Mayor backs campaign group's wish to see Amblecote’s last piece of untouched meadowland protected for centuries
The Mayor of the West Midlands has said he hopes to see Amblecote’s last piece of untouched meadowland retained as green space as he visited the site to meet campaigners who have been fighting to protect it.
The visit by Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, to Corbett Meadow was rescheduled after heavy snowfall in early January.
But it came just three weeks after the Corbett Meadow Action Group learned it had been successful in its bid to see the meadow designated as a green space, with greater protection from development.
The wish to preserve the meadow, located to the rear of Corbett Outpatients Centre, for future generations was set out in the Dudley Local Plan which will determine the local authority’s land use policy for the next 15 years and this was approved in principle by a planning inspector last month.
The news has been widely welcomed by campaigners and local residents in Amblecote, Stourbridge, who have vociferously campaigned against the site, off Vicarage Road, being developed for housing.
However, it remains to be seen whether the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, which owns the land, will press ahead with its aim to sell off the land to a developer - having struck up a partnership with Charles Church, part of Persimmon Homes, which submitted an unsuccessful plan in 2022-23 to build 84 homes on the site after Countryside Properties withdrew its interest in the site in 2019.
The trust has always maintained it has a duty to maximise profits available from unwanted assets to plough back into healthcare. The local community, however, has strongly objected to the meadow being developed as it was gifted to the people of Stourbridge by benefactor John Corbett in 1893. It had been part of John Corbett’s Hill estate where the original Corbett Hospital was built and it fell into NHS ownership with the creation of the National Health Service in 1948.
