Issue 84 | Autumn 2021
News from BKHS Bablake
Morning,
Mr Mayor!
A
n interview with West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street
My aspirations are to become a political journalist and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity of meeting Andy Street, West Midlands Mayor, during the October half term. He was attending a breakfast business meeting in Coventry and I was able to ask him a variety of questions. It is Coventry City Centre which has predominantly benefited from funding since Coventry was awarded the City of Culture, so I asked Andy his thoughts on how this boosted the economic status of the city. He said:
“There are tourists coming in, maybe fewer than if we were to have done it pre Covid-19, but 400,000 tickets have already been sold for events, a lot of them to ‘Coventrians’ but also to other visitors. That significantly helps the city.” Speaking about the ways in which it has boosted the job sector within the region, Andy said: “It looks like over a thousand jobs have been created indirectly through the ‘City of Culture’ and we have also trained around 500 people in areas such as event management and hospitality. In addition to this, it has been a great cultural festival.” I also asked about the state-of-the-art HS2 railway network to see if Andy thought it a worthwhile project.
He explained: “It gives us a brand new, utterly reliable, dedicated main transport spine North - South. So we have to make that once in a generation investment. You can already see the investment it’s bringing into Birmingham with the city being at the centre of that line so categorically yes.” It has been a rather eventful and successful first four years for Andy Street as Mayor of the West Midlands. He is aiming to carry his success into his second spell by enhancing the progress and development of Britain’s next generation train network, and he believes that this is one of the ways in which Birmingham and the West Midlands will recover from the pandemic in the coming years. Joshua Pilling
www.bkhs.org.uk