Marco Longhi MP visits the Blue Brick in Brierley Hill to high light the Crooked House law.

Express & Star

Marco Longi MP visits the Blue Brick in  Brierley Hill to highlight the Crooked House law.

Transcript

00:00 Paul Jenkins of the Express and Star, we're here with Dudley North MP Marco Longhi and

00:07 pub champions and champions of rebuilding the Crooked House, Paul Turner and Ian Sandall.

00:14 But we're here today at the Blue Brick Pub, which is another pub which is under threat.

00:20 It's been closed for about 18 months, there's a planning permission in place.

00:25 Marco, just tell me how it ties in with your campaign, the Crooked House Law?

00:31 Well obviously we are campaigning to rebuild the Crooked House and then as a wider plan

00:36 we want to make sure that we protect heritage pubs just like the Blue Brick.

00:41 Now we have come across the fact that the Dudley Council have received a planning application

00:46 for partial redevelopment of the Blue Brick and what we want to do is make sure that as

00:52 many people as possible within the locality are aware of this.

00:57 And months and months ago I set up a committee which is to preserve heritage pubs and I'm

01:02 very lucky to have Ian Sandall and Paul Turner here with me who are very active members of

01:07 that committee to help me, former pub landlord, massive campaigner for the Crooked House and

01:13 others who are actually current landlords to make sure that we pull all this together

01:18 and make sure not only that we eventually get a change in the law from government but

01:23 locally local councils can do so much more to make sure that assets at risk such as this

01:29 are registered locally and they get better protections and they aren't just treated

01:33 with normal planning permissions.

01:37 And Paul, it's been six months since the terrible events at the Crooked House, your

01:45 whole group has been at the forefront of trying to get it rebuilt.

01:49 There's a pub in London that was rebuilt, how's it going on your side?

01:54 Well we're having to wait really, we're having to wait for a legal process to take

01:57 place.

01:58 In terms of the Colton Tavern that you just mentioned, we've got a plan to go and meet

02:02 with their campaign group to talk about what they did to achieve what they achieved which

02:07 was to get their pub rebuilt.

02:09 So we're going to be doing that pretty soon.

02:12 But in the meantime we're just keeping everybody aware of what's going on, making

02:16 sure that we've got an event on Saturday which is to commemorate the six month anniversary

02:23 of the fire at the Crooked House.

02:26 And we're doing various things to just keep things in the public eye so that, I don't

02:32 think people would forget, but we'll make sure that they won't.

02:35 And Ian, six months on, are you still confident that Crooked House can be rebuilt brick by

02:40 brick, which was the first intention after the fire?

02:44 Six months on we're still, well we're more confident that we can get it rebuilt.

02:48 This feeling, this passion hasn't gone away.

02:51 People are more kind of convinced now that we can do this.

02:56 They have a real fond attachment to the Crooked House.

03:02 We're not going to let this be consigned to history.

03:04 Like the Blue Brick as well, we have a rich cultural heritage of Portsmouth in this area.

03:09 We can't afford to let people ride roughshod over the Crooked House, the Blue Brick.

03:15 I've got fond memories of my youth in here, the late 90s, early 2000s.

03:21 Particularly in my age it was the place to be.

03:25 It's got a history, everybody's got memories of the Blue Brick in this area and the Crooked

03:30 House.

03:31 We can't let people do what they want with these buildings.

03:35 They're historical.

03:36 You look around the Blue Brick as well, there's a Lamps on the front, part of our history.

03:43 Each one of these buildings is a landmark within our area.

03:47 We can't afford to let people do what they want with them.

03:52 [Sounds of a bus passing by]

03:57 [Sounds of a bus passing by]

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