Emotions run high outside council house as Birmingham councillors pass cuts and council tax rises

Save Birmingham Youth Service protesters joined union members and other people hit by the forthcoming cuts.

Despite the city being Europe's youngest and in the grip of a teenage stabbing epidemic Birmingham Youth Service are set to bare the brunt of the cuts along with disabled children and other vulnerable groups who rely on council services.

Youth workers and centres are set to be closed due to cuts to a budget which is tiny in comparison to the hundreds of millions wasted on faulty IT systems and historic equal pay claims.

One protester said: "Those councillors voting through this budget just do not care about young people. They deserve everything they get in the coming years, axing early years help, sacking youth workers, closing down youth centres will create more youth crime and easy pickings for county line and sexual exploitation gangs on the streets on our city. They decimated youth services in this city ten years ago and all the warnings came true, child criminals became more violent and younger. The same will happen again."

The protest was the third in three weeks by Save Birmingham Youth service with backing from unions, at a cabinet meeting last month they drowned out the proceedings inside and demanded the leadership to accept letters written by children.

Green Party Councillor for Druids Heath, one of the poorest estates in Birmingham which has a thriving youth centre which almost certainly will be closed, Julian Pritchard read out letters of young people at the budget meeting.

The letters were from some of the most vulnerable children in the city who begged leaders not to axe their local centres.

He said: "These are the voices of our young people and it is clear they want and need the youth services which provide so much to the people of Birmingham."

Speaking after the five hour meeting which saw the budget passed easily, with all Labour's councillors in the chamber voting for the motion, Unite national officer for local authorities Clare Keogh said: “These cuts are devastating for Birmingham council’s workers and the entire city. Vital public services are on the brink of being all but destroyed. This is the culmination of years and years of brutal budget reductions by central government.

“Birmingham council’s workers, who have already suffered well over a decade of falling wages and whose efforts have ensured increasingly depleted services functioned, must not pay the price for a crisis they didn’t create.

"Unite will do everything in its power, politically and industrially, to ensure they don’t."

A youngster, who did not want to be named, had travelled to the council house on the bus to protest. He said: "I don't understand. I don't want my youth centre to close. I like having somewhere safe to go."

The city's arts and culture will also be hit hard by the budget with theatres, orchestras and other organisations preparing for their grants to be totally axed. Users of local libraries also protested outside the council house, which is less than 500 metres from the giant Central Library which cost £188m but had to have its opening hours cut due to running costs.

Lyle Bignon, UK music consultant and Night Time Economy (NTE) Ambassador (Birmingham) for the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), said: "The proposed cuts to council culture budgets confirm what many of us working in arts, culture, entertainment, music and NTE in Birmingham have known for some time.

"Our city's council, regional authorities, and key agencies have simply not placed enough value on culture over the years, despite its proven social and economic benefits.

The city's taxpayers, as well as being told to expect less services for their council tax now know there will be 9.99% rise in council tax in the next year.

Council leader John Cotton apologised to citizens for the "unprecedented" cuts, telling councillors the "budget before council today is not the budget I entered politics to set".

Mr Cotton said: "It is not a budget I ever envisaged for our city. Sadly, however, it is a budget that reflects the significant challenges currently facing this council.

"Because the harsh reality is we must make cuts of over £300 million over the next two financial years in order to receive exceptional financial support from Government, and to meet the challenge set by commissioners.

"As the report before us states, that is unprecedented in scale and, for that, I unreservedly apologise to the people and communities of our city."

Conservative group leader Robert Alden said: "Lord Mayor, this is an important budget, it's a budget that shows just how badly Birmingham Labour have made a mess of the council's finances and how they haven't got a real plan to fix that mess.

"Instead all Birmingham Labour have to offer is a double whammy of higher taxes and fewer services."

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Communities Secretary Michael Gove wrote: "Many more councils are not in the same position as Birmingham.

"The people in that great city have been terribly let down by Labour mismanagement. The contrast with the wise stewardship of West Midlands mayor Andy Street could not be starker."