‘No excuses’ for delay answering parks complaints, Dudley Council admits

Dudley Council admitted there are ‘no excuses’ for the time taken to answer concerns about communication with parks friends groups.

A year after groups told the council to improve its engagement with them the authority approved a new Parks Friends Forum which will have its first meeting – in January.

The forum, which will be overseen by Dudley Council for Voluntary Service (CVS), was agreed by the authority’s cabinet at a meeting in October 2026, after being told concerns were raised at a Communities and Growth Scrutiny Meeting in October 2025.

Cllr Ryan Priest told the cabinet meeting: “I cannot express enough how much damage it has caused taking a year to get to this point. These groups haven’t had any contact from the council since the committee meeting.

“At that meeting all of the requests, all of the complaints, were more or less the same; which is that the communication with the council doesn’t work and what we have done is wait a year to talk to them.”

Dudley group director for communities and growth, Nick McGurk,said: “There is no excuse for the amount of time taken.

“Throughout that meeting we did come to the conclusion that the resource and the amount of work going on in that area didn’t actually allow it.”

Mr McGurk welcomed the involvement of Dudley CVS and said work was going on to prepare for a ‘kick-off meeting’ which he predicted would be held in January although a date was yet to be finalised.

A report on the new forum signed by Jim Deakin, Dudley director for communities and growth, said: “Key responsibilities for the forum would include volunteer recruitment strategies, the integration of services across departments, to identify funding approaches, including collaboration with council services such as antisocial behaviour and public health.”

Cllr Damian Corfield, Dudley cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said: “This is a great piece of work that’s going to come together quite quickly, we are giving the friends groups exactly what they asked us to do.”