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
Bluewater (shopping centre) B), Ensignbus and London Buses routes serve Bluewater bus station. Bluewater (shopping centre) Bluewater Shopping Centre (commonly referred to as Bluewater) is an out-of-town shopping centre in Stone (postally Greenhithe), Kent, England, outside the M25 Orbital motorway, east south-east of London's centre. Opened on 16 March 1999 in a former chalk quarry after ten years of building works, the site including car parks occupies and has a sales floor area of 154,000 m (1,600,000 ft) over three levels, making it the fifth-largest shopping centre in the UK (after Westfield London, MetroCentre, Trafford Centre and Westfield Stratford City). Elsewhere in Europe