Gloves are coming off in a blame game at Dudley Council over who was responsible for the failed Brookes Bar project.

The council-run bar closed at the end of August after making eye-watering losses which, along with the bill for developing the venue, cost the authority a total of £1.5 million.

The council’s cabinet member for finance, Cllr Steve Clark, denies he misled a meeting of the council on August 22 by claiming the then cabinet member for commercialisation did not have ‘the bottle’ to stop the project.

The target of his remarks, Cllr Shaun Keasey, has now written to the council’s monitoring officer, who enforces standards of conduct, about the comments.

Cllr Clark said: “ I stand by my comments, Cllr Keasey was the cabinet member for commercialisation. Brookes was commercial activity run by the council.”

Work to develop the bar, in Dudley’s Priory Street, began in 2019, it opened in 2022 and remained under the control of the regeneration directorate.

Control of running the bar passed to the commercial directorate in April 2024, long after Cllr Keasey had resigned from the cabinet and the Conservative Party to sit on the authority as an independent.

Cllr Keasey dismissed Cllr Clark’s argument as ‘absolute cobblers’ and added the bar should have been handed over after building was complete but that did not happen.

He said: “I’m not being blamed for something I had nothing to do with, I actively tried to stop it happening. I find it ironic, I wanted Brookes Bar in my portfolio.”

The pair clashed on the issue in the council meeting after Cllr Keasey, who owns a nightclub in Wolverhampton, told Cllr Clark: “You paid a consultant £50,000 to give you advice on Brookes and then shut it.

"I’d have done it for free. I warned about this and my views were dismissed.”

Cllr Clark hit back, he said: “To blame us when you were the person that could have done something about it and chose not to – you are totally out of order.”