It is of vital importance that you are both able to clearly articulate, advocate for and weather system-level changes to transport provision across the city.

Over the past four years, we worked closely with previous cabinet members and officers on a range of transport issues. Particularly on the topics of road safety and delivering the Birmingham Transport Plan. We hope to continue this relationship with you.

As you will know, the previous administration adopted an incredibly bold and ambitious set of transport policies, however was unable to deliver them. This is particularly true of traffic circulation management and through-traffic reduction schemes, many of which were shelved or outright cancelled, in part because of political leadership and also because of council process failures.

This has contributed to Birmingham’s declared road safety emergency – where someone is killed every fortnight on average, which means that unless action is taken, during this council term 106 people could lose their lives in avoidable crashes with thousands more injured, many with life-changing injuries.

Prior to the election campaign, we published a set of ten asks signed by 17 local and national organisations, co-signed by many successful Green and Lib Dem councillors, which we believe will address the road safety emergency: betterstreetsforbirmingham.org/2026

During our relationship with the Council and councillors, we have found that transport planning officer policy is solid, however the policy becomes thwarted by delivery. For example, some schemes we highlighted as overdue in a 2023 inquiry are yet to be delivered. This is in stark contrast to other authorities in the region.

We have also found that the wider council has not bought into transport policy under a “one council approach”, which we have previously highlighted to the Council’s Managing Director. Particularly with regard to highways engineers designing with discouraged interventions and undertaking bizarre consultation processes, highways within planning making decisions contrary to the transport plan, and the parks service installing exclusionary barriers.

We are asking you to commit to:

1. Delivering transport projects already in the pipeline, such as Mayar Yahia Square, Kings Heath and Moseley LTN, the City Centre Movement and Access Strategy and the A38 cycle lane extension
   
2. Adopting our ten steps to address the road safety emergency, with a response from officers on how they plan to make this happen
   
3. Outlining a timeline for adopting newly available powers on pavement parking
   
4. Adopting a new speed reduction policy that explicitly states that speed cushions are not an acceptable use of council funding
   
5. Lobbying the Mayor’s office for Birmingham’s 2027-32 Transport for City Region projects as part of the ongoing Rosewell Review, and new devolved funding levers to deliver the region’s mass rapid transit ambitions in addition to street-level transformations

We would appreciate a meeting with you to discuss your priorities and our asks at your earliest convenience.

Best wishes

Paul Manzotti, Florence Cadge and Martin Price
Co-chairs and Outgoing Chair

Cc: Phil Edwards – Director of Infrastructure and Sustainability, Mel Jones – Head of Transport Planning