Merry Hill Shopping Centre closing in June 1990. A further blow came when the local council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough, announced that it was bringing in parking charges throughout the area; this turned more shoppers away from local town centres, and towards the Merry Hill Centre, where parking remains free. Though there have been plans for introducing parking charges at the centre, this has been criticised, ironically, due to fears of impacting trade. In 2008, Merry Hill Centre, along with nearby Brierley Hill, was redesignated as the 'strategic town centre' of the Dudley Borough, and thus the focus of future local government investment. The Merry
Travel Merry Hill and it was completed in 1989). In the early days, the fleet consisted of Carlyle Works bodied Freight Rover Sherpa vehicles. An attraction to customers of the Merry Hill Minibus service was that the buses gave change to passengers not having the exact fare, which was not the case with the incumbent Travel West Midlands. The company intended to operate around 100 vehicles from the time of the centre's completion in November 1989, but stalled at 46 following the early 1990s recession. During 1997 Merry Hill Minibuses was taken over by West Midlands Travel's parent company National Express who continued