On This Week: December 15-21, 2005 in East Rudham, King’s Lynn, Terrington St Clement and West Dereham

In our weekly feature we look back at what was making the news 19 years ago…

Heartless thieves ploughed their way through St Andrew’s Church graveyard, in West Dereham, twice in four days to steal heating oil. They siphoned half the £650-worth of fuel from the tank behind the church and then later returned to drain the rest. As well as churning up the graveyard grass with their vehicle, the raiders also moved a headstone marking the grave of a female church stalwart away from the grave and up against a hedge. Church officials say the tank will now be fitted with a secure metal cage before it is filled with oil again, so that the new £38,000 heating system installed last year can be back in use.

Elderly West Lynn residents are up in arms after a regular bus service into Lynn town centre was cancelled, meaning they have to wait hours before they can travel. Long Sutton company Cavalier Travel has stopped running its hourly service and now there are only three buses into town each day run by Norfolk Green. Cavalier managing director Dennis Upton had sympathy with residents, but pointed out that since the West Lynn ferry had increased its frequency and size it had taken some passengers away from the bus route.

Good news for supporters of Lynn Stars speedway team, with club boss Buster Chapman unveiling his two British reserves to complete the 2006 line-up. The Money Centre Stars have signed up Chris Mills and Simon Lambert, who have both had previous links with the club and the names were announced to the 200 supporters attending a pre-Christmas event at the clubroom. Team manager Rob Lyon tipped them to “make a combination of the two best reserves in the league”.

A Government appointed team of finance consultants sent into Lynn’s cash-strapped Queen Elizabeth Hospital have left after just a week. The Department of Health team has given the hospital a vote of confidence in its recovery plan to find ways of reducing the £11 million debt it currently faces. Debts at the hospital have rocketed over the last couple of years, forcing ward mergers and recruitment freezes. The trust was also “fined” a further £1.5 million earlier this year by the Government for being over its budget.

Around 7,000 Marshland residents will benefit from a new £1.2 million doctors’ surgery which has been given the go-ahead at Terrington St Clement. West Norfolk Council has given full planning permission for the surgery to be built on part of the playing field at St Clement’s High School and work should start in late April to early May next year. The school will be one of the first in Norfolk to meet a new extended school strategy, integrating education, health and child care facilities on such a scale that it could become a hub of community services.

Skipper Jack Defty is due to make his 150th Linnets appearance this week at Cirencester. Defty is now the longest-serving player at the club and was made captain this season. The Walks outfit, however, will not want a repeat of the last time a Linnets player notched up a milestone: last week Adam Jones was sent off during his 100th league game. Lynn’s last game saw three points collected from a win at Northwood to keep them hanging in just below the play-off picture and manager Tommy Taylor is hoping they can now put a run together.

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of Lynn News readers, the construction of a state-of-the-art lit helipad at Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital will begin in the spring of 2006. The appeal was launched on July 15 and, in just a few months, more than £34,000 has been reached towards the £60,000 needed to build the landing pad. Fundraising readers throughout West Norfolk have been doing everything from cutting off their hair, baking cakes and holding coffee mornings – and many more events are still planned.

A planning inspector has refused an appeal by developers to build 36 detached homes at Gaywood Hall. Residents had objected to the plans, put forward by a Chelmsford-based company, and West Norfolk Council refused the application in February which led to the appeal against that decision. Objections to the plan included the narrowness of the road, increased traffic and the environmental impact of building on a green space. It was also pointed out that the site contained trees which were subject to preservation orders.

East Rudham is celebrating that it can build a Multi-Use Games Area (MUGA) thanks to a £30,000 grant from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Rural Enterprise fund. This follows a West Norfolk Borough Council initiative put forward in 2002 which highlighted the need for strategically-placed MUGAs throughout the area in order to increase sports participation.