Picture Past: Regent Street, redundancies and petty theft
The Weston Force of the Somerset Emergency Volunteers Organisation held a practical excercise on Sunday. The casualty clearing station. Picture: WESTON MERCURY - Credit: Archant
A mammoth scheme to revamp Weston’s Regent Street which could cost up to a half million pounds was unveiled.
The development – costing between £250,000 and £500,000, and set to be completed in 1971 – was meant to include a supermarket, shops, offices and a multi-storey car park.
To make way for the new additions, it was proposed the building – owned by the borough council on the southern side of the street, which back onto Regent House car park – be demolished.
The supermarket and other new facilities would then be built in their place, with the multi-storey car park accommodating 450 vehicles and 5,000 square feet of office space.
The proposed frontage was said to be 230 square feet long, and the building set to be torn down to make way for the development included a news agent, a china shop, a Chinese restaurant, a cobbler and an electrical shop.
n Hundreds of workers were set to be laid off at Westland Helicopters.
The 400 redundancies of ‘non-productive’ workers included employees at the Yeovil HQ, as well as plants in Weston and Hayes in Middlesex.
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The firm’s management cited spiralling wage costs and delays in finalising new contracts.
Of the business’s 7,000 employees, 1,000 worked at the Weston plant.
A Westland spokesman said: “This step is essential to maintain the economic health of the company during this difficult time, and to maintain our competitive position in world markets, but it in no way affects the need to employ more productive workers to meet our current aircraft programmes.”
n Somerset police were searching for a young man who snatched £60 worth of fivers from a petrol station in Weston.
They also wanted to speak to the driver of a van who may have witnessed the incident at the New Bristol Road filling station.
A police spokesman said a man walked into the petrol station at just after 6pm the previous Friday and asked for distilled water, and, while the attendant went to the back of the premises to get some, the man had taken the cash and run off.
He was then seen getting into a Blue Ford Cortina driven by another man.
The man was about 5’3” and about 19 years old, with a ‘slim build’.