February 2006

IT was announced work on the £100m Wakefield Waterfront project would create more than 1,000 jobs. The company behind the revamp believed the job figure was a “conservative estimate” and didn’t include those who would be employed in restaurants and bars. The project features the £26m Hepworth Wakefield Art Gallery and offices. Developer Oliver Quarmby said: “This neglected part of the city will be transformed and will become a truly wonderful, invigorating and stimulating place to live, work and spend time. “It is tremendously exciting. We can’t wait to get started.” Detailed planning permission for the £175m Marsh Way scheme was also granted in February. That project features household names like Debenhams and Sainsbury’s plus posh apartments. Plans for the £9m development of Wakefield Theatre were also submitted this month. In the pipeline are a split-level foyer with bar and cafe areas, new box office facilities, an education suite and a 120-seater studio space. Plans are afoot to reinstate the Victorian stage, making it the only theatre in England where plays and pantomimes could be staged as the Victorians intended.

WAKEFIELD GP and Express columnist Dr Keith Souter is no stranger to these pages – but he made the news for a different reason this month. Dr Souter penned his first crime novel – The Gathering Murders – a tale of serial killings at a literary festival on a Scottish Island. But the medic, who is from Scotland, set it on an invented Hebridean island. Dr Souter, who writes under the name of Keith Moray, said: “I have been telling stories for a long time and this is my 12th book. It usually takes me about three months to write a novel, but this has taken me about six months. Being my first attempt at the genre, I wanted to get it right. “Agatha Christie has always been my greatest influence, her plot construction is second to no-one’s and I have read at least half of her detective fiction. “I would like to think this book has got quite an intricate and convoluted plan – it is a suitably tangled web.” The publication of the book enabled Dr Souter to join the Crime Writers’ Association, which puts him alongside one of the best in the business – fellow Scot Ian Rankin. The doctor from Sandal said writing is very much a pleasure rather that a chore, adding: “It gives me a break from the other things I do. It is like therapy really.”

A PLANNED traffic trial for Westgate was announced, which meant it would be off-limits to ordinary motorists on weekend evenings. Only taxis, buses and the emergency services would be able to use the busy thoroughfare during the trial. Council officers and police also drew up plans to turn it into a one-way street between 7pm and 4.30am on Friday and Saturday nights. Chief Inspector Simon Whitehead said the scheme was being rolled out on a trial basis, to cut violent crime in the city centre and get people out of the city centre faster, avoiding late night boozy punchups. Drivers coming into town from Westgate End on Fridays and Saturdays would be diverted either up Back Lane by the prison, or towards Ings Road, past the Cathedral Retail Park. Taxis and emergency vehicles would be able to access Westgate via Wood Street. Council leader Coun Peter Box added: “We have worked with taxi and private hire drivers, bar and club owners to come up with a trial scheme.”