A supermarket in a Black Country town has had its windows smashed and a Job Centre has been vandalised.
A once-bustling UK town is now so “troubled” that residents say it’s not safe to park your car there.
Visitors to Willenhall in the Black Country town will find passageways lined with graffiti, with rows of barbed wire on either side. Locals say it is the “forgotten town that no one cares about”.
Security cameras have been ripped off the wall outside Willenhall’s Job Centre’s front entrance. One resident said: “The windows have been repaired now, but give it a couple of months and they’ll be smashed again.”
Willenhall was once famous for making locks and keys. Now residents say that the industrial town has been “forgotten”.
One social media user wrote: “It’s not safe to park (there) and leave your car.” While a second wrote: “The forgotten town no one cares about.”
The comments were made after the windows of Willenhall’s Morrisons, which overlooks the Job Centre, were broken.
A reporter from Birmingham Live visited the town. Jamie Brassington found the windows of Morrisons were still smashed.
Susan Deeley, 62, from Featherstone, told Jamie: “You come to the high street, you’ll find shops closed down. There’s nothing to attract people.”
“What gives anyone the right to smash the windows (of the Job Centre)? Where will the money come from to replace the windows? The tax-payers. They need to find a job, I have been working since I was 15.”
Also out shopping was 85-year-old John Nicholas, who now lives in Spain, but was “on holiday” in Willenhall after flying back to visit family.
He said: “I lived here for 40 years. Me and my wife moved to Spain five years ago. Now this place is like a skip.
“Where I live in Spain, it’s so clean and tidy. Ok, in the summer, there’s a lot of bins in the street, communal bins. But they get emptied three times a day. Here, what is it once every two weeks?”
“I came down here on Sunday. Ok, it was Sunday, but there were only three shops open. It is a shame for the town.”
Another former resident was Ken Cooper, 83, who now lives in Bridgnorth, but he was also out shopping in Willenhall. He said: “I used to live here, it’s absolutely disgusting now.”
Mr Cooper said the town’s decline began in the 1970s. Every time he visits, he still hopes to bump into his “old boys” but admitted many have now “passed away”.
One of the longest-standing businesses in the town centre is Conways Butchers, run by 75-year-old Tony Butler. Mr Butler said his business attracts customers from as far as Poole and Peterborough due to it being a traditional butcher.
But he admits he is struggling, alongside the town itself. He said: “We used to have a market, it was fantastic there on the Saturdays. Now it has gone down the pan. We used to have all the windows open here, but now we can’t.”
