'We feel like we haven't been taken seriously': Walsall Leather Museum protesters make a noise as council cabinet approves plans to close museum

Around 14 protesters from across Walsall came together outside the Council House on Lichfield Street on Wednesday evening to make their voices heard about not wanting to see the Leather Museum close.

Carrying placards with messages such as "WMBC gone yampy" and "We're giving Walsall Council hell for leather" and chanting about wanting to keep the Leather Museum, which has been based on Littleton Street West since 1988, open and operational, the protesters made themselves known ahead of the Walsall Council Cabinet meeting.

In that meeting, the decision was made to rubber stamp plans of purchasing a new town centre building for the museum, and the disposal of the existing museum building at Littleton Street West to Walsall College as a facility to provide enhanced facilities for children with special educational needs.

It was also confirmed that the artefacts inside the museum would be relocated elsewhere, although no details have been given yet of where.

The Conservative-led authority’s plans to move the museum into an unknown town centre location was first announced last year in the 2025/26 budget.

It was hoped the move would create an annual saving of £190,000.

Before the meeting, protest leader Lauren Broxton said that the campaign group had been engaging with Walsall Council about saving the museum, but felt that the new plans had been dropped on them at the last minute and spoke about how she felt the decision was an awful one.

She said: "We have consulted with council leaders and we've put proposal after proposal forward and spent the last six months rallying support from academia and education, but we feel that we're not being taken seriously and transparency is not being upheld.

"I think we want to see that the public has been properly consulted on this and making sure we have a choice in preserving heritage that predates Walsall Council and it is part of Walsall's heritage, so I just think it's too precious to be treated so half-handedly.

"We just wanted to be here tonight to represent the public feeling that this really is an outrage."

Among the protesters was former museum curator Mike Glasson, who said that he thought the museum he had been in charge of between 1988 and 2017 played a very important role in celebrating Walsall and losing it was another sign that the council didn't care about the town's heritage.

He said: "It's a really positive thing, the leather industry, and is incredibly famous and skilled and of real quality and I think is something we really should be proud of and Walsall people are proud of.

"We once had six museums in the town, but one by one, they've closed down, from the town museum to the canal museum and the lock museum and I think it shows that the council aren't prepared to put their hands in their pockets to keep it.

"It's just another step towards Walsall becoming a bland, dull little town that will be full of commuter houses for Birmingham and it's just stripping away the distinctiveness of what makes the town special and its unique tradition."

Following the cabinet meeting, council leader Councillor Mike Bird said it had been a difficult decision, but one which was needed to balance the budget, and said he disagreed with the notion that people hadn't been consulted properly.

He said: "Unfortunately, previous cabinets have shied away from difficult decisions at time, and this is one of those difficult decisions, but at the end of the day, we've got a gap of £20 million to find to balance the budget, which is required by law.

"£190,000 is a lot of money and if we can provide it somewhere else in the town centre, we think we can actually improve the footfall and could, in actual fact, increase the heritage that Walsall has got to offer.

"I think any claims about people not being consulted properly are complete rubbish as officers have contacted Lauren on many occasions and had consultations with her as to what is good and bad and the papers came out last week, with constant conversations between her and the officers responsible, so I do not accept that and Councillor Andrew pointed this out within the meeting."