Activity centre plan at old Dudley court building

Age UK Dudley wants to use the old Dudley County Court building at the Waterfront, in Brierley Hill, as the hub for its weekly activity classes and advice workshops.

The county building, which also took cases for Wolverhampton Crown Court, shut in 2011, after Her Majesty's Court Service blamed high running costs. It came after the charity revealed it had spent £637,000 a year on renting the building.

Charity spokeswoman Charlotte Dean said it was confident of securing the lease and bosses have submitted a planning application for a change of use for the premises.

She said eventually the charity plans to consolidate its activities programme on the one site at the Waterfront rather than continue running from three locations in the borough.

A series of outreach sessions would still be held around the borough including at libraries and at the headquarters in Halesowen Road, Netherton.The organisation runs activities centres at Merry Hill and Brierley Hill Methodist Church. Age UK Dudley has been looking at different ways of working since it secured a lottery grant of £360,000 to support its Springboard project. The charity offers a range of activities from Monday to Friday to between 300 to 350 people aged 60 and above every week.

Activities on offer include zumba, coffee meets and cycling. The Springboard project also arranges trips, lunches, talks, demonstrations and workshops and has a counselling service, holistic health and beauty therapies, as well as social events.

It comes as Dudley Council continues to develop a scheme to encourage more businesses to come to the site. It hopes to create an enterprise zone to lure firms back to the complex. Cabinet member for regeneration Councillor Judy Foster said: "Creating an enterprise zone-type initiative will hopefully create a major boom in jobs and investment for the borough."