RECENTLY-introduced car parking charges and waiting restrictions on many roads in Bromsgrove town centre had upset members of the Chamber of Trade. Shopkeepers said the 3d (1p) fee was driving potential shoppers away. This week the urban district council refused to meet a delegation of angry chamber members who wanted to hand in a 500-name petition calling for a rethink on charges. The car parks had made a profit of £11 during April.

POLICE in Bromsgrove issued a "friendly" warning to organisations who were running fund-raising football pools that they may be breaking the law. This was bad news for Bromsgrove Rovers, the county cricket club and the local branch of the Labour Party. Cash from the Rovers scheme run by the supporters had paid for floodlights to be installed at the Victoria Ground last year.

SCHOOLS in Bromsgrove came top of the class during the spring term in the attendances league with a record 90.6 per cent as against 86.6 last year. What absenteeism there was was due to illness. Individually, Upton Warren school, with its 36 pupils, came out top with 96 per cent attendance. There were 6,183 children registered with Local Education Authority schools in the Bromsgrove area.

A NEW police beat to take in the whole of the new Charford estate and stretching from New Road to Upton Warren had been created. It would be patrolled by PC Davies, whose station would be one of the new police houses in Newton Road, Aston Fields.

PLANS were being made to create an area in Bromsgrove's old cemetery next year where cremated ashes could be buried.