Lack of investment in City's investment service?

One of the websites I follow regularly for updates on developments in Birmingham is locatebirmingham.com, the website for the city's inward investment service Locate in Birmingham.

The service is aimed at those looking to invest in Birmingham or those looking to extend their current investment and provides a networking role to access skills, knowledge and assistance while also highlighting the opportunities in Birmingham.

This is a necessary part of the continuing regeneration of Birmingham, highlighting the city to potential investors and attracting investment, but I feel a little worried by the website as a good example of Birmingham with it's almost dated corporate image and it's lack of continual updates on developments and it's links to the City Council's Area Investment Portfolios.

Screenprint of locatebirmingham.com website, accessed 10.03 pm 4th April 2009.

The latest news should be the announcement of the new Library of Birmingham, a welcome chance to show Birmingham's ambition in the current economic conditions and a signal of the city's continuing investment potential, but instead is Nissan hydrogen car fuels up on region's innovation. While this was important news and highlighted our developments in innovation and hydrogen energy research and development it is not the most recent.

Admittedly I don't blog news developments as soon as they are announced but i'm doing this as a personal blog aimed at highlighting the changing face of Greater Birmingham and hoping to share my thoughts whereas LocateBirmingham.com is our inward investment agency and it should be selling Birmingham as the can-do city that investors need to look at. With competition for jobs and investment, especially in the current economic conditions, Locate in Birmingham needs to be banging the drum loudly for the city and with a large creative sector we need to be selling it in a way that shows we are a 21st century creative city.