My patch - Solihull
C'llr – September 2009

Mark Smulian meets Solihull leader Ken Meeson, whose first election success was as an independent campaigning on a very local issue, and who still puts local needs above party politics

Ken Meeson's entry into local government attracted national headlines. "Unknown independent beats Tebbitt's brother", the story went in 1984, as he unexpectedly found himself a councillor.

He had stood in Solihull's Dorridge ward in opposition to a school reorganisation, and his victory over Peter Tebbitt caused great surprise, not least to himself. "I'd never even been to a council meeting at that stage, but after three months the bug bit and I got really interested in local government, mainly in education and especially in children with special educational needs," he recalls.

He was born in east London - traces of the accent remain - and was a police officer in Yorkshire before settling in Solihull in 1970 originally as a local government claims investigator, later working in insurance.

Come the next elections he won Dorridge as a Conservative and five years later found himself leading their minority administration.

Ken lost his seat in the Tories' 1996 wipe-out but regained it two years later - "I live in the ward I represent and it would be wrong to just switch to a so-called safe seat" - and still sits for what is now Dorridge and Hockley Heath. Last year he once again became leader and, unusually, combines this with being cabinet member for children's services. At 70, he still works part-time as governors' clerk for a further education college in neighbouring Birmingham.

"I just enjoy it all, though I hate to think how many hours I work," he says. Solihull makes a range of demands on councillors because of the huge socio-economic differences between its south and north.

The south is mainly leafy avenues of semidetached and detached houses, one of the country's most affluent areas and in places almost rural.

This is where Ken's ward lies and it's one of those places where the councillors don't hold surgeries "because we tried it and nobody turned up, it's that type of area, and people telephone, or email, or turn up on my doorstep".

'Garden grabbing' is the big issue for councillors. "The major problem in my ward is that property prices are high and it's attractive for developers to buy up a family home with a garden, demolish it and put in a block of flats," Ken explains. "The two concerns are that it does nothing to provide more affordable housing, and it changes the nature of the neighbourhood from one of families to one of households without children, with knock-on effects, for example on the schools' viability.

"Those developments are not really answering any demographic change, as only those in fairly highly paid jobs can afford them and they do nothing for what is very much an ageing population."

Poor bus services are also an issue in an area that is 70%green belt with many scattered settlements.

"The West Midlands was under some pressure from government to bring in road pricing, but we were very much against it in Solihull because people working here cannot get to work except by car," he says.

"It's been a big issue recently because of reorganisation of bus routes, and we've almost become a transport operator, as we commission our own bus services at a very significant cost."

Ken's responsibilities to the whole borough can conflict with those as a ward councillor, but he thinks this is a difficulty that every councillor must manage. "Sometimes tensions arise, for example a proposal to develop something in your ward might be unpopular but desperately needed for the good of the borough and you have to learn how to handle that.

"It happened to me with a business park, which took some local open space, but the borough really needed it."

To the north of Birmingham airport lies a very different Solihull, an area of 40-odd-years-old council estates with some 8,000 homes, which is now the site of one of Europe's largest regeneration projects.

Ken says: "Solihull has this reputation for being very affluent, but that conceals that nearly one third is areas that are among the 5-10%most deprived in the country and the thing I'm proudest of at the moment is the regeneration happening in north Solihull.

"The main aspect is not just building but building communities, and it's very much education led."

He explains that council land is put into the regeneration partnership with house builder Bellway at current value - a negligible sum in the case of the area's large open spaces - and once it is developed and the properties sold the profit is reinvested in the regeneration partnership.

The same approach is used to build 10 new schools to replace 16 old ones. Sites of former schools are sold for development and the proceeds devoted to construction of the new ones, which Ken says will be fewer in number, but better distributed. Somewhat controversially, new secondary schools in north Solihull will be academies, but at least one will have an unconventional sponsor.

"One of our most successful schools in one of the most affluent areas, Arden school, is remaining a council-sponsored but the governors have formed a trust to manage Park Hall school, which has been in special measures, as an academy," Ken explains.

North Solihull's estates do not look the kind of place that normally votes Conservative, and Ken notes that visiting government ministers have often asked why a Tory council is putting so much effort into an area that does not vote for it.

"It's not a matter of party politics, it's the right thing for the borough to try to improve homes and skills," he says.

The emphasis on education in north Solihull is part of a wider effort to improve skills locally, and indeed across the region.

"I've always been interested in education and it's not rocket science that if you want to reduce unemployment you've got to increase skills and people's expectations and confidence and that is why north Solihull's regeneration is very much education led," Ken says.

"People in north Solihull are not unskilled, but the skills they have are ones nobody has use for any more, and that has led to long term unemployment, which has become generational for some."

Solihull is involved in one of the new multi area agreements, which focuses on high technology and environmental skills across the city region.

This is among a rash of local government initiatives, which have also seen the borough engaged in a Total Place pilot and Ken take a seat on the West Midlands Leaders' Board.

The Total Place exercise concerns children's services, and joint working with neighbours Coventry and Warwickshire.

"We've a long history of working well with the NHS and the police, government agencies and third sector and this is an extension of that work in looking at how partnership can use resources better," he says.

"One example is that Solihull has particular problems around unaccompanied asylum seeker children, which puts terrific pressure on us to find foster carers, yet we find other councils competing for carers and we need to work together on the best use of resources across the wider area."

Child asylum seekers are the subject of a lengthy dispute between Solihull and the Home Office. They are in Solihull, Ken says, not because they entered the UK at Birmingham airport but because the Home Office happened to buy a vacant local building as a reception centre.

"We just got a call from them saying they had opened this centre without telling us and these children were now our responsibility," Ken says.

Some children's stories are, he says, "quite horrific, there are young people who don't know if their parents are still alive, and although financially and logistically this is making life very difficult for council I have to say the majority of those young people are proving to be highly motivated and doing extremely well at school".

He sees the West Midlands Leaders Board as potentially useful, but already showing a democratic deficit and unclear priorities.

"The region is so diverse with different councils of different sizes and interests that it's quite a struggle to really have common ground," he says.

"There is also the democratic question as nearly all the councils are Conservative controlled and we have had robust debates about how we provide a wider voice for opposition parties within those arrangements."

Like other councils, Solihull is consulting on political structures. Despite the Conservatives' commitment to elected mayors in major cities, Ken declares firmly he is "not a fan" of them, because he feels this places too much power in one person's hands.

It should all make for interesting discussions with one local MP, the Tories' shadow communities and local government secretary Caroline Spellman.