![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/688fdce667615.jpeg\")
\n \u00a9 LDR Service<\/p>\n
\n \u00a9 LDR Service<\/p>\n
\n A sports club in Halesowen has been given permission to upgrade its ground after a Dudley Council decision was overturned.\n <\/p>\n
Planners at the authority had rejected an application from Coombs Wood Sports and Social Club for improvements at their Stewarts Road ground.<\/p>\n
The club appealed to the Planning Inspectorate who reversed the council\u2019s decision that the development was on greenbelt land and should be blocked.<\/p>\n
Planning inspector Les Greenwood said: \u201cAlthough the proposal would represent inappropriate development in the greenbelt, the very special circumstances necessary to justify such development do exist in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club, which hosts cricket and bowls, applied to make changes to the exterior of the clubhouse, convert a garage into changing rooms, add a new garage and a new building on the bowls area.<\/p>\n
Halesowen North councillor Stuart Henley supported the plan and said the community stood firmly behind the proposal.<\/p>\n
Dudley council planners took a different view and decided the development would \u2018harm the openness of the greenbelt and would conflict with its fundamental purpose of the greenbelt designation\u2019.<\/p>\n
In their report on the application, officers said: \u201cThe proposed detached garage and the new bowls structures would also, by reason of their scale, mass, siting and visual prominence would create excessively large overly prominent and uncharacteristic, incongruous additions within this highly sensitive location.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement supporting the application, Simpatico Town Planning said: \u201cIt has become apparent that improved changing facilities are needed to cater for different groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a by-product of this work, the club wish to take to opportunity to improve safety for visitors, by relocating the existing machinery storage space within the site to a safer and more appropriate location, away from pedestrian movement, in a new dedicated store building.\u201d<\/p>\n
In overturning the council\u2019s decision, Mr Greenwood said: \u201cThe proposal would significantly enhance outdoor sports and recreational provision for the local community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese amount to strong public benefits that would clearly outweigh the harm to the greenbelt.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9 LDR Service A sports club in Halesowen has been given permission to upgrade its ground after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[22440,22441,855,9163,22439,748,9444,1354,393,9453,4884,14987,269,12,3669,9440,93,16823,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-315844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-102-5","9":"tag-102-5-fm","10":"tag-birmingham","11":"tag-black-country","12":"tag-brierley-hill","13":"tag-britain","14":"tag-dab","15":"tag-dudley","16":"tag-england","17":"tag-fm","18":"tag-great-britain","19":"tag-halesowen","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-online","23":"tag-radio","24":"tag-sport","25":"tag-stourbridge","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114967633406944477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}