What is Birmingham 2026? Birmingham 2026 is the long-term community strategy shaping Birmingham’s future; our vision for the future. It is vital to the success of the UK’s economy. It will be based on firm evidence, reflecting what local people and organisations say are the big issues for the city over the next two decades. It sets out how Birmingham's stakeholders will respond to these challenges. It is developed by Be Birmingham, the local strategic partnership for our city, which brings together partners from the business, public, community, voluntary and faith sectors, to deliver a better quality of life in Birmingham. Birmingham’s first community strategy was launched in 2002, and updated in 2005. Working in partnership, we’ve achieved a great deal, but there’s still more to do. This draft new strategy takes a look at progress to date. It defines key issues facing the city – which we must work together to meet. This plan focuses on the long term rather than "quick fixes". It offers everyone the opportunity to be involved in building an even better future.

Our Vision It's 2026... Birmingham is a globally competitive city contributing fully to the thriving, prosperous and sustainable city-region. Birmingham people have high aspirations, and the skills and opportunities they need to succeed. Birmingham is a safe, clean and friendly city that is tackling climate change protecting the local environment. People are healthy and economically successful, and enjoy living together. The city is truly 'a global city with a local heart'.

Consulting on the draft Strategy In developing a draft strategy upon which to consult with Birmingham people, we have listened hard to what thousands of local people have told us over the last two years about what is important, what needs to be improved, and what they want to do to improve the city. We summarised what we heard, and translated this into a draft strategy for the next 20 years We then used this draft to consult widely across the city to ensure that the strategy reflects the needs of Birmingham’s diverse population. A number of individuals and organisations representing our diverse communities, hard to reach groups, key stakeholders and representatives within the council and the Be Birmingham Strategic Partnership received full copies of the draft SCS. They were asked to provide detailed responses to the document, either directly or through structured face to face consultation events. We posted the full version of the strategy, and a summary version on the City Council and Be Birmingham’s websites. We also made the full strategy and summary version available in key locations across the city, (including neighbourhood offices, libraries and Job Centre Plus offices) and invited responses from those reading the strategy. We distributed short questionnaires across the city and at various events, aimed at assessing which of the key priority outcomes of the strategy were most important to Birmingham citizens. Additionally, a specially designed consultation pack for schools provided valuable feedback from young people across the city. We received an excellent response from the questionnaire, which will allow for the key priorities of Birmingham people to be reflected in the final strategy. The detailed feedback we received has provided an invaluable critical assessment of the draft strategy. As well as highlighting specific issues, this process also provided an excellent assessment of people’s views on the overall vision and structure of the strategy. The collation and analysis of the consultation responses has now been completed, and we are currently using these in the redrafting process. The comments received included issues such as: Given the timescale involved the 2026 vision should be more ambitious Providing a stronger focus on the positive aspects of Birmingham’s diversity A more Birmingham specific approach is needed with greater focus on how the people of Birmingham as well as its businesses are essential to the success of the 2026 vision A greater focus on individual subjects such as dealing with emergency situations (including the effects of climate change) Better signposting to other documents where more detail can be found The role of the voluntary sector needs to be clearer

Next steps The consultation period is now over and a final report, together with a report on the consultation we undertook, will be available after the summer.