Walsall residents and councillors demand mental health centre is not sold off

Furious residents and Conservative councillors want Broadway North, in Paddock, to be kept open and potentially turned into a new health centre serving more than 23,000 patients.

But Walsall Council Labour chiefs agreed to sell off the site, home to adult social care services, Dudley and Walsall Mental Health NHS Trust and Park Hall Community Association, at a cabinet meeting last month.

The council’s decision has now been called in and will be grilled by a scrutiny meeting next week where councillors Mike Bird, Rose Martin, Gurmet Sohal, Adrian Andrew and Peter Washbrook will all speak out against the sale.

On top of this, a petition calling for the Broadway site to be saved has more than 2,000 signatures.

Councillor Bird has said that by selling off the site before making formal plans for the relocation of the groups, the council runs the risk of spending more on dealing with the social problems the loss of the site would create than it would make by selling it on.

He said: “I believe this is short-sighted and the money the authority hopes to bring in by the sale will be less than what it will end up spending trying to fix the problems it would create at a later point.”

Councillor Rose Martin said that the site was ‘by far the best of its kind’ in the area and claimed that the Walsall South area of the borough has unfairly been a target for cuts.

She said: “We want the council to reverse their decision, it doesn’t make sense that they would get rid of such an excellent facility.

"The work that is done there does immeasurable good for our community and it is also in a great location with transport links nearby allowing people from all over Walsall to access it.

"It feels to me like this area has been hit unfairly in the cuts and that we have been targeted, but this isn’t about just our area it is about the interests of everyone in Walsall.”