Former Dudley leader says ‘think outside the box’

Dudley Council needs to rethink how it spends taxpayers cash according to the leader of a party with an anti-cuts agenda.

Ahead of local elections on May 7, Cllr Pete Lowe from The Black Country Party called for the council to scrap more cuts and demand more funding from the government.

The former leader of Dudley Council, who formed his new party in 2025 along with other ex-Labour councillors, believes it’s time for a change of mindset in local government.

Cllr Lowe said: “You have to think outside the box and look at the skills of local authority which can bring revenue in.

“Dudley Council provides 600 services, there have been some high-profile failures but they are small when you look at financial terms to use as an argument to say local government is failing.

“I can provide far more successes where local government has worked extremely well and it could do so much better if any party at national level was only to invest in it.”

In 2025, Dudley councillors approved a budget from the ruling minority Conservative group which earmarked around £42m in savings from a revenue budget of around £330m.

The Tories argued the savings were necessary to rebuild depleted council reserves and steer the authority away from effective bankruptcy.

A year on and the council has now boosted its reserves to around £50m but Cllr Lowe believes it would make more sense to spend some of the cash.

He said: “We are proudly anti-austerity and wouldn’t support cuts to services already cut to the bone.

“If you invest in services early enough, in time that saves you money, services will be gone and reserves will be eaten up even quicker.

“Politics needs a bit of utopian thinking, come out of austerity and look how we can provide services.

“The money is still there, the argument is how we align that money to the local community, all you need is different choices.”