The Bradley Stoke Journal

Abigail Newton Smith, the cerebral palsy sufferer from Bradley Stoke who is about to travel to the USA for a life-changing operation, was featured on  BBC1′s Inside Out West programme last night (Monday 29th).

Nine-year-old Abigail, who attends Bowsland Green Primary School, is due to undergo the selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) operation at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital on 16th December.

The Footsteps 4 Abigail appeal, which has been running since the Summer, has raised £36,000 to pay for her surgery, which is not currently available on the NHS.

Abigails’s Mum, Carrie, told The Journal:

“The last six months have been tough with so many weekends spent doing numerous fundraising events and when we weren’t physically at them we were planning for the next event.”

“Trying to maintain some degree of family life during such a stressful and emotional time has been a challenge, but we have been committed and are passionate about changing Abigail’s future.”

“She doesn’t want to spend her life in a wheelchair and have the doom of surgeries ahead of her. Abigail has always been a fighter and wants the best she can from life. She wants to be as independent as she possibly can.”

Read on for details of the final fundraising event in the campaign »

The Bradley Stoke Fireworks Display, held annually at the Jubilee Centre, may have to move to another site if health and safety concerns arising from the large attendance cannot be resolved, the Town Council heard last week.

Crowds at the event reached five to six thousand in 2009, when numbers were swelled due to the cancellation of the popular Clifton Downs display and similar numbers were seen at this year’s renewal.

Cllr Mark Forsyth, Senior Health and Safety Officer for this year’s event, warned that the event had “become too successful for its own good”, adding: “We could have ended up with a ‘situation’”.

Councillors heard that the need to keep crowds off the public roads surrounding the venue led to a potential over-crowding issues within the car park of the Jubilee Centre.

Although the artificial pitch at the site had been made available to spectators, there were insufficient marshals to guide people in there, claimed one Councillor.

Summing up, Cllr Forsyth said:

“With my health and safety hat on, I wouldn’t do it again. That’s my professional advice.”

Read on to discover the options discussed by Councillors »

Bradley Stoke could soon have no less than three late-night, seven-days-a-week, pharmacies after a rush of planning and licensing applications in the last couple of months.

Boots, due to open soon at the Willow Brook Centre, became the first to reveal its hand when it submitted a planning application that included references to a “midnight pharmacy” at its new store.

Bradley Stoke Surgery then entered the race when it submitted a planning application to change the use of part of its newly-extended premises from “clinical space” to “a 100-hour opening pharmacy” and The Journal has since learned that a third licensing application for a 100-hour pharmacy in the area is being processed by the local health authority.

Following a part-liberalisation of licensing rules in 2005,  a pharmacy becomes exempt from having to prove that it is “necessary and expedient” if it opens for more than 100 hours a week.

When asked about the possible opening of new pharmacies in the town, NHS South Gloucestershire told The Journal:

The Boots pharmacy at Willow Brook has been approved as a 100-hour pharmacy. There are two further applications for 100- hour pharmacies pending under the exempt rules in the vicinity of Bradley Stoke Surgery.

Read the rest of this article »

There’s just a week left to enter the Willow Brook Clinic’s competition to win a course of three free 30-minute massage treatments.

The competition, organised in conjunction with The Journal, is being run to mark the first anniversary of the chiropractic and physiotherapy clinic based on the first floor of the Willow Brook Centre.

Entries must be received by Tuesday 30th November 2010 and the winner will be announced on Friday 3rd December 2010.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

Local MP Jack Lopresti visted the Willow Brook Centre on Saturday to join Town Councillors in welcoming support from Bradley Stoke businesses in the campaign to bring faster broadband connections to the town.

About 2,000 homes in Bradley Stoke have very poor broadband speeds because they are too far away from the BT exchanges at Filton and Almondsbury and their streets are not cabled by Virgin Media.

Mr Lopresti has vowed to make the fight to secure faster, more reliable, broadband coverage across his constituency one of his top priorities and he recently met Communications Minister Ed Vaizey to discuss the problem.

The Bradley Stoke Journal has been urging local residents to vote in the Race to Infinity, a nationwide competition being run by BT, that will see the five areas registering the most votes fast-tracked for the installation of superfast fibre optic broadband.

Vote now at: www.racetoinfinity.bt.com

N.B. You don’t need to be a BT customer in order to vote. Even if you are content with the broadband speeds you are getting (perhaps because you are a Virgin Media customer), please take a few seconds to vote and help those who are less fortunate.

Generous financial support from the Willow Brook Centre, CJ Hole and the new Bradley Stoke Harvester restaurant has funded the printing of banners and posters to publicise the BT competition, which runs until the end of year.

The sponsorship has also facilitated the printing of 5,000 leaflets to publicise the BT competition and a further 2,000 leaflets to promote a second campaign front that will demonstrate the demand for Virgin Media to complete its cable network in the town.

All the publicity material has been designed free of charge by local graphics design firm Fortyfour Creative, one of many local firms that say their business is seriously affected by being in a broadband ‘slowspot’.

A team of volunteers from the local community is being assembled to distribute leaflets to the 2,000 homes in the 52 Bradley Stoke streets that aren’t currently on the Virgin Media network. The remaining leaflets will be distributed through schools, community centres, libraries, pubs, shops and local businesses.

Read on to find out how YOU can get involved in the campaign »