THIS weeks Redditch Standard’s letters.
REDDITCH is going to have a temporary police station. The current police station in Grove Street will be demolished before the new one in Middle House Lane is finished.
Building work at the site for ‘a new blue light hub’ may take over a year before completion.
This means there will need to be a temporary home for the PCs and PCSOs.
John Campion, West Mercia’s Police and Crime Commissioner, has said there is search for a suitable venue.
Now just think of the many empty buildings in the town centre (and on industrial estates).
Here are three suggestions – the old Debenhams Store, St Stephen’s House at the corner of Prospect Hill/Easemore Road, the former British Heart Foundation charity shop in the Market Place.
The chosen venue would need plenty of parking space for their police vehicles.
A colleague suggested perhaps the land left after demolition of Car Park 7 – fill it with Portcabins!
Was this need for a temporary cop shop budgeted for?
Is this all because of poor planning by Councillor Dormer, Campion, etc including the Town Board?
And we know the new Cop Shop will not have a custody suite and detainees will need to be taken to Kiddy or Worcester.
Southcrest resident.
NEW voting rules have come in for the upcoming local elections and they are likely cause problems.
This May those who vote in person will have to bring photo ID to elect their councillors, but hardly anybody seems to know about it.
The impact of this will be huge – hundreds going to do their duty risk being turned away if they turn up without ID and many more are likely to just not bother as they don’t have the correct ID in the first place.
It’s all right if you can just pop home to pick up your passport, but what about people who have to go to work or drop off the kids at school or don’t have a passport anyway?
Poll workers are supposed to be counting those they turn away – but this is likely to underestimate the scale of the problem as it won’t include anyone who left the queue to vote after finding out that ID is required, turned back halfway, or didn’t even set off because of not having the right ID.
This expensive and unnecessary scheme should be cancelled.
Timothy Haigh,
Redditch
THE Standard reported Coun Dormer as commenting that Redditch Labour wanted to ‘take the town backwards’.
When you are heading in the wrong direction going back is the best thing to do.
Whether it is Ipsley meadow, demolishing the library, the location of the market, the general plans for the town centre or their profligacy with taxpayers money, at this time of all times, the Conservative council are, I contend, demonstrably taking the town down a wrong route.
Mr Dormer claims to be working with BID to ‘deliver….some food fairs in the town’. If he or BID leaders feel this is a substitute for an ongoing market in (the clue is in the name) Market Place, they are mistaken.
Even if the outdoor market was trialled over the summer to ascertain its viability in an, admittedly changed, trading environment, that would be something.
I am usually a Conservative supporter but I feel, locally at least, Labour deserves a chance.
Their plans for Redditch appear to be better than those of the present council. Frankly, it is hard to see how they could be worse.
K Wass
WHAT a lovely photo of the well laid hedge at Forge Mill.
What a contrast to the massacre of trees and hedges on both sides of the Slough, Studley.
No wonder that the wildlife of Great Britain is slowly dying out.
Soon there will be nowhere for them to roost, nest, or hide from predators.
Mrs M A Hay
Alcester Rd
Studley
WE have lived in Redditch for over 35 years and enjoyed the benefits of the open market, we can remember when there was an open market and indoor market which we quite often used.
I was shocked recently when I went to buy a new watch strap off the guy who had the truck behind the library, and was told everyone has had to move inside.
Every decent town has a outdoor market it’s part of their heritage so why not Redditch?
Paul Shut
Redditch
THE market should stay outside.
The outside market repeatedly comes indoors and is killing the business for the indoor market.
The indoor market, the people who occupy shops and pay rent should be the only people selling within the centre.
Just as it was before Covid, the outdoor market should stay outdoors.
Lomu Potia
Redditch
THE PRIME Minister has stated anyone entering Britain illegally will be denied access to the protection afforded by our modern slavery laws.
What on EARTH is going on?
Have you all lost whatever shred of humanity you’ve ever possessed?
Nigel Braithwaite
