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Housing developer Persimmon has asked Sandwell Council for permission to build a further 18 homes on land on the edge of its recently completed estate off Friar Park Road in Wednesbury. The land, which is also a protected site of local importance to nature conservation, was intended to remain as mostly woodland with a new children’s play area and a balancing pond included in the plans approved by Sandwell Council in 2024. The new and updated plans submitted by Persimmon show the children’s play area would be moved to another location nearer to the recently built Elm Tree Primary Academy. Persimmon already had permission to build 84 homes on the playing fields – after plans were given the green light by Sandwell Council in 2020 – but the developer later returned in 2023 with larger proposals. Two new sports pitches – as well as changing rooms and similar facilities for local clubs – would be installed at the Phoenix Collegiate in West Bromwich as part of the Friar Park work. The application had been criticised by government body Sport England over potential ‘broken promises’ to build replacement playing fields and improve existing facilities in its 2020 application. When the plans were submitted, Sport England, the body responsible for protecting playing fields, came out against the plan over concerns that £300,000 promised to improve facilities elsewhere in Sandwell might fail to materialise under the new proposall. As part of the deal to build 84 homes on the playing fields, Persimmon agreed to stump up £300,000 towards improving the facilities at the Hydes Road playing fields – just over a mile away – which Sandwell Council had singled out as a “key priority site” for sports. Persimmon said better pitches had already been built at the Phoenix Collegiate site in West Bromwich – which was formed in 2010 after the merging of Menzies High School and Manor High School in Friar Park Road. The school had operated from both sites before Manor High School closed in 2012 because of asbestos. The site of the former Friar Park Road school has since been transformed into the High Point Academy which opened in 2021. The planned new homes are just one of several applications currently in the works in Wednesbury. The huge new £20m Friar Park ‘urban village’ – which is set to be built in the next several years – includes more than 600 news and improvements to the nearby Millennium Community Centre. Up to 34 two- and three-bed homes are set to be built next to drinks firm and Irn Bru maker AG Barr’s site in Friar Park Road, while the former Friar Park Inn in Crankhall Lane could also be demolished and replaced with 14 new flats and a shop. Friar Park was also awarded £20m government funding to be spent on community facilities for the ‘left behind’ estate across the next decade.
