Is strike-hit Birmingham really in decline?

"It's just like every other place that has issues. There is good and there is bad."

Singer Jonathan Francis was setting up his microphone to begin busking in Birmingham city centre when he spoke to me.

The 25-year-old, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean, has made the UK's second city his home.

It is a place that has recently found its reputation under the spotlight with a seven-week ongoing bin strike leading to claims of streets being plagued by "rats the size of cats".