Council accused of 'making it difficult' for groups to take on youth centre now up for sale

The Dudley Council-owned Russells Hall Youth Centre in Overfield Road is due to be sold at auction later this month after standing empty for six years, a decision one local councillor described as a "travesty". Closed in 2017 due to a lack of funding, the building now has a guide price of £150,000.

Councillor Cathryn Bayton, who represents the St James's ward the council-owned building sits in, said charitable groups had expressed an interested but were put off when they saw the "sheer amount of work" the building needed to make it usable again.

"We haven't been able to find a community group that could afford to take it on on the terms and conditions from the council," she said.

Councillor Bayton also said there had been conversations with NHS about offering a health hub, saying her ward had some of the lowest healthy life expectancy and highest childhood obesity figures in the borough.

She complained that estate surrounding the disused youth centre had been "stripped of most of its assets over the years", and added that the area needs a community building, citing Living Hope Church as the only building with a room groups can use. She also accused the council of "not actively supporting us at calls to support a positive alternative use for the site".

Patrick Harley, leader of Dudley Council, said the Conservative-run authority had made attempts to reopen the building, but these had failed to materialise as people pulled out.

"Since then the council has made several unsuccessful bids for funding to bring the building back into use, be that as an early years facility or something else to benefit the community," he said.

"We have spoken to a number of community groups about taking it on and we did have interest from a prospective tenant, but anyone who has declared an interest in the site has ultimately withdrawn because it was felt the level of investment required to bring it back into use was too high.

“With it now being six years since it closed, we have decided that rather than continuing to leave the building empty and watching it become more of an eyesore, the best solution would be to put it on the market for a private developer to invest in the site.”

Councillor Bayton said that in the week after the listing was made public three community groups got in touch to say they had wanted to take it on, but claimed the authority had "made it difficult" for them.

She added that in a recent council meeting she asked Councillor David Stanley, cabinet member for enterprise and regeneration, whether money made from selling community assets are ring-fenced to be put back into neighbourhood projects rather than being banked away. She said the council had a "moral responsibility" to help replace a facility once it's sold off.