John Hemming's Web Log

Maryline Stowe's website kindly invited me to do a guest post. I did this about adoption statistics . A response with questions has been written by Lucy R on the transparency project blog I have written this blog post to answer the questions and reconcile the statistics. All figures are figures for the English jurisdiction. Most (if not all) are based upon the SSDA903 return. The SSDA903 return is an annual electronic return from Children's Services Authorities to the Department for Education. It includes details of each change of legal status and each change of placement status for children in care. I have had additional analyses done by the DfE statisticians - which is what the source of the spreadsheets that I have uploaded is. The most widely known analysis from the SSDA903 return is the Statistical First Release. This is normally issued in the September after the end of the Financial Year that it is relevant to. Hence the 2014 SFR can be found in a PDF form he...

When I did my maiden speech in 2005 I had some research from the House of Commons Library about the Yardley Constituency. There has, in fact, been a constituency of Birmingham, Yardley since 1918. I think I have uploaded the maps prior to Yardley joining Birmingham (1911). From the 1832 Reform Act Yardley was part of East Worcester constituency until I think 1885. I have scanned and uploaded all the maps I had from the House of Commons Library and link to one of the documents on this page. If I have a lot of time I might organise them in a structure. Flickr allows paging through Images, however. Hence if you want to see what is available click right and left

The Ordnance Survey have uploaded here maps of the historic counties of the UK. These varied over time, but I have extracted the boundaries for Birmingham so show where the old counties used to end. What I found interesting was that Stoney Lane through to Walford Road were the boundary between Worcestershire and Warwickshire making the junction of the Stratford Road and Warwick Road fully in Worcestershire. Thanks be to the OS. I am not sure of the date and I thought that Harborne was at one stage in Staffordshire. Having glanced at Wikipedia it appears that Harborne moved into Warwickshire in 1891. This demonstrates the relationship between historic counties and current ceremonial counties in the North of England.

These photos are from my archives and I found them when getting rid of some old floppy discs. They were taken in the late 1990s. I thought they were an interesting historical record, however, so have uploaded them to flickr. I asked a question of the Prime Minister (when it was Gordon Brown) about bus regulation. I think the Greater Manchester Combined Authority is getting the powers to do this. I hope we make similar progress in the West Midlands. I don't think such dangerous driving is commonplace today, but would be interested to hear of any examples. I remember getting some media attention for the issue in the 1990s when these photos were taken, but beyond the GM combinened authority I am not sure any progress has been made on the underlying issue (Which is about sector tendering).