Grand opening of Chelmsley Wood's new Enterprise Centre

BIZ BUZZ: The enterprise centre was launched
last Thursday evening.

CHELMSLEY Wood's brand-new Enterprise Centre had its official launch last week.

Meriden MP Caroline Spelman and Melody Hossaini - a former candidate on BBC's The Apprentice - joined local business owners for the grand unveiling.

The ground floor of the £2m facility has seminar rooms and hot-desking areas, while upstairs there is office space available for local businesses (be they start-up companies, sole traders or larger firms,)

The purpose-built premises, part of the Chelmund's Cross development, is at the heart of Solihull Council's plans to promote business growth in the local area.

While the borough has traditionally been the engine of the West Midlands economy, growth was brought to a shuddering halt by the recession.

This led to the the local authority drawing up plans to nurture new businesses and encourage job creation, with an action plan announced several years ago.

One of the main challenges identified was the gulf between the number of businesses being set up in North and South Solihull.

According to the 2011 Census, only eight per cent of the working population in Chelmsley Wood are self-employed. By comparison, a far greater proportion of people are working for themselves south of the A45 (in areas like Knowle and Dorridge, as many as one in five.)

It is hoped that the Enterprise Centre will help readdress the balance and the council has set a target of having the site 70 per cent occupied by next year.

Green Party announce their candidate for Meriden

GREEN SURGE: Alison Gavin, a local teacher, will
contest Meriden for the Green Party.

PUSHING for decent public services will be a top priority for the Green Party’s candidate in Meriden.
It was announced this week that Alison Gavin would go up against Caroline Spelman in the constituency that includes North Solihull.
The teacher – who has lived in the area for eight years and previously taught at Oaklands School, in Smith’s Wood – said that the Greens were the only party offering a genuine alternative.
“We need a restructure of public services that works for the common good of all people, not just the interests of big corporations where profit is their number one motive,” said Ms Gavin.
“At the moment we have Labour and UKIP too similar to the Con-Lib coalition to be able to make any difference.”
Councillor Howard Allen, who will stand for the party in neighbouring Solihull, described Ms Gavin as a “first rate candidate” and said that her commitment to fairness would resonate with voters.
While the Greens finished sixth in the constituency at the last General Election, they argue that they are now the official opposition to Conservative incumbent Mrs Spelman.
In 2010, the Greens had a single council seat, but have added five more since – wiping out Labour in Chelmsley Wood and Smith’s Wood wards.
Activists locally will also be buoyed by news that their national polling is now at a 20-year high and membership has soared to over 40,000. The surge in support is believed to have been driven by broadcasters' original intention to exclude the party from the pre-election TV debates.

HOW THEY LINE UP: 100 days before polling day,
all the major parties have now announced their candidate for Meriden.

Concentration camp survivor to speak at CTC Kingshurst

A MAN who survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp will be speaking at the CTC Kingshurst Academy next week.
Dr Martin Stern (pictured above) was just five-years-old when German soldiers arrived to arrest him at his nursery school in Amsterdam. The schoolboy's "crime" was that his father was a Jew.
He was taken, along with his one-year-old sister, to Theresienstadt - half way between a ghetto and fortress.
Tens of thousands lost their lives in the camp; many were murdered outright, others died as a result of malnutrition or disease.
"It was disgustingly overcrowded," said Dr Stern, during a previous visit to Solihull. "It stank to high heaven, and we couldn't wash properly. I probably wore the same clothes all the time I was there.
"There were fleas, bed bugs, mice...And towards the end of my time in that place, there was a typhus outbreak. It killed a lot of people, those who had not already died of starvation."
At the camp, Martin and his baby sister were cared for by a kindly woman, Catharina Casoeto de Jong, who had been incarcerated for marrying a Jewish market trader.
Mercifully the children were never called to be  transported to Auschwitz - a worse camp still, where more than a million people perished.
In 1945, with Hitler's forces retreating across Europe, Martin awoke to discover the Red Army had liberated Theresienstadt. Of the 15,000 children who had been sent to the camp, the siblings were among the handful who had survived.
Dr Stern would go on to study at Oxford University and become an eminent immunologist in England. In recent years he has toured the country, talking to schoolchildren about his ordeal.
He has given several such talks at the CTC in recent years and will be returning for Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday (January 27),
The free talk will be taking place from 6-8pm. You can find out more here or call 0121 329 8300 to reserve seats.

When Winston visited Castle Bromwich...

WAR EFFORT: Winston Churchill visits Castle
Bromwich in 1941. Picture/Imperial War Museum

TODAY'S newspapers are full of photos of Winston Churchill - who died exactly 50 years ago.

One image overlooked by the national press, which will be of particular interest to local readers, is this shot taken in 1941.

It shows the wartime Prime Minister during a visit to the Castle Bromwich Aerodrome.

He is pictured talking to Alex Henshaw, who was the site's chief test pilot for Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers built at the adjoining factory.

Mr Henshaw would go on to write a book about his role and following his death in 2007, McCarthy and Stone decided to name a new retirement complex in Chester Road after the well-known figure.

Woman rescued from Smith's Wood fire

FIREFIGHTERS rescued a woman following a blaze at her Smith’s Wood home in the early hours of this morning (Saturday).
The resident had a lucky escape after being overcome by smoke at her Greenfinch Road property; neighbours had heard the smoke alarm and dialled 999.
Crews from West Midlands Fire Service’s technical rescue unit arrived at the address at just before 3am and braved the flames to rescue the unconscious woman.
Outside the property, paramedics administered oxygen, which helped to bring the woman round.
A West Midlands Ambulance spokesman said: “Upon assessment [she] was found to have suffered no burns from the fire and continued to respond well to treatment on scene, indicating no serious issues with her airways.”
She was taken to Heartlands Hospital by ambulance for further treatment. The cause of the fire is being investigated.

Smith's Wood men jailed after cannabis factory is uncovered

BUSTED: Officers discovered the plants inside the small
flat.  Photo/West Midlands Police.

TWO local men have been jailed, after police discovered £72,000 worth of cannabis in a two-bedroom flat.
Daniel Carter, 22, and Jamie Elkin, 26, were convicted of producing the Class B drug and sentenced to 22 months in prison.
The pair, both of Starling Grove, Smith’s Wood, had been cultivating the crop inside the cramped property.
But the illegal enterprise was uncovered by officers from the Smith’s Wood and Castle Bromwich Neighbourhood Team last year.
Photos posted by the team earlier today showed a “jungle” of cannabis plants and the sophisticated equipment used to nurture them.
Carter and Elkin were sentenced by the courts last week and the plants have been incinerated at a special "waste to energy" plant, in line with force policy.

Cannabis Factories: It was revealed only this week that West Midlands Police seized 52,218 cannabis plants in the space of just 12 months and increasingly officers are uncovering factories designed to grow the drug on an industrial scale. While the set-up in Smith’s Wood was confined to a single property, some gangs use several addresses at a time. Often police deploy thermal imaging equipment to discover factories, as well as relying on more traditional methods of detection. A few years ago I accompanied a pair of PCSOs on a patrol of Smith’s Wood and they told me that the pungent smell of the drug could sometimes lead officers straight to an offender’s front door.
If you have information about possible drug offences in your area, contact your local neighbourhood team on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

UKIP select parliamentary candidate

A FORMER member of the Army’s bomb disposal unit has been chosen as UKIP’s parliamentary candidate for Meriden.

Mick Gee (pictured above) was selected by the party last year and will challenge Conservative incumbent Caroline Spelman for the seat which encompasses North Solihull.

In 2010, Mrs Spelman won her fourth consecutive election, increasing her majority to over 16,000.

UKIP’s candidate Barry Allcock lost his deposit after winning fewer than 1500 votes (2.6 per cent of the total).

Five years on the party is feeling rather more positive about its prospects, having won its first two MPs in high-profile by-elections and continuing to perform strongly in the opinion polls.

Locally, UKIP has secured its first Solihull councillor in Kingshurst & Fordbridge; Debbie Evans unseated the leader of the Labour group at last year’s local elections.

The party also came a close second in Castle Bromwich and the Conservatives are likely to be troubled by how near the eurosceptics came to capturing a traditional Tory stronghold.

Mr Gee said: “The forthcoming election promises to be the most unpredictable for many years. I am going to work very hard in Meriden to prove to the residents that I can successfully represent them in Parliament and fight for their concerns.”

The former serviceman spent 22 years in the Army, before leaving in 2008 to take a job at Jaguar Land Rover, in Wolverhampton.

The father-of-two’s election pledges include opposing proposals to build homes on part of Babbs Mill Nature Reserve and calling for a new community hub to be created at Kingshurst. He has also spoken out against the bedroom tax and the HS2 rail link.

• Other Side of Solihull will be keeping readers up-to-date with all the latest elections news between now and May 7. Closer to polling day we will approach all the candidates standing in Meriden to ask them to outline why you should vote for them.