The Birmingham Independent Improvement Panel has reported on Birmingham City Council’s improvement progress since February 2017.

A new report has found that more vulnerable young people are living in poverty than at any time in the previous 10 years.
According to the Buttle UK report, The Real Face of Child Poverty in the UK in 2017, 44 per cent of families in crisis lack basic material items, meaning that over 400,000 children do not have their own bed to sleep in and have to sleep on the floor or share with parents or siblings.

A new £15 million fund has been made available for towns and cities across Northern England to support major culture and tech capital projects.
The Northern Cultural Regeneration Fund, announced by Culture Secretary Karen Bradley, will make grants of up to £4 million available to support the projects and help build a lasting regional legacy from the Great Exhibition of the North.

Newcastle City Council has announced the decision to rollout full fibre gigabit broadband across 25 of its social housing developments.
The rollout, provided by residential gigabit broadband provider Hyperoptic, will progress across almost 5,000 properties in 25 of the council’s social housing developments and will enable broadband speeds of 1,000Mbps – a speed reported as more than 30 times faster than the average.

Almost 40 per cent of carers who reported serious financial difficulties also felt socially isolated, a survey has found.
The Personal Social Services Survey of Adult Carers in England 2016-17 was published by NHS Digital and reports on the views of 55,700 carers who are caring for a person aged 18 or older.

The £3 million Lustrum Beck Flood Alleviation Scheme in Stockton-on-Tees is complete.
The Environment Agency and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council worked together on the £3 million award-winning scheme, which included replacing Londonderry Bridge and building new flood walls along the beck.
The Environment Agency also installed a new lifting screen at the culvert at Primrose Hill and had previously built a new flood wall along Bishopton Road.
The scheme reduces the risk of flooding to over 150 homes in the town.

The biggest development of homes built specifically for private rent in the UK is set to receive a £65 million boost from the government.

The second in the government’s series of fire safety tests of cladding and insulation combinations has been completed by the BRE.

Sexual health services are ‘at a tipping point’ after demand has increased and funds have decreased, councils warn.
Patients could have to wait longer for sexual health services with visits to clinics up by 25 per cent in five years at the same time that funding for councils to provide vital public health services has been cut, the Local Government Association (LGA) says.
In 2016 there were 2,456,779 new attendances at sexual health clinics compared with 1,941,801 in 2012.