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Dudley Council gets back mosque saga site

The site of a proposed mosque in Dudley that sparked a decade-long battle is finally back in the hands of the borough council.

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Dudley Council confirmed its deal to buy back the Hall Street site from the Dudley Muslim Association had been completed - a move that draws a line under a long and bitter battle.

Leaders from the DMA say they will now move on from the saga and find a new site for a mosque they say is still desperately needed.

Cash-strapped Dudley Council has paid £40,000 to the DMA in order to regain ownership of the land, which will now be put back on the market.

Dudley Council says it has struck a deal to buy back the land in Hall Street from the Dudley Muslim Association (DMA) and now plans to put it back on the market.

The DMA were understandably disappointed after the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the council over the land last year.

But for their part they now say they are looking forward to discussing possible alternative sites with council bosses.

This is positive news, but would it not have been better for all concerned if both parties had looked at different sites for the mosque at an earlier stage?

The squabble over the land has been unedifying at times. It has brought far right groups to the streets of the town and seen the council and the DMA facing off in court rooms.

The council has paid £40,000 to buy the site, but the legal battle has cost upwards of £200,000.

The mosque saga was finally brought to an end in October when appeal judges ruled in favour of the council's bid to seize back the land.

The amount owed by the council would have been much higher but the DMA was ordered to contribute £114,000 towards the council's legal costs following the hearing.

A planning application to build a mosque on Hall Street was first submitted in 2003 with the sale of freehold for the land agreed two years later.

The application was turned down by planning bosses and the ensuing battle put Dudley in the national spotlight, with far-right groups descending on the town to voice their anger over the plans. More than 80,000 people signed petitions against plans for the mosque.

The authority spent more than £200,000 on legal costs battling the mosque bid.

Council leader Pete Lowe said: "The buy-back deal has now completed and we are just working on the formal legal paperwork process with the Land Registry before the land officially belongs to the council. We expect that to be complete in the next few weeks."

The DMA said it was now looking forward to entering into discussions with council chiefs about a new site for a mosque, which they maintain they are in desperate need of.

Spokesman for the group Amjid Raza also confirmed they would be looking for a central location in the town, not too far from the Central Mosque on Castle Hill.

He said: "There is a need for a mosque, there is no doubt about that. There are a lot of benefits of that (being in the town centre). We don't want to have to move away so people have to travel. There will then be issues over parking and congestion.

"We will now go back to the community for suggestions on what we are going to do in the future."

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