MP calls for naming and shaming over sites blighted by travellers

Walsall North MP David Winnick has called for the owners of The Eagle and Leathern Bottle pubs in Bloxwich to be named and shamed after showing 'complete disrespect' and ignoring a council order to have the sites cleaned up.

The owners of the sites were served with a section 215 notice earlier this year by Walsall Council, meaning they had to clean the sites up by August 3.

However the deadline has passed and the sites remain a mess, with plenty of rubble still around after demolition of the pubs started but never finished.

The sites have regularly been used by travellers, with the Council powerless to move them on because they do not own the site.

Now Mr Winnick, who has penned his second letter to the Council's chief executive over the site, has called for the owners to be named and shamed.

He said: "If a local authority had taken steps to demolish a building and then left it there would be uproar, and rightly so. It demonstrates that they do not give a damn about the order and have no respect for residents on the Mossley estate.

"How would the owners like to live near such a site and how would they like their children going to a school where the rubble adjoins the building?

"I want to see the owners named and shamed, the site cleared up and action taken."

Walsall Council is understood to be considering legal action against the owners of the two former pubs, and will discuss the issue in private later this week.

Drugs and a dangerous dog were found at the Leathern Bottle in 2009. The pub first opened in the 1970s.

It closed several years ago and was earmarked for demolition to make way for a new pub, retail and residential complex under proposals revealed more than two years ago by SEP Properties.

Meanwhile the Eagle pub has been empty since 2007 when a man was shot after a fight broke out on St Patrick's Day.

SEP Properties had permission for 17 one-bedroom flats.

After closing it fell into a state of disrepair and has been a magnet for vandals and metal thieves. The pub stands at the junction of Tintern Crescent.