The high street's quiet machinery
Walk down the High Street on a Saturday morning, past the queue at Johnstans Butchers and the bunting strung between lamp posts, and you'd be forgiven for thinking the place has always organised itself. It hasn't. It's been doing the work since 2001.
Kings Heath Business Association — KHBA — was founded by a small group of traders who reckoned the High Street, by then long established as a busy commercial drag south out of Birmingham toward Alcester and Stratford, deserved a voice. The Association was made formal in 2001, registered as a fully independent non-profit body, and recognised by HM Government, Birmingham City Council and West Midlands Police. Twenty-five years on, it's still run by a small group of elected past and present members who meet regularly in the area to discuss matters of concern.
The work most people never see
The first thing the Association did was the obvious thing. It listened. To shop owners worried about anti-social behaviour. To committee members chasing grant funding. To the small business that needed someone to call when a streetlight had been out for weeks. Most of that work isn't visible to anyone walking past. That's the point.
Where it became visible was May 2006. Five years in, Kings Heath needed a Farmers’ Market — a regular, reliable, monthly fixture where local producers could sell direct, where Saturday shoppers had a reason to make the trip to Kings Heath rather than the Bullring. They picked a corner — by the church with the spire, where Vicarage Road meets the High Street, where the 11 bus turns — and the Farmers’ Market launched. It's been running on the first Saturday of the month ever since.
A Farmers’ Market, a square, and a reason to linger
In the years that followed, the Village Square took shape at that same intersection. KHBA didn't build the Square — that was a wider environmental project around All Saints' Church, finished in stages — but the Association had been arguing for years that Kings Heath needed a real public space, a focal point, somewhere to put fairs and markets and creative activity that wasn't a pub. Eventually there was one. The Farmers’ Market and the Square moved in together.
The work since then has been less dramatic but more important. KHBA has played a role in procuring well over £1m in grant funding for the area over the years — additional and highly specialised policing, crime-busting CCTV cameras, the Christmas streetlights that go up every November, environmental improvement projects of special interest to local businesses. None of it makes a flashy press release. All of it makes a Saturday on the High Street feel safer, brighter, easier.
A voluntary voice, not a levy body
What the Association does not do is sell. It's not a Business Improvement District. It isn't funded by a statutory levy on businesses in a defined area. It's funded by membership fees from its 152 paid-up businesses — independent retailers, professional practices, service businesses, the people who put their names on the front of the shop. KHBA is distinct from the Kings Heath BID, which administers the levy and works on streetscape and area events. Both organisations are doing useful work. They are not the same thing.
The Committee is where it all happens. The Chairman, Stan Hems. The Treasurer and Membership Secretary, Steve Bairstow, who handles both jobs because that's the kind of organisation it is. Paul and Mary Reynard. Gurdip Singh. A handful of vacancies, as committees go. Past committees have done their bit and stepped back. The current one is still in the room.
Why showing up still matters
Most of what KHBA does won't ever be put on a banner. Twenty-five years of monthly meetings. Twenty years of a Farmers’ Market the committee organises themselves, by hand, twelve dates a year. Quiet conversations with the council. A presence in the room when planning decisions are being made.
A High Street like Kings Heath isn't an accident. It's the kind of place that keeps going because there's a small group of people who never stopped showing up.