Proposal for Windrush museum in the Black Country rejected

The move to open the exhibition space and learning centre dedicated to the Windrush generation in Popes Lane, Oldbury, has been turned down by planners at Sandwell Council.

The local authority said the area was unsuitable for a new museum and the land had been reserved for industrial and employment use. Concerns were also raised about the lack of parking spaces.

A report by the council’s planning officers said: “The site forms part of a wider allocation which safeguards the land for employment use, and the development would undermine the allocation by utilising floorspace for a heritage and exhibition centre as well as the use being incompatible with surrounding industrial uses.

“The applicant has failed to demonstrate sufficient off-street parking provision and cycle storage is available for the proposed use, and the lack of a coherent parking and transport strategy for the development would compromise highway safety due to the reliance on on-street provision.”

The new museum would have boasted an original 1960s front room, a vintage analogue recording studio as well as other permanent and loaned exhibitions focused on those who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between the late 1940s and early 1970s.

The exhibitions would have been designed to help those with dementia to remember life between the 1940s and 1970s – dedicated facilities that were “few and far between” according to the application.

The centre would also have proved an “invaluable” resource for those with dementia as well as their own children, grandchildren and families to learn about the Windrush generation, the plans added.

The name ‘Windrush’ derives from the HMT Empire Windrush ship which brought one of the first large groups of Caribbean people to the UK in 1948.

As the Caribbean was, at the time, a part of the British commonwealth, those who arrived were automatically British subjects and free to permanently live and work in the UK.