Multicultural city revealed

housing crisis as the rest of the country due to a lack of affordable properties, which is causing homelessness to rise. It affects all aspects of life from finding work to accessing health services.

A recent report revealed that in simple terms the population in the city is growing at a faster rate than homes are being built leading to major overcrowding across all housing sectors.

Around 20,000 households in the city every year are either homeless or at risk of being homeless.

The council recently revealed that more than 2,000 people in the city are in temporary accommodation, including over 500 in bed and breakfasts - of those 200 are located outside Birmingham. A key message during the consultation was that an inability to speak English is a major barrier for some people to integrate in the city.

Around 47,000 residents live in Birmingham who cannot speak English or at least speak it well.

While more than 40 per cent of school children in the city have a different first language. Anti-social behaviour and crime are considered to be both a cause and consequence of a divided city as well as being linked to low achievement at school.

Vulnerable teenagers with a poor support system are easily drawn into knife crime and drug dealing.

In 2017 there were 370 hospital admissions in Birmingham due to knife attacks, nearly double the 205 recorded five years earlier.

Discrimination against BME individuals is also present in the justice system.

In Birmingham black or black British youths between the ages of 10 and 17 make up nearly 50 per cent of young people who are handed jail sentences, despite the fact they only account for 11 per cent of that age group’s population. One in four people in the West Midlands have a mental health issue, while those from BME backgrounds, the LGBT community (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and the homeless are more vulnerable.

Recent NHS figures for Birmingham and Solihull showed that now one in ten adults registered with a GP have been diagnosed with depression with numbers having shot up from 54,000 to 96,000 people in five years.

It is estimated that every year around 70 people in the city take their own life.

Just last week the city council moved to review its mental health and suicide prevention action plan. There are more women in Birmingham than men – 51 per cent to 49 per cent – yet there remains a £5,000 gender pay gap with females earning less on average.

Only 41 per cent of high skilled jobs in the city are carried out by women and there is a stark difference between the proportion of working age women and men in any form of employment – 54 per cent to 74 per cent.

There are also nearly three times as many ‘priority need’ homeless applications from women as there are from men in Birmingham.

This is against the backdrop of gender-based violence and crime such as domestic abuse, harassment, sexual assault, female genital mutilation and forced marriages.