The archdiocese covers an area of 3,373 square miles (8,740 km2), encompassing Staffordshire, the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and much of Oxfordshire as well as Caversham in Berkshire.

The metropolitan province includes the suffragan dioceses of Clifton and Shrewsbury.

He succeeds the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols (2000–09).

Longley was installed as Archbishop of Birmingham at the Metropolitan Cathedral and Basilica of Saint Chad on 8 December 2009, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and one of the patronal feasts of the archdiocese, St Chad being the other.

The Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, has overall episcopal oversight of the diocese that is divided into three pastoral areas, each of which is headed by an auxiliary bishop and contains a number of deaneries: