THE children of West Malvern look to be facing major disappointment in the apparent failure of bids to obtain substantial funding from Malvern Hills District Council for improvements to the playing field playground and for play facilities at St James’s C of E Primary School. The funds arose from payments agreed under Section 106 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 as a condition of planning permission granted for the redevelopment of the Scotland House site on North Malvern Road. Last year the Parish Council was assured by MHDC officials that its proposals for improvements at the Playing Fields would qualify for £22,000 grant funding, while fundraisers for the school building fund receiving similar assurances in respect of £6,000 for the school. Now, however, it appears that MHDC is claiming firstly that the money was never available for use in West Malvern and secondly that despite its being a legal condition attached to the planning permission, the money had not been received from the developer who has since gone bankrupt, although the development was completed some time ago and most of the apartments are now in occupation. West Malvern’s representatives are upset by MHDC’s apparent retraction of the verbal statement by its own officials more than a year ago that West Malvern qualified for the grant and are critical of the fact that the developer had been allowed to proceed without paying over the agreed Section 106 monies. The PC and the school representatives are continuing to pursue the issue, but at present the outlook seems bleak.

There were many reunions of old friends and schoolmates from many generations at Saturday’s successful History Day at the village school. A remarkable number of old photographs and archive documents were on display which brought back memories to native West Malvernians and gave more recent arrivals an insight into earlier times in the village – not least the pictures of some of today’s old-timers as they looked as schoolchildren half a century and more ago!

Although a full tribute was paid in last week’s Gazette to the late Terry Cole it would be wrong not to refer here to his long and devoted service to West Malvern Football Club which he had served unstintingly as manager for nearly 40 years. As well as arranging fixtures and picking teams, he was out in all weathers, often on his own, erecting goalposts, marking out the pitch, filling in rabbit holes, and doing all the odd jobs needed to enable matches to take place. He will be greatly missed.

Monday will be a Bank Holiday, so – of course! - the Royal British Legion will be staging another of its car boot sale on the village playing fields from 10am-2pm. Admission free, booters £5 per car, set up from 9.30am. Contact: Richard Hammond on 07533 710651.

Pictures of our beautiful local landscape have been coming in nicely to Kay Meredith who is co-ordinating production of a 2010 calendar to raise funds for the school building appeal. But the more the merrier, so anyone who may have favourite photographs of good quality that they would like to be considered for inclusion should get them to Kay as soon as possible either digitally (preferred) to kay.meredith@virgin.net or by post or in person to Kay Meredith, 24 Montpelier Road, West Malvern, Worcester, WR14 4BP.