Danny Crump, Director of Urbanism at Broadway Malyan, said: “Often we see reports with fantastic recommendations, but which don’t consider the real-life challenges, such as securing funding or planning permission. We wanted the proposals in our masterplan to be as deliverable as possible.

“Birmingham is one of many urban centres across the globe facing huge challenges. The slow Covid-19 recovery still depletes highstreets and city centre life. The impact of the climate crisis is more and more visible, as is the world-wide loss of biodiversity. As urban designers, of huge importance to us is how city centres affect not just people’s health and wellbeing, but their safety and quality of life. If we truly want to have an impact on these shared issues, we can no longer afford to provide blue-sky thinking. We must come up with a clear roadmap for change.

Louise Brooke-Smith, GBSLEP Board Director for Place, added: “Creating greener and cleaner places for all of us is not a choice but a priority if we are to help our city-centres reach net zero targets and mitigate the impacts of climate breakdown.

“This work builds upon our partnership with Colmore and Retail BIDs to ensure we help catalyse investment into the city centre. Our ambition is to create places that are greener and a city that is sustainable.

“After two years of intermittent lockdowns, it is really important we do what we can to make spaces welcoming for businesses, workers, visitors and residents. GBSLEP is committed to driving inclusive economic growth and this is another way in which we have used our unique structure of bringing together public, private and academic partners to make a difference. I look forward to seeing the toolkit applied to green infrastructure improvements.”