'Disgraced' owners of derelict Walsall pubs facing legal action

The owners of the Eagle and Leathern Bottle pubs, just yards apart in Creswell Crescent, Bloxwich, had been handed a council order to clean up the sites last year, but the sites remain eyesores.

There are still piles of rubble on the sites after demolition of the pubs started but was never finished.

Now Walsall Council is preparing a prosecution case to force the owners to take responsibility for the sites.

A report set to be discussed at a planning committee meeting tonight states that prosecution cases are being prepared against the two owners, who have failed to comply with section 215 notices issued in the past in order to get them to clean up the site.

A spokesman from Walsall Council said that 'if necessary' it would seek a resolution through the legal processes, adding that it was still trying to 'secure compliance with the Section 215 notices'.

Official documents in the council's planning committee reports states that the 'prosecution case is being prepared'.

It also states under the type of action being taken against the two sites that the council was seeking 'prosecution.

When the clean-up notice was issued at the start of last year, Walsall Council gave the owners a deadline of August 3, however an inspection in November revealed that neither had completed the job.

Walsall North MP David Winnick has been campaigning for a number of years to get the owners to take responsibility for the rundown sites.

He said: "They have disgraced themselves and there is no other way to say it – leaving these pubs in such a condition.

"As far as the Leathern Bottle is concerned, having demolished the pub they left the rubble and now for some considerable time its been left there, just yards from a nearby school.

"The height of irresponsibility is a disgrace.

"I hope there is a prosecution and considerable payments made for both.

"I have campaigned for more than five years, and my constituents have had to suffer with the sites in the condition in which they have been left in."

In November, travellers set up camp outside The Eagle, just weeks after Walsall Council was granted an injunction that allowed it to move travellers from 12 sites quickly.

The Eagle was closed in 2007 when a man was shot.

The council would not reveal the identity of the owners of the derelict pub sites.