CONFIRMATION that Fine Fare supermarket was to be offered the plum former cattle market site in Bromsgrove resulted in a Tory-Labour row at the Council House. Labour Councillor Henry Webley maintained the ruling Conservatives had not given Tesco, the other contender, which already had a store in High Street, a fair chance of acquiring it. Tesco had planned to have an in-store bakery and a rooftop car park.

"A YEAR of tension in which education appeared to be crushed between two millstones." That was how North Bromsgrove High School head William Bloomfield summed up the state of schools in the district in his address at the annual speech day. Problems over funding, cuts and uncertainty over jobs added up to a pretty dismal picture he said.

THERE were sad goodbyes at two schools in the district when the term ended