Gloves off in row over failed Dudley bar as blame game begins

The council-run bar closed at the end of August after making eye-watering losses which, along with the bill for developing the venue, cost the authority a total of £1.5m.

The council’s cabinet member for finance, Councillor Steve Clark, denies he misled a meeting of the council on August 22 by claiming the then cabinet member for commercialisation did not have ‘the bottle’ to stop the project.

The target of his remarks, Councillor Shaun Keasey, has now written to the council’s monitoring officer, who enforces standards of conduct, about the comments.

Councillor Clark said: “I stand by my comments, Councillor Keasey was the cabinet member for commercialisation. Brookes Bar and bistro was commercial activity run by the council.”

Work to develop the bar, in Dudley’s Priory Street, began in 2019, it opened in 2022 and remained under the control of the regeneration directorate.

Control of running the bar passed to the commercial directorate in April 2024, long after Councillor Keasey had resigned from the cabinet and the Conservative Party to sit on the authority as an independent.

Councillor Keasey dismissed Councillor Clark’s argument as ‘absolute cobblers’ and added the bar should have been handed over after building was complete but that did not happen.

He said: “I’m not being blamed for something I had nothing to do with, I actively tried to stop it happening.

“I find it ironic, I wanted Brookes Bar in my portfolio.”

The pair clashed on the issue in the council meeting after Councillor Keasey, who owns a nightclub in Wolverhampton, told Councillor Clark: “You paid a consultant £50,000 to give you advice on Brookes and then shut it – I’d have done it for free.

“I warned about this and my views were dismissed.”

Councillor Clark hit back, he said: “To blame us when you were the person that could have done something about it and chose not to – you are totally out of order.”