There were three interesting presentations at yesterday’s public meeting of the Fox Hollies Green Neighbourhood Forum meeting, held in Oaklands Primary School. The presentations were given by:

• Naluda Kauser from the NHS Primary Care Trust (there are currently three PCTs in Birmingham but they are shortly to be merged into one) – Naluda was keen to encourage residents to get involved in the variety of public consultation events the Trust organises and have their say about the development of this part of the NHS. For more information see http://benpct.nhs.uk/
• Grace Welch, the Manager of the Fox Hollies Childrens Centre – see http://foxhollies.childrencentre.org/ – which is a Surestart centre run by Barnardos and Birmingham City Council on the Fox Hollies Road. It provides a wide variety services to local families with children aged 0-5. Grace stressed that they aim to be responsive to the needs of local families with young children and are increasing provision for fathers and grandparents as well as mothers.
• Sergeant Dave Mirams gave an update on the police reorganisation which has seen the police align their organisational boundaries with the City Council’s ward boundaries. He is setting up a monthly Acocks Green Ward tasking meeting, for residents to discuss issues with the police. This will first meet in July and is likely to be on the first thursday of each month (to be confirmed). Answering questions, Sgt Mirams accepted that the Police’s non urgent phone call centres currently have major problems with calls not being answered for many minutes. He said that the 999 system still works well and non urgent issues can be sent to him via email on acocksgreen@west-midlands.police.uk A number of local concerns were raised including complaints about anti-social behaviour from some customers of The Colosseum bar, traffic problems caused by parents dropping off and picking up their children from schools (Sgt Mirams promised an action week will be held on this issue in early July) and speeding on Fox Hollies Road outside the Children’s Centre. Sgt Mirams promised to look into all these issues.

The next meeting of the Forum will be its AGM, which will be held on Monday 4th October.