LOCAL COUNCILLOR ENCOURAGES VANDALISM AND FLY TIPPING

Who needs enemies when you have friends like your local councillor?

After years of successfully discouraging fly-tipping on grot spot Church Vale ‘Triangle’, local group Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) discovered that the planters and borders the group had lovingly and patiently tended had disappeared. Was it yet another act of mindless vandalism? It appears not. To our utter disbelief, it appears that local Councillor Mahmood Hussain was behind this.

These are the Facebook posts which alerted us yesterday morning (22.3.25):

LB: Our councillor instructed BCC contractor, ‘Kier’, to remove the tyre planters and plants we installed on Church Vale Triangle, and had maintained for four years. This was just after Simon and I had spent an afternoon trimming the plants and tidying the Triangle.

This corner will now return to being the weed-filled fly-tipping site it was until 2021. (As you can see, the fly-tipping has already started.)

Hundreds of hours of voluntary work by HHH members and friends wasted!

SB: We’re very disappointed to find that the plants and planters arrayed in a dozen tyres – almost hidden by burgeoning foliage – have all been removed from the apex of the ‘Triangle’ in Church Vale B20 where HHH volunteers arranged and planted them in 2021.

Is it thievery? Why would a thief bother with all those tyres – carefully fixed together – and several hundred weight of compost? Is it a council contractor? Kier have been working on trip hazard bricks on the triangle and two of their workers told me two weeks ago they planned to tidy and jet wash the relaid surface of this pocket park.

I’ve no idea why this could have been part of a general clean up given that other corners of the triangle are stacked high with abandoned waste.

This morning – Thursday 20th March – I cycled down and asked around the Church Vale shop keepers and the garage. No-one had seen anything. I’ve phoned Cllr Mahmood Hussain and he is making enquiries. This may progress our request for CCTV on the Don Brown Memorial Triangle.

Photo taken March 2024

On behalf of HHH, Simon Baddeley decided to take the bull by the horns and immediately contacted Leader of the Council Cr Cotton with the following complaint:

Dear Cllr Cotton,

REMOVAL OF CHURCH VALE TRIANGLE PLANTERS B20 3SG

I am Hon Sec of Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) – a small voluntary group working in the local areas of Handsworth, Birchfield, Lozells and Holyhead since 2010, striving to improve the area for local people as well as performing a wide range of assistive errands for vulnerable people. In 2015 HHH was given a Lord Mayor’s Award for Community Service and in 2020 we received a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

I wish to draw your attention to the removal of tyre planters and approximately £150 worth of mature shrubs and flowers, placed in the Church Vale Triangle by Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) volunteers in 2021 and regularly maintained by HHH volunteers ever since.

On Wednesday 19th March our treasurer, Lin Baddeley, shopping at Church Vale, found that the planters to which she had given special attention – buying shrubs and flowers over the years and, more even than other volunteers, regularly attending to their care – had gone, all nine tyres arranged in one corner of the Triangle, containing several hundredweight of good compost, shrubs and flowers budding and flowering for the spring. Our first thought was that the planters and their contents had been stolen. This happens with plants alone and HHH volunteers are used to swiftly replacing what’s stolen or vandalised.

I contacted our ward councillor, Mahmood Hussain, who lives hardly 300 yards from the Triangle. He said he didn’t know anything about this adding that “they might have been removed by Kier”. He said he would contact Kier for me.

We now find that the planters and their contents were removed by Kier with Cllr Hussain’s approval because he thought they looked ‘untidy’ and were ‘not being maintained’. We have just learned from a council employee that a photo-shoot is planned by Birmingham City Council on Monday 24th March 2025. We believe this photoshoot is to showcase the excellent surface maintenance work carried out by Kier on the Triangle. We agree their work on the trip hazards on the Triangle and the tree surround is very good and timely, but our planters and their greenery have gone, leaving the one attractive corner of the Triangle as vulnerable to the constant flytipping that blights the other two corners.

I attach before and after photos taken this week (the one on this post is just the planters a day before they were removed)

These planters and their contents, part of the city’s ‘Cleaner-Greener’ agenda, have been seen and enjoyed daily by a very large footfall of local people including many schoolchildren and their parents. With the coming of spring the plants and flowers in these planters were burgeoning.

Our councillor knows very well that HHH regularly works on the de-littering and planting of the Church Vale Triangle (also known as the Alderman Don Brown Commemorative Triangle) and have done so for over a decade. On this occasion Cllr Hussain did not get in touch with any of us beforehand, though he knows us and our contact details well. So, despite HHH’s regular work gardening these planters and the other flower beds next to them over many years, as well as sweeping and litter picking on the Triangle, and lobbying Cllr Hussain to stop the extensive and regular flytipping on the Triangle and get CCTV installed, HHH’s planters and their contents were removed wholesale by Kier two days ago.

HHH had permission and approval from BCC Highways Department in 2021 prior to the installation of these planters.

Best wishes

Simon

Simon Baddeley, Hon Sec

Handsworth Helping Hands (Queens Award for Voluntary Service 2020)

07806 816730

simon@baddeley.be

Committee members: Shaik Faisal Ahmed, Simon (Hon Sec) & Linda Baddeley (Hon Treasurer), Sr. Simone Hanel, Nina Hayr (Councillor liaison), Mike Tye (Acting chair HHH, Birchfield Environmental Strategy Group),

Find us on…https://www.facebook.com/groups/334430036631024/

Councillors and MP reactions:

Cr Hussain has been contacted and we are eargerly awaiting his response.

Birmingham City Council Deputy Leader Sharon Thompson has also been contacted and was asked to help in this matter.

We understand that fellow Cr Hendrina Quinnen (Handsworth Ward) justified the move on the grounds that the tyres used as planters presented a fire hazard.

Erratum: We have been reliably informed that Cr Hendrina Quinnen speculated and merely wondered if it was due to a concern about fire hazard.

Lozell’s Councillor Waseem Zaffar was shocked and said “These schemes may be small but they’re the small building blocks of community.”

Perry Barr MP Ayoub Khan said he is making a ‘formal complaint about Kier’s action approved by Cllr Hussain.

The public’s angry reaction was swift, as can be seen in the HHH Facebook post (30 active reactions at the time of publishing): https://www.facebook.com/groups/334430036631024/