HERE’S a selection of stories as they were reported in the Chronicle back in September 2001.
ALMOST £1.2m will be spent on improvements to one of Barnsley’s busiest traffic junctions.
Leading councillors this week approved a plan to spend £1,171,000 on a collection of improvements to the crossroads at Dodworth Road and Pogmoor Road.
The complicated set of traffic lights will be replaced, a new road surface will be laid on all directions to the crossroads and the carriageway approaching the traffic lights on Pogmoor Road will be widened.
Also under the plans, parts of the railway bridge on Pogmoor Road will be replaced and a cycle route will be created from White Hill Avenue to West Moor Crescent.
Council chiefs have agreed to spend so much on the area because it is the first bit of Barnsley most people leaving the M1 will see as they visit the town.
- A SlX-MONTH row over who should run a Barnsley charity’s refugee camp in Bosnia has finally been resolved.
Bosnian authorities had to step in to break the deadlock when rival groups within the Holy Ground Mission charity both laid claim to the shelter in the village of Illjas.
Jackie Ryalls, one of the charity’s founders, has now been told she is the building’s rightful owner.
But thousands of pounds in donations is still sitting in a bank account she can’t get to because the purse strings are held by the rival group.
- BARNSLEY actor Kenny Doughty has landed a dream film role in which he gets to kiss Hollywood siren Andi McDowell.
Kenny plays the lead in the romantic comedy ‘Crush’ which made its English premiere in Leeds this week.
The movie is about an unmarried, middle-aged headmistress at a girls’ school whose life is changed when she falls in love with a younger man played by Kenny, 26.
Kenny started acting at 15 when he responded to an advertisement in the Barnsley Chronicle for the National Youth Theatre.
He went on to gain a first class honours degree in drama from Guildhall college of music and drama in London.
- A MONTH-OLD car burst into flames after an electrical fault in its central locking system.
Tankersley fire-fighters were called to Northumberland Way, Birdwell, on Wednesday to extinguish the blazing Y-reg Vauxhall Corsa. A spokesman said they believed it was caused by a fault with the security system that locks the doors two minutes after the ignition is turned off.
Leading fire-fighter Kevin Rollings added: “The owner went out to check the car was locked and the mechanism hadn’t worked. She locked it with the key instead. Moments later, it burst into flames.”
UPERMARKET giants Morrison and Tesco are locked in a store war to secure a prime site on the edge of the town centre.
Negotiations to decide which should get the go-ahead are reaching a climax and a decision will be made shortly on who should be allowed to develop the Westway site.
Talks have been going on for months between council officers and the two companies about the sale of the site, jointly owned by the council and a Leeds firm. It covers more than 60,000 sq ft taking in the New Street car park, a petrol station and the former site of Company Cars.
Council highways chief Andy Chymera said that under the plans, the roundabout halfway along West Way where the petrol station is will be removed and two sets of traffic lights would be installed instead.
