ONCE dubbed a glittering hotspot of the 1970s, Dudley’s decline is seemingly severe.
The West Midlands district was recently ranked the third worst place to live in England, with locals only shocked it didn’t score lower.
The stats, put together by The Sunday Times, considered factors like local crime rates, Ofsted school reports, GP waiting times, car parks and community assets.
In total, only Rushmoor in Hampshire and Basildon in Essex scored worse than Dudley – a result which stunned those who live there.
“I thought we’d be first,” said 54-year-old shopkeeper Anna Shahmani, as she scrolled through her CCTV to look at another case of suspected shoplifting.
“I’m surprised there are two worse than this.”
Nearby Lye – a town in Dudley district – was recently dubbed a ghetto where sex is flogged openly from cars and yobs are fined for pooing in the street.
Dudley itself was also last year ranked the unhappiest town in the West Midlands while Stourbridge, seven miles down the road and part of the same Metropolitan Borough, was ranked the happiest.
But, just as everyone moans about the place, anyone over 60 will also tell you what a fantastic town it used to be.
Proud and thriving, the town that gave us Sir Lenny Henry, Sue Lawley and Sam Allardyce, remains the unofficial capital of the Black Country.
And the Black Country’s distinctive flag is flown permanently from its Council House, a grand, neo-Georgian from the 1930s.
Only now, in a visual symbol of decline, the flag is not distinctive at all, appearing more like a rat’s tail floating in the sky.
Robert Bennett, 66, has officially worked on Dudley Marketplace since he was 15 but, he says, it’s actually a lot longer than that.
“Back in the 70s people were fighting to get a pitch on the market,” he said. “It was all hustle and bustle and so vibrant. It has gone downhill.”
His stall is the only one open and customers are few and far between, mostly people picking up a few bits.
“Whatever the Council do ends up being wrong,” he added.
“They have big plans but for the last year we have had no bus terminal so everyone is being dropped off further away and the older people don’t want to walk the extra distance carrying shopping.
“At the same time, they put in car parking charges, when that had offered free parking to help get over Covid but now they’ve got no money.”
Last August, the council admitted a £37 million funding gap over the next three years.
But there is precious little sympathy for the local politicians.
One shop owner, who asked not to be named, said they’d recently opened a “fancy bistro” in the Town Hall, only for it to make huge losses.
Last summer, Brooke’s Bar and Bistro closed less than two years after it opened having recorded an annual loss of £200,000.
Locals say the downhill slide has been a steady one with most people pointing to the late 1980s and the development of the Merry Hill (aka Merry Hell) Shopping Centre in nearby Brierley Hill as the start.
“The Dudley of years ago was brilliant,” said retired warehouse worker John Darby, 83. “And then along came Merry Hill and things slowly started falling apart.”
Helped by a local cobbler, he rattles off a list of the big brands who had made Dudley their home – Thornton’s, WHSmith, M&S, H Samuel, to name a few…all went.
“Now what is there to come into Dudley for,” went on John. “It’s like downtown Beirut towards the church, three Turkish barbers, some charity shops and homeless people everywhere.
“The market had one stall on today. Later on it will smell of weed because the kids will be there after school.
“The bus doesn’t drop you off at the right place anymore and on the road, we’ve got more lights than Blackpool only ours don’t twinkle, they just hold up the traffic.
“Our museum and gallery went bankrupt, our football team has no ground, the main post office became a big Balti restaurant, there’s no trade at all and our politicians talk about city status or turning Dudley College into a University.
“They have lost the plot and don’t get me started on the local health service – 47 ambulances waiting the other day.
“If my mother could come back and see Dudley now, she’d weep.”
John Massey, 40, a radiographer from the town, said: “As people I’d say we are the best but as for investment and decisions about investment, that’s a different story altogether.
“There is always something happening but very little progress being made.
“As a kid, I could come here and spend the day. You could do your shopping, have something to eat, now you can see it all in 10 to 15 minutes. The town has lost its character.”
Mary Hollyhead, 70, agreed: “It’s not just the town centre, it’s the surgeries.
“If you need to see a doctor, you’d be quicker getting a bus to the surgery than ringing them up.
“You can wait and wait and then all the appointments have gone.”
The top ten worst places to live in England
- Rushmoor
- Basildon
- Dudley
- Castle Point
- Boston
- Fenland
- Central Bedfordshire
- Tameside
- Mansfield
- East Lindsey
Despite its current malaise, reminders of its glorious past are everywhere.
There is the now defunct Museum and Art Gallery (1883 to 2016) and the statue on the marketplace honouring local hero Duncan Edwards, the boy wonder who scored 151 times for Manchester United before dying in the Munich air disaster aged just 21.
And then there are the long overdue bits of unfinished business – the Metrolink extension that began in March 2020 and is still unfinished; the Hippodrome building where Laurel and Hardy played to capacity crowds, empty since Gala Bingo left in 2009.
Such things leave the town with a cluttered look and a feeling of decay.
“It is such a shame,” said Jayne, of recently opened Saturday Books down the retro-looking Fountain Arcade. “We have a lot to offer visitors with a Castle, a popular zoo and the Black Country Museum which gets a lot of tourists from American coming to study their ancestry.
“But I have lived in Dudley all my life and there seem to be more desperate people around these days.
“And it is sad to lose things like the Museum and Art Gallery which went back to the 1800s. Now they want it as a big play centre but you’ll need money to go to a place like that.”
There is nothing much for kids to do around here except hanging around and getting into trouble.
Zarina Aleksandraviciute
Stacey Jones, a mother of two, has recently moved back to Dudley from Dorset.
She said: “I’m not surprised it’s one of the worst. The town centre has nothing, just kids on bikes wearing balaclavas.
“And my experience of the schools is not good. My friend had to pull her son out of school because he has mobility issues and there was no supervision.
“She had to report the school to the Trust just to get an appointment.”
Among Dudley’s 80,000 inhabitants are plenty who have come from elsewhere to make it their home.
Mario, 63, moved from Naples after love blossomed on a holiday romance.
He said: “In the last 10 years all the heart has been ripped out of the place. When the shops go, so does the community spirit.
“There is still community spirit where I live and it’s not a bad place really but the town centre is not good.
“I can’t fault the health service though as I recently had a diagnosis of prostate cancer and they saw me within 12 hours.’
Majid, 70, who came to Dudley 47 years ago, said: “I feel more like a foreigner than ever. It doesn’t feel like a safe place to me.”
Shop worker Zarina Aleksandraviciute, 31, added: “There is nothing much for kids to do around here except hanging around and getting into trouble.
“I hardly ever see the police.”
Her boss, shopkeeper Anna Shahmani, wonders why they are bothering with the Metrolink as who would want to come to Dudley.
“You aren’t going to come all the way here for chicken and chips or pizza are you,” she said.
“It is bad. The community has broken down because if you don’t physically need to be somewhere, like having your nails done or hair done, you shop online.
“That breaks the community spirit. Now we have homeless people causing a lot of trouble to shopkeepers.
“Dudley people tend to be a bit over friendly if anything but now I don’t see many smiling faces.
“It’s miserable and dreary.”
The Sun has reached out to Dudley Council and West Midlands Police for a comment.
The top ten best places to live in England
- Richmond
- Cheltenham
- Stroud
- Merton
- Ribble Valley
- Fylde
- The Cotswolds
- Sutton
- Chorley
- Bath and North East Somerset
