Tornado Relief fund: Who are the 'Birmingham Foundation'?
the good the bad and the ugly | 19.09.2005 17:40 | Birmingham
Residents and traders from Balsall Heath and Moseley recently met up at St. Paul's school to discuss how to regenerate the area affected by the Tornado devastation back in July. The meeting was initiated by the Balsall Heath Forum.
One of the proposals made by a group of local residents was to organise a local grass-roots group without political or vested interests to help administer the Tornado Relief fund. Then at the end of the meeting Dick Atkinson from the Balsall Heath Forum and Esther proposed using 'The Birmingham Foundation' to setup and administer a Tornado Relief Fund. When asked who exactly 'The Birmingham Foundation' were, they replied that they were "the great and the good of Birmingham".
One of the proposals made by a group of local residents was to organise a local grass-roots group without political or vested interests to help administer the Tornado Relief fund. Then at the end of the meeting Dick Atkinson from the Balsall Heath Forum and Esther proposed using 'The Birmingham Foundation' to setup and administer a Tornado Relief Fund. When asked who exactly 'The Birmingham Foundation' were, they replied that they were "the great and the good of Birmingham".
The Birmingham Foundation: 
http://www.bhamfoundation.co.uk
The Birmingham Foundation is a large private charity with extensive links to multi-national corporations. It has the controversial millionaire construction and property consultant David Bucknall as its chairman and another director who works in the arms manufacturing industry (see notes).
The Birmingham Foundation is a private charity that aims to 'satisfy a desire among Birmingham's business leaders to give something back to the community'. The Foundation essentially acts as a broker for many community orientated projects in Birmingham and as a medium for corporate donors to get publicity.
Given the amazing grass-roots response to the disaster from local people, some of whom have experience fund-raising, why should the community need a private charity to broker the funds they need to raise for the disaster?
Since The Birmingham Foundation have recently made a £5,000 contribution to the Balsall Heath Forum, shouldn't Dick Atkinson have been in a position to tell us more about them and whether this private charity syphons off money to cover it's costs?
Will the Foundation's proposed involvement also include some form of corporate branding like most of its other projects?
Surely the administration of the relief fund should mirror the same grass-roots response to the disaster - why can't local people setup their own group, perhaps with pending charitable status to administer the funds?
Notes:
(i) David Bucknall, chairman of the Birmingham Foundation, chairs the construction and property consultancy Bucknall Austin. Bucknalls were involved in the construction of the Bakun Hydroelectric Project which was temporarily shelved in 1990 http://www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/newslet/news1097/story5.htm
There is enormous opposition to the immense social, environmental and economic costs of the project. Not least the fact that the construction of the dam will require the relocation of more than 9,000 of the indigenuous peoples who lived in the area to be flooded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakun_Dam
(ii) Bucknall Austin offers the following services - regeneration, Private Finance Initiative procurement and planning supervision to it's construction and property clients. Public and private sector clients include arms manufacturers BAE Systems, Barclays Bank, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, British Airways, CGNU insurance group, Coca-Cola, David Wilson Homes, DEFRA, Forte, Hilton, HM Prison Service, HSBC Bank, Ikea, Land Securities, Mitchells & Butlers, Ministry of Defence, O2, Persimmon Homes, Prudential, Tesco and Waitrose.
(iii) Gary Gould is regional director of the Defence Diversification Agency and a director of The Birmingham Foundation http://www.dda.gov.uk/inthepress/press_link_collaborating_westmidlands.htm
http://www.bhamfoundation.co.uk The Birmingham Foundation is a large private charity with extensive links to multi-national corporations. It has the controversial millionaire construction and property consultant David Bucknall as its chairman and another director who works in the arms manufacturing industry (see notes).
The Birmingham Foundation is a private charity that aims to 'satisfy a desire among Birmingham's business leaders to give something back to the community'. The Foundation essentially acts as a broker for many community orientated projects in Birmingham and as a medium for corporate donors to get publicity.
Given the amazing grass-roots response to the disaster from local people, some of whom have experience fund-raising, why should the community need a private charity to broker the funds they need to raise for the disaster?
Since The Birmingham Foundation have recently made a £5,000 contribution to the Balsall Heath Forum, shouldn't Dick Atkinson have been in a position to tell us more about them and whether this private charity syphons off money to cover it's costs?
Will the Foundation's proposed involvement also include some form of corporate branding like most of its other projects?
Surely the administration of the relief fund should mirror the same grass-roots response to the disaster - why can't local people setup their own group, perhaps with pending charitable status to administer the funds?
Notes:
(i) David Bucknall, chairman of the Birmingham Foundation, chairs the construction and property consultancy Bucknall Austin. Bucknalls were involved in the construction of the Bakun Hydroelectric Project which was temporarily shelved in 1990
http://www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/newslet/news1097/story5.htm There is enormous opposition to the immense social, environmental and economic costs of the project. Not least the fact that the construction of the dam will require the relocation of more than 9,000 of the indigenuous peoples who lived in the area to be flooded
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakun_Dam (ii) Bucknall Austin offers the following services - regeneration, Private Finance Initiative procurement and planning supervision to it's construction and property clients. Public and private sector clients include arms manufacturers BAE Systems, Barclays Bank, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, British Airways, CGNU insurance group, Coca-Cola, David Wilson Homes, DEFRA, Forte, Hilton, HM Prison Service, HSBC Bank, Ikea, Land Securities, Mitchells & Butlers, Ministry of Defence, O2, Persimmon Homes, Prudential, Tesco and Waitrose.
(iii) Gary Gould is regional director of the Defence Diversification Agency and a director of The Birmingham Foundation
http://www.dda.gov.uk/inthepress/press_link_collaborating_westmidlands.htm
the good the bad and the ugly
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
the birmingham foundation's trustees
20.09.2005 12:12
MR IAN WARWICK-MOORE MCARDLE
MR TIM WATTS
MISS CHRISTINE TRAXSON MBE
MR DAVID BUCKNALL
MR GARY GOULD
DR JIM HIGGINS
CLLR MAHMOOD HUSSAIN
MR MICHAEL AMES
MR PETER BACHE
MR RICHARD GRAVES
MRS SONIA SAVILLE
MR THEO VAN BEURDEN
MR JOHN KIMBERLEY
transparen c
The Birmingham Foundation is a registered charity
22.09.2005 10:10
The Foundation's work is just to hold funds for charitable purposes and act, usually as an agent for funders/donors, to ensure competent and impartial administration. They have been doing this for many years, and have channelled large amounts of charitable funds to many voluntary organisations and projects in the inner city.
They have offered staff time for nothing as their contribution to hardship resulting from the tornado, along with their charitable staus and expereince of handling such funds.. The offer is that representatives of residents across the affected area would form a panel to make decsions on the applications for assistance. The trustees do not want to be involved in any way in this process.
I am not surprised that the motion to work with them on these terms was overwhelmingly carried at the residents meeting of 21 Sept 05
John Newson
e-mail:
john.newson@stpaulstrust.org.uk
but I am considerably richer than yow!
23.09.2005 09:11
Tim Watts, owner of Pertemps and trustee of the Birmingham Foundation
Pertemps have been at the highly profitable helm of Neo-Labour's New Deal policy through their Birmingham based Employment Zones to force unemployed people into dead-end, low paid precarious jobs. Many unscrupulous employers use job agencies like Pertemps to obtain cheap labour with very little rights and poverty wages. They can also avoid any responsibility for pensions or sick pay.
Shockingly Watt's proclaims the late Enoch Powell as one of his heroes - “the most misunderstood person in the United Kingdom”. (ii)
(i)
(ii)
the good the bad and the pig ugly
Newson's innaccuracy
30.09.2005 16:04
Newson however contradicts what was said at the meeting to which he refers; he claims BF will not have representation on the disbursement commitee, but at the meeting it was suggested that they would have someone on the board. Why does Newson not only claim otherwise, but further claim the meeting 'approved' - by informal majority vote only - the move on the fictional terms he invents, and not the terms actually presented to the meeting?
Newson must appreciate his post is factually innacurate, breaches Indymedia guidlines and there are consequences; bandwidth is wasted by these consequences. Nonetheless he should be invited to resubmit a corrected post and the original hidden. Newson must further appreciate his actions have an impact on this open-source platform, and on the quality of this IMC newswire.
White Lunar