FRIAR PARK: HOW MANY TIMES DO RESIDENTS HAVE TO ASK BEFORE SOMEONE GIVES A STRAIGHT ANSWER?
There is something seriously wrong when residents have to spend months chasing councils, public bodies and elected representatives simply to find out what is happening in their own community.
That is exactly where we are with Friar Park.
We are not dealing with a tiny planning application.
We are dealing with a proposed 600+ home urban village, major brownfield remediation, contaminated land, flood risk, air quality, drainage, transport, schools, SEND provision, biodiversity, public open space, developer procurement and millions of pounds of public money.
And yet trying to get clear, complete and joined-up answers has become an exhausting exercise in delay, deflection, partial disclosure and being passed from one organisation to another.
Residents deserve better than this.
A major regeneration scheme — but no straight line to the truth
Friar Park has been discussed, planned, masterplanned, funded, procured and promoted for years.
There have been consultants.
There have been Cabinet reports.
There have been developer selection exercises.
There have been remediation strategies.
There has been Environment Agency engagement.
There have been planning applications.
There have been funding arrangements involving Sandwell Council and the West Midlands Combined Authority.
There has been political promotion.
But when residents ask for the underlying evidence, the experience is very different.
Too often the answer is:
“NIL.”
Or:
“Too broad.”
Or:
“Information withheld.”
Or:
“Ask somebody else.”
Or:
“Go to the ICO.”
That is not transparency.
That is a system that appears far better at moving projects forward than it is at answering the people who have to live with the consequences.
Sandwell Council — too many NILs, too many later disclosures
We have submitted a number of FOI and EIR requests concerning Friar Park and associated planning applications.
Too often Sandwell's initial position has been that little or no relevant recorded information is held.
“NIL.”
Again.
And again.
Then, after challenge, more documents appear.
That happened around DC/23/68742.
Additional contaminated-land and other material emerged after the original response.
It has happened around DC/25/70154.
Later-disclosed correspondence showed active technical discussion over noise calculations and amended drawings.
That is precisely why confidence is being damaged.
If later disclosures show active officer-to-applicant and officer-to-consultant dialogue, how are residents supposed to accept without question earlier responses suggesting almost nothing else exists?
This is not about demanding every internal email for the sake of it.
It is about whether searches are being carried out properly and whether requests are being interpreted so narrowly that relevant material is being missed.
When we challenge this, too often we do not receive a proper substantive explanation.
Instead, the conversation eventually becomes:
Take it to the Information Commissioner.
So we have.
That should concern Sandwell's new political leadership.
Residents should not repeatedly have to involve a national regulator simply to establish whether their own council has adequately searched for records about major planning decisions.
DC/25/71072 — four months and hardly any visible explanation
Take the latest 18-home application at Friar Park.
DC/25/71072 was considered by Planning Committee on 1 April 2026.
The formal permission was not issued until 10 August 2026.
More than four months later.
When we checked the public planning portal, there was very little obvious material explaining what happened during that period.
There is a CIL liability acknowledgement.
Then the final decision.
So what was happening in between?
Were conditions being negotiated?
Was drainage being discussed?
Was Biodiversity Net Gain unresolved?
Were there legal issues?
Were technical matters being settled?
Were any plans or conditions altered?
Who authorised the final notice?
We should not have to guess.
So yet again, we have had to submit another information request.
Think about that.
A major planning decision is made in April.
Formal permission appears in August.
The public record gives little obvious explanation.
And the burden falls on residents to reconstruct the audit trail through FOI.
That is exactly the kind of thing that breeds mistrust.
Twenty-four conditions — and residents are supposed to be reassured
The final permission for DC/25/71072 contains 24 conditions.
Twenty-four.
These include matters concerning:
contaminated land,
surface-water drainage,
foul drainage,
dust,
construction management,
ecology,
Biodiversity Net Gain,
habitat management,
landscaping,
and environmental controls.
Some conditions are normal in planning.
Nobody is pretending otherwise.
But there is a wider pattern here that cannot simply be brushed aside.
Important technical issues keep being pushed into conditions to be resolved later.
Residents are told the concerns are dealt with.
But when you actually read the permission, the detail often still has to be submitted, investigated, approved or monitored after permission has been granted.
That is why people are asking whether this has become a culture of:
Approve first. Sort the difficult bits later.
That is not an allegation.
It is a legitimate concern based on what the actual permissions say.
Contaminated land is not a side issue
Friar Park has a complicated history.
Historic remediation material prepared for WMCA and Sandwell records former sewage-treatment infrastructure, waste deposits, made ground and contamination concerns.
The issues identified include metals, hydrocarbons, ammonia, asbestos, ground gas and risks to controlled waters.
Potential pathways include dust, fibres, groundwater and surface waters.
The remediation strategy itself anticipated excavation, treatment, movement, reuse or disposal of material.
So when residents raise concerns about dust, disturbed soils or environmental monitoring, these are not wild theories.
They are issues documented in the professional evidence itself.
And yet getting clear answers about remediation has been anything but straightforward.
Environment Agency — information eventually, but only after a fight
We have also had major difficulties obtaining information from the Environment Agency.
An earlier request was refused as manifestly unreasonable because it was considered too broad.
So we refined it.
Then more information emerged.
Some material concerning regulatory and permitting matters was withheld under another EIR exception.
So we challenged that too.
An internal review followed.
Then we had to make a separate request for flood information.
Eventually, we received useful flood-model data.
But even that raised another question.
The model supplied is identified as:
River Tame – 2009.
We are in 2026.
That does not automatically mean the model is invalid.
But it certainly raises a reasonable question about whether a 17-year-old model is sufficiently current for a major housing development and remediation scheme today.
So what have we had to do?
Write again.
Ask whether it remains suitable.
Ask whether updated modelling is required.
Ask whether updated modelling has already been discussed behind the scenes.
Ask whether current climate-change allowances need to be applied.
Again, why are residents constantly forced to ask the next question because the first answer never gives the whole picture?
Flood risk is being split between organisations
The EA itself makes clear that it deals primarily with main-river flooding.
Surface water?
Sandwell as Lead Local Flood Authority.
Groundwater?
Again, other responsibilities.
Sewer flooding?
The water company.
So who is joining this all together?
That is the question.
River Tame flood risk cannot be assessed in isolation.
Surface-water runoff cannot be assessed in isolation.
Sewer capacity cannot be assessed in isolation.
Groundwater cannot be assessed in isolation.
Remediation and disturbed contaminated ground cannot be assessed in isolation.
Then hundreds of homes cannot be assessed separately as if the wider cumulative picture does not exist.
Residents live in the real world.
Not in organisational silos.
WMCA — another wall of resistance
The West Midlands Combined Authority has also been difficult.
WMCA has played a major role in Friar Park.
It has been involved in land, regeneration, remediation and funding.
It has been part of the machinery moving the project forward.
Yet when we sought detailed information about remediation, funding, regulatory engagement and environmental oversight, we again encountered refusal, review requests, refined requests and repeated chasing.
Commercial sensitivity exists.
Of course it does.
Nobody serious disputes that.
But commercial sensitivity cannot become a convenient fog around a publicly backed regeneration project.
Residents do not need every tender price or negotiation tactic.
They do need to know:
what commitments have been made,
what housing assumptions underpinned procurement,
what public money is at risk,
what delivery deadlines exist,
what happens if planning requires fewer homes,
and whether environmental safeguards are genuinely capable of changing the scheme.
These are basic accountability questions.
A developer can be selected before residents know the final scheme
Keepmoat has already been selected as preferred development partner.
Again, that is not automatically improper.
But it matters.
Because by the time ordinary residents eventually see the full planning application, substantial commercial and strategic decisions may already have been taken.
Masterplan.
Funding.
Procurement.
Developer selection.
Housing numbers.
Delivery expectations.
Remediation.
Regulatory engagement.
Then later comes the formal planning application.
That creates a very obvious concern.
How genuinely open is the later planning process if so much of the project has already gathered momentum?
If planning evidence says fewer homes are appropriate, can the scheme shrink?
If infrastructure evidence says more land is needed for schools or open space, can the scheme change?
If air quality or noise requires bigger buffers, can the developer lose plots?
If remediation requires a different layout, will that be accepted?
These questions need straight answers.
Not public-relations language.
Where is the cumulative assessment?
The biggest planning failure we keep coming back to is fragmentation.
We have already seen:
DC/23/68742 – 105 homes
then amendments,
then:
DC/25/71072 – 18 more homes
That takes that development area to 123 plots.
Alongside that sits the proposed FPUV scheme of another 600+ homes.
So stop looking at each application as though it exists in a vacuum.
Where is the assessment of the total effect on:
traffic,
air pollution,
schools,
SEND,
Tame Bridge,
roads,
drainage,
surface water,
health services,
public transport,
open space,
ecology,
and community infrastructure?
The Council's own air-quality policy refers to cumulative impacts from known developments.
So where is the cumulative Friar Park assessment?
We have asked.
We are still waiting for convincing answers.
Secondary schools — still no proper local answer
One of the most frustrating issues is education.
We have repeatedly raised secondary-school capacity.
We have raised the history of the site and the earlier expectation of education provision.
We have raised the impact of hundreds of new homes.
And what do we get?
Broad Sandwell-wide statistics.
References to spare places elsewhere.
General statements.
That does not answer the question.
What is the actual long-term secondary-school position for Friar Park and Wednesbury if this entire development programme goes ahead?
Not today.
Not one year group in isolation.
Not the whole borough averaged together.
The actual local picture over the life of the development.
Why is that so difficult to obtain?
SEND — national policy is not a local capacity plan
The same applies to SEND.
We have raised local SEND provision.
We have raised pressure on places.
We have raised out-of-area provision.
We have raised transport implications.
And too often the response moves immediately to national government policy.
That is not an answer.
Parents in Friar Park cannot send their children to a White Paper.
They need actual provision.
Actual places.
Actual transport.
Actual support.
If hundreds of homes are coming, where is the local SEND capacity assessment?
Show us.
Antonia Bance MP — housing, housing, housing is not enough
We have written extensively to Antonia Bance MP.
Her earlier response placed heavy emphasis on the need for new housing.
Fine.
Housing is needed.
But “we need housing” cannot become an answer to every environmental and infrastructure concern.
We wrote back.
We set out the local issues.
Schools.
SEND.
Traffic.
Air quality.
Flooding.
Remediation.
Infrastructure.
Transparency.
Cumulative impact.
We chased.
We have chased again.
And we are still struggling to obtain a substantive response to the actual questions being asked.
That is not good enough from the local MP on a development of this scale.
If the MP supports the scheme, say so.
If she believes 600+ homes are appropriate, explain why.
If she believes schools can cope, provide the evidence.
If she believes infrastructure is adequate, tell us what she has checked.
If she believes the environmental safeguards are sufficient, explain what evidence she has reviewed.
What residents do not need is another general statement about the housing crisis.
We already know there is a housing crisis.
We are asking whether this scheme, on this site, at this scale, is being properly planned.
Sarah Coombes MP — still waiting for meaningful engagement
We have also written to Sarah Coombes MP because the consequences of Friar Park are not confined to one parliamentary constituency.
Traffic crosses boundaries.
Air pollution crosses boundaries.
Rail passengers cross boundaries.
School journeys cross boundaries.
Bescot does not disappear because somebody draws a constituency line on a map.
We sent a detailed briefing.
We followed it up.
We have not received the level of engagement these cross-boundary issues warrant.
Again, that is disappointing.
Residents should not have to repeatedly chase elected representatives to get them interested in a major development affecting neighbouring communities.
Council leadership — a change of party should mean a change of culture
Sandwell now has a Reform administration.
That administration inherited much of this project.
It did not create the historic contamination.
It did not initiate every earlier planning decision.
It did not create the original WMCA arrangements.
But it is now responsible for what happens next.
That means the new leadership has a choice.
It can inherit the old culture of:
minimal answers,
officer-driven processes,
technical deflection,
poor public engagement,
and “go to the ICO if you don't like it.”
Or it can change it.
We have tried to engage the Council Leader.
The response and level of engagement has not matched the seriousness of the issue.
That needs to change.
If Reform came into Sandwell promising a different way of doing things, Friar Park is a very good place to prove it.
Local councillors — where is the leadership?
And where are our local councillors in all this?
This is not some abstract strategic-planning exercise.
It affects real residents.
Their streets.
Their schools.
Their environment.
Their air.
Their journeys.
Their parks.
Their children's futures.
Local councillors should be demanding the evidence before residents have to.
They should be asking officers why information is difficult to obtain.
They should be demanding cumulative assessments.
They should be asking whether infrastructure is keeping pace.
They should be explaining decisions publicly.
They should be standing between residents and opaque bureaucracy.
Instead, far too much of the digging is being done by residents themselves.
That is backwards.
Pride in Place — keep your hands off the community money
And now we have Pride in Place.
Up to £20 million over ten years.
That money is supposed to be about the community.
It must not become a convenient back-door funding source for Friar Park Urban Village.
Not for remediation.
Not for developer obligations.
Not for infrastructure that should properly be funded by the development.
Not for statutory services the Council should already provide.
Not for filling holes elsewhere in regeneration budgets.
There must be a clear firewall.
Residents should be able to see exactly what Pride in Place money is being spent on.
Every pound.
Every project.
Every decision.
Who proposed it.
Who approved it.
Who benefits.
Anything less invites suspicion.
Too much is happening behind the curtain
This is perhaps the central problem.
When you put everything together, the authorities clearly possess a huge amount of information.
Consultant reports.
Technical studies.
Procurement documentation.
Masterplans.
Regulatory correspondence.
Funding agreements.
Remediation strategies.
Planning records.
Developer submissions.
Internal emails.
Yet residents continually find themselves asking for basic information and receiving either fragments or silence.
That contradiction is becoming impossible to ignore.
There is enough information to procure developers, secure funding and progress regeneration — but apparently not enough information to give residents straight answers.
How does that work?
We should not have to become investigators
This is a council area.
Not a crime scene.
Residents should not have to behave like investigators.
We should not have to:
submit FOIs,
chase overdue FOIs,
request internal reviews,
challenge “NIL” responses,
submit EIRs,
refine EIRs,
challenge exemptions,
write to the ICO,
search planning portals,
compare committee reports,
download technical appendices,
trace Cabinet decisions,
search WMCA records,
and repeatedly chase MPs,
just to understand what is happening.
Public authorities should publish enough information proactively that ordinary residents can follow the project without needing a law degree, planning qualification and unlimited spare time.
At the moment, that is not happening.
This is what transparency should look like
If Sandwell, WMCA, the EA and the elected representatives involved believe this project is sound, then prove it.
Publish a single clear public evidence base.
Show:
the remediation strategy,
the contamination risks,
the flood evidence,
the current River Tame modelling,
the surface-water strategy,
the air-quality evidence,
the cumulative traffic assessment,
the school capacity projections,
the SEND assessment,
the infrastructure plan,
the housing numbers,
the affordable-housing commitment,
the open-space calculation,
the BNG strategy,
the funding streams,
the developer obligations,
and the project timetable.
Then residents can make an informed judgement.
That is transparency.
What we have now is a jigsaw puzzle where the public is expected to find the pieces.
We are not going away
There is sometimes an assumption in public bodies that if you delay long enough, residents will lose interest.
We won't.
If an answer is incomplete, we will challenge it.
If information is withheld, we will test whether that withholding is justified.
If internal reviews fail to address the substance, we will escalate to the ICO.
If planning decisions are unclear, we will trace the audit trail.
If elected representatives fail to respond, we will say so publicly.
If Pride in Place starts drifting away from genuine community control, we will challenge that too.
That is not troublemaking.
That is accountability.
My message to everyone involved is simple
To Sandwell Council:
Stop making residents drag information out of you.
To WMCA:
Stop hiding the public-interest story behind commercial and procedural barriers.
To the Environment Agency:
Give residents clear explanations, not just technical datasets and legal exemptions.
To Antonia Bance MP:
Answer the questions actually being asked, not the easier question about whether Britain needs more houses.
To Sarah Coombes MP:
Engage properly with the cross-boundary consequences.
To Sandwell's political leadership:
If you promised change, show us.
To local councillors:
Start leading on this rather than waiting for residents to do the work.
And to those progressing Friar Park Urban Village:
If the scheme is safe, sustainable, properly funded and properly planned, you should have nothing to fear from scrutiny.
So stop making scrutiny so difficult.
Wednesbury deserves regeneration.
But it deserves something else just as much:
The truth.
The evidence.
Straight answers.
And a genuine voice before the important decisions are already effectively made.
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