Dudley MP seeks meeting with landlord on future of library and clinic

Dudley's MP is to seek a one-to-one meeting with the owner of the building housing Sedgley's library and health centre.

The Express & Star revealed in December that the library would be required to vacate the premises in Ladies Walk in March next year, when the 25-year lease came to an end. The clinic will also need to leave the complex.

The library in Ladies Walk opened in 2001 as part of a £4 million private finance initiative deal which also saw a new state-of-the-art health centre open on the site. 

It replaced a previous 1960s library, which was owned by the council, and the neighbouring Ladies' Walk clinic, which dated from about the same time.

Fears that the village could be left without a library and nowhere to house clinics and offer a variety of treatments were raised at a meeting of North Dudley Community Forum.

Sedgley and District Community Association chairman Brian Guest said it was understood that the landlord did not wish the services to continue. He added that people wanted to keep the centre open and urged the council to use its full powers to stop any future application for change of use.

Forum chairman Councillor Shaun Keasey said the building was owned by Norwich Union Public and Private Partnership.

He said the three Sedgley ward councillors were working with the council to find alternative new home locally for the library. Two or three buildings were being looked at - both council and private assets.

Councillor Damian Corfield said sites that had been put forward included the former Barclays bank branch and the Concord Market.

Resident Elaine Bouckley said there were reports that the owners wanted to re-develop the site for residential use. She said the library was more than a place to borrow books and provided many valuable services for the community.

Another resident John Corser asked whether the council was working with the local health trusts to provide a joint front to keep the health centre, which provided vital services for the wider area, open.

Council leader Councillor Patrick Harley said it would work with its health partners.

Mrs Kumar pledged to ensure that clinical services stayed within Dudley and were in the community and not just in hospitals.

She is to try and have a meeting within a week with Norwich Union Public and Private Partnership to establish what the situation was and exactly what it wanted to utilise the building for.

Mr Guest urged her to ask the owners to come along to face the public in Sedgley and explain whet they planned to do.

Councillor Keasey said they would invited the health trusts to  come to the next forum meeting. All the Sedgley councillors would fight hard against the loss of the services which affected the whole of the community.

Upper Gornal and Woodsetton's Councillor Adam Aston suggested that with all urgency a specific public meeting was held to concentrate only on the closure issue with the NHS invited to attend.

The development won an award for the 'most innovative private finance initiative under £10 million' in the Public Private Finance Awards for 2001 and was officially opened by then Dudley North MP Ross Cranston and was visited by then health secretary Jacqui Smith.