Joy at saving 'rewarding' West Bromwich bus station community hub

Louise Colledge said she was worried having to tell people the centre was going to close

The team behind a community hub threatened with closure said "everybody pulled together" to keep it open.

The Let's Chat hub at West Bromwich bus station faced closure last month after funding from Transport for West Midlands came to an end.

But West Midlands Combined Authority announced it would fund it and two other sites in Coventry and Walsall until March 2024.

Louise Colledge, from the hub, said they cried but people were pleased.

"It's lovely. We've had tears but it's not really thanks to me, it's thanks to the community," she said.

The centre had been run at the bus station since February,

A hub at Dudley Bus Station has closed as the station is to be redeveloped and a centre in Bilston is only available on Mondays.

The hub has helped people find accommodation, it said

Ms Colledge said people upset with the proposed closure wrote to local politicians and started a petition outside the hub, garnering more than a thousand signatures.

"Everybody has pulled together and they're still bringing in the teabags and the biscuits, so we'll have enough teabags to last after March - hopefully if it continues being funded," she said.

Sue Cousins, passenger services manager for community transport at the station, said from when it opened, the hub was really successful.

"Had we not been able to get extra funding, we were all going to be gutted," she said.

"It has been a valuable asset to the people of West Bromwich."

She thanked the authority for finding money to keep funding the project because closing before winter was a concern.

Ms Cousins added the hub was a community and she had seen one man, who used the facilities to meet people after his wife died, go on to form a friendship group that went out together to lunch.

"It's things like that that make it all rewarding for us," she said.