A NEW community group is putting forward an ‘alternative’ plan for the derelict Longlands School site – and is urging residents to inspect their proposals at a meeting next week.

The News reported last week how Persimmon Homes’ plans for 62 new houses on the vacant Brook Street site in the Old Quarter had been met with concerns over traffic and road safety.

Residents are keen for the site – which has become a haven for vandalism and trespassing since its closure in 2011 – to be developed but many have objected to the scale of the plans.

Now, the recently-formed Stourbridge Community Development Trust has put forward its own scheme, which involves social housing and community space.

The scheme would include a health centre, youth centre, playing fields, extra parking and a cycleway link to the town centre.

The trust is holding a meeting at Katie Fitzgerald’s pub on Enville Street at 7.30pm next Thursday (July 12).

There, they plan to frame a ‘community agenda’ that they can take to the public meeting on the Persimmon plans, to be chaired by Margot James MP, the following night at Stourbridge Town Hall.

SCDT co-founder Eddy Morton said: “We are not imposing our proposal on people or saying ‘we are going to do this’.

“We are just saying to the community that there is the chance to do something different, that this is what could be done as an alternative.

“Let’s have a conversation about how we can make this happen.

“There seems to be a lot of appetite from people saying ‘why can’t we take control of this site?’ and we are saying ‘you can’ and this is a mechanism to do so.”

Should their plans for the Longlands site – which is owned by Birmingham Metropolitan College – become reality, SCDT hope to finance them through Government Community Housing Fund money.

Mr Morton added: “If there are enough objections to the (Persimmon) scheme and it doesn’t go ahead then they (the council) will have to look at community use of the land.

“If the decision is a ‘yes’, then that makes everything irrelevant in relation to the Longlands site – but our ideas don’t only apply to this one site.”

SCDT describe their proposal as ‘an environmental and technological hub, incorporating social housing and combined workspaces, all owned by a Community Land Trust’.

Their proposal states: “It would address issues of housing, enterprise and innovation, re-energise Stourbridge as an artistic and creative hub as well as addressing local issues of parking, traffic and energy poverty.”

For more details on the SCDT proposals, visit http://stourbridgecommunitydevelopmenttrust.moonfruit.com/the-longlands/4594257338