Are our taxes being wasted on the Hippodrome and Metro?

Dear Sarah, Helen and FoI team.  Could Sean, at 16 Summer Lane, also help with the answers to the financial questions, please?

"Curtain up on many more years of misery"  Halesowen Chronicle dated 29 March 2018

Could you please give me the answers to these questions?

1. For how much money did Dudley MBC buy the Hippodrome Theatre?
2. When did the council buy it?
3. What company or organisation or individual did you buy it from?
4. Why did you buy it?  What was the original intention and plan?
5. What were Cllr Patrick's "exciting plans" for the Hippo that would end "years of misery"?
6. Was it to create a leisure and tourism hub to rival that of the four at the foot of Castle Hill?
7. How many years or months after the purchase was the decision made to demolish it?
8. Why was it not sold to the private company who wanted to buy it for £8 m?
9. Please name the private company.

Metro trams will revive Dudley town centre with investors pouring in to make their wealth

1. For how long has Cavendish every window smashed House been empty?
2. What are the plans?
3. When will the plans for the site start to come to fruition?
4. For how long has the other huge office block in Flood Street been empty?
5. Are there any plans for it?
6. Am I right in thinking that the flash, glitzy, "all that glisters is not gold", Metro tram will run down both Flood Street and past Cavendish House?
7. When did the last investor move in to Dudley town centre on hearing the good news that trams were finally going to arrive, after 37 years of trying?
8. Is it true that, from a newspaper report in 2016, Dudley was the fifth worst town centre of its size for empty shops - more than 20%?
9. What is the most recent figure?
10. Is there evidence to suggest that it is very largely only local people who shop in Dudley town?
11. What research has been done to find out what proportion of Dudley town's people shop at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?
12. Has there been any market research done to find out how many Dudley folk will jump on the tram for shopping at Merry Hill?
13. When did Beatties department store move out?
14. When does a town centre officially become a ghost town?
15. Do the two huge, largely empty car parks that the trams will run past indicate that Dudley top town is, in fact, now a ghost town?
16. What is the latest figure for the cost of building "bus on rails" trams to pour into Dudley town centre at the rate of six to ten trams an hour?
17. In 2016, it jumped from £310 m to £343 million, plus cost overruns from unforeseen difficulties.
18. Of the new figure, how much are council taxpayers in the West Midlands paying?
19. How much of the second devolution deal will be going to pay for Dudley's extravagant and inappropriate 11 Kms WBHE?
20. Can over £31 m/Km to block, for ever, any hope of finally finishing the 120 Kms Black Country Railway be regarded as prudent, sensible expenditure?
21. Does Helen Martin now regard Dudley low town at Castle Gate as being regenerated and high town as a 'rundown centre'?

Dudley Central Mosque

1. To promote good community relations, does your council give any time or, even any thought, to the Muslim's community long standing wish for a purpose built mosque in or next to Dudley town centre?
2. Has it occurred to you that the smart, flashy tram will run straight past the present unfortunate building that is the mosque?
3. What are the present plans for the Hall Street site that was denied to the Muslims?

With thanks for your help in these matters.  Like two years ago, I will refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman if there is no complete and full response by the end of this month.

Best wishes

Tim Weller