THE list of peculiar decision by the district council continues to grow.

Last year, the ill-formed proposals to build a homeless shelter in the heart of Stourport’s tourist district was defeated (although we are still waiting for new, much-needed homeless proposals to be put forward at a suitable site).

This year, it is Bewdley under attack. Actually, this is a re-emergence of an idea that was put forward over a decade ago.

Wyre Forest District Council owns a number of community assets across the district, assets that we can all use and that attract visitors to the wider area. Our traders then generate income from those visitors and everyone is happy.

In Bewdley, the council owns the museum and the adjacent gardens.

The latest plan is for the council to put these assets into a trust and hand this over to the town to look after.

The problem is the town doesn’t have the money to run the museum and gardens and to raise it, would have to triple the council tax charged by Bewdley Town Council.

This is the same as the proposal that was put forward over a decade ago that was rejected by the newly-elected administration on the district council.

Of course, the museum could charge for use. Not necessarily charging an entry fee, it could charge for events out of hours – evening parties, weddings and whatever else comes to mind.

But for the new museum trust to be secure, it would have to be profitable the whole time.

If charging was introduced under the district council ownership, it could at least suffer a few years of loss making, underwritten by other income from the council.

As it happens, Bewdley has a perfect example of a community asset that makes money – St George’s Hall.

But it can rent out the coffee shop, offices and the various meeting rooms. It was built as a commercial asset. Bewdley Museum Gardens are not such an asset.

Wyre Forest District Council does some amazing things and I do as much as I can to support their good ideas.

It was a joy to work with them to secure the £20.5 million for investment into Kidderminster’s town centre.

But amongst the genius are some really dumb ideas and I fear that this latest proposal to offload a community asset is one such dumb idea. The local community certainly seems to think so.