The Birmingham Dispatch

24/09/2025

Isabel* sensed something wasn’t right from the very first committee meeting. But she couldn’t put her finger on what. 

It was October 2022 and she was excited. She was at Raddlebarn Primary School after hours, corridors normally full of chattering children now empty and silent. In a small meeting room, a group of adults were gathered, a mix of senior school staff and parents who acted as governors for the school. 

Isabel was newly appointed to the latter group. Previously treasurer of the Friends of Raddlebarn, a parents and teachers association, Raddlebarn’s glossy headteacher, Angela Lowry, had recently recommended Isabel join the governor board. 

Isabel was proud to be asked, and relieved. Her mother had just died; she had time on her hands, and grief to channel. Plus, she was invested in the little red-brick Selly Oak school her children attended. It was a place with so much potential, struggling against budget cuts. Maybe, thought Isabel, with her background in financial services, she could help.

But as Angela Lowry introduced Isabel to the school’s financial officer, a cheerful man called David, and the meeting began, a sense of unease settled over her. 

“I felt really, really uncomfortable,” she remembers. “Everyone seemed very friendly and happy, but I didn’t see any actual financial control happening.”

Her instincts were onto something. Today Raddlebarn is sinking under a financial deficit of over £400,000.

Questions abound about financial irregularities surrounding the institution and Angela Lowry’s management of funds. 

But despite a 24-page report commissioned by Birmingham City Council that singles out Angela Lowry, it has been Raddlebarn’s parent governors who’ve found themselves under investigation by the council. 

While no direct evidence of fraud was found, the auditors said a number of missing receipts on Lowry’s purchase cards “could not rule out one way or another the possibility that those purchases may not have been school related.”

Approached by The Dispatch, Lowry said she had been away from Raddlebarn due to ill health. “I am not in a position to comment in detail on some of the operational and financial matters you refer to."

22/09/2025

It’s the middle of a hectic filming day when an email lands in everyone’s inbox: urgent announcement, mandatory Microsoft Teams call. Within minutes, a team of 250 scatters — some retreat to corners with phones in hand, others huddle in small groups, eyes fixed on screens. “We thought, that can’t be good,” recalls one makeup artist. 

The mood had shifted, like a montage from every Churchillian drama where everyone listens in as war is declared. Then a BBC executive appeared on the call. 

“You’re all doing a great job, and it’s a great show, but I’m so sorry — we have to cancel it,” was the message, our source recalls. No explanation followed. “We weren’t given reasons,” she says. And there was no acknowledgment of the impact, or trace of responsibility taken. 

The announcement was made on 18 October 2023, and that was the moment the cast and crew of BBC’s long-running daytime soap, Doctors, found out it was axed. First broadcast on 26 March 2000, Doctors ran for over 4,500 episodes, won 17 BAFTAs and – according to a source from the production – the BBC employed over 200 people to make it. 

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

22/09/2025

Your Monday Briefing is out now

Plus, Boxpark backs out of Digbeth

19/09/2025

The audience is a snapshot of Black Country diversity: young and old, black and white. Everyone is turned out to support a young Sikh woman who, last week, reported a brutal s*xual assault in Oldbury. She told the police that a racist remark was made to her during the r**e. The police, who believe it was a racially aggravated attack, are searching for two white men. One man has been arrested and released on bail.

Believe it or not, this vigil, organised by local women’s organisations, is a controversial gathering. Two days earlier, on Sunday, a different assembly and march took place on the streets of Smethwick. In a video posted by Sikh Youth UK, man in a turban speaks into a microphone: “Unless you have something to support our community, then stay out of it,” he says.

Although both Sunday and Tuesday’s gatherings were called to show support for the same victim, they represent a polarisation within the Smethwick Sikh community. 

Sikh Youth UK is a national organisation based in Smethwick whose voice has been front and centre in the wake of the r**e. But the group hasn’t responded positively to alternative community efforts, urging social media followers to “boycott” Tuesday’s vigil. 

Posting on Instagram before the event, they said: “the family of the victim has explicitly instructed that they only want Sikh leaders and organisations in direct contact to act on their behalf”. They claimed those behind Tuesday’s vigil were “hijacking this horrific incident for their own purposes, using Sikhs as pawns in their political battles”. 

But there is also a growing unease among Sikhs about how Sikh Youth UK has handled its response to the incident. Some Sikhs have said they sense an increasing undercurrent of Islamophobia, fuelled by narratives around “Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs,” despite the fact that the police are searching for two white men.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

15/09/2025

Your Monday Briefing is out now, incl:
🚨Latest on racially motivated Oldbury attack
⚽️Great Barr United's celeb backers
🗳️Reform win in Walsall council byelection
+much more

Plus, Great Barr United gets celebrity backing

13/09/2025

I kick things off with a softball question. What is Richard Parker’s favourite restaurant in Birmingham? I’m thinking he’ll be a Piccolino man, but perhaps he’ll surprise me by saying he enjoys an upmarket tikka masala at Asha’s.

I do not expect him to reply: “the one where the meal finishes as quickly as possible.”

Evidently, it’s not much fun being mayor of the West Midlands. It’s been 16 months — a third of Parker’s term — and the novelty seems to have worn off.

When he and I last spoke at length, it was just 110 days after his election. The jury was still out on what kind of leader he would be. Early reports suggested the former accountant was still in campaign mode: too focused on criticising his Conservative predecessor, not enough energy devoted to making his own mark. Perceptions of a lacklustre start weren’t helped by the West Midlands Combined Authority insiders who told The Dispatch that Parker had been slow to get going, taking a while to even appoint a team.

“Richard’s early days,” said one Labour source at the time, “have been marked [...] by disinterest”.

What’s more, part of Parker’s pitch for the job had been his close relationship to the national Labour party leadership, particularly his friend, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves. It was a clear departure from the more independent approach taken by the former mayor, Andy Street, and his Greater Manchester counterpart, Andy Burnham. The question was: could Parker put the West Midlands before his loyalty to Labour HQ?

Today, Parker still defends being a party man, maintaining that the region must work with the government, not against it.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

10/09/2025

“I believe in living in the times you are born into,” he told the Birmingham Post in 1963. “I don’t think a painter should isolate himself from the world he is living in — I can’t, anyway.”

In today's story (£), Ruth Millington examines the life of Brum's answer to Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

The fast-living painter left Brum search of the American Dream

06/09/2025

People were looking at each other, arms folded, rolling their eyes. The atmosphere in the top floor suite of Birmingham City University was getting tense.

It was the afternoon of Friday 8 November, 2024 and employees of BCU’s College of Psychology were listening to their recently-appointed vice chancellor, a professor of engineering named David Mba, tell them about big changes he was ready to implement across the institution. 

Over the next five years, Mba would transform BCU: less ivory tower, more focus on the street-level needs of the city and region. To make graduates more employable, he told the lecturers in attendance, the number of students getting “good grades” — 2.1 and above — needed to increase. Grades for groups facing challenges — especially Black students whose results are 33.1% lower than their white peers — needed to come up.

Several members of staff argued back, according to two attendees who described the discussion to me on the condition they weren’t named. Mba didn’t understand the constraints they were working under, lecturers told him. If he wanted results to improve, he needed to provide more support for students. At BCU, 45% of undergraduates come from the most economically deprived neighbourhoods in the country; 58% are black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background. 

One audience member raised their hand to point out that a recent decision to lower entry requirements — in 2024, BCU waived the need for some students to have a grade 4 in GCSE English and Maths — was counterproductive, if the university simultaneously expected an uplift in results. 

But Mba wasn’t having any of it. “So, you don’t think our students are good enough to be here?” he asked. The problem, he said, did not lie with the bright and capable student body, but with how their tutors perceived them. As far as he was concerned, it was time to stop using a “deficit model” approach and to start expecting more from their students.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

05/09/2025

Thanks to everyone who made it to last night for our sold out event! Focaccia was eaten, wine was quaffed and our panel of knowledgeable speakers tackled the big question: what can Birmingham do to become the UK's second city again?

We hope to see you at the next one.

01/09/2025

Your Monday Briefing is out now, ft:
📈Does Brum have an 'out of work' crisis?
🥊The big growth debate: WMCA vs Centre for Cities
💰2 x Brum National Lottery winners yet to claim prize
+ lots more
https://www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/does-brum-have-an-out-of-work-crisis/

30/08/2025

'I'm about to trek a journey through time and space - down the Harborne Walkway.'

The path explains everything about why this part of the city is the way it is.

Now a walking route, the city's first dedicated commuter line has a huge legacy

27/08/2025

Far-right extremists have been linked to the organising of Operation Raise the Flag - but ordinary people in South West Brum have joined in the frenzy.

What do they think about it all?

A local effort has snowballed into a national campaign — is it patriotism or something more sinister?