Local News Wednesday 26th April

Wednesday, 26 April 2023 06:00

By Steve Haigh

Local schools are preparing for more disruption when teachers take further strike action tomorrow and next Tuesday. A new way to help victims of domestic abuse has been introduced in Somerset. An uninsured driver from Chard has been banned from driving for six months. An Ilminster girl has come runner-up in a national singing competition...and more.

Local schools are preparing for more disruption when teachers take further strike action tomorrow and next Tuesday. Members of the National Education Union are due to stop work on Thursday and also Tuesday, May 2nd in their long-running pay dispute. It’s understood that Fiveways Special School and Buckler’s Mead Secondary School in Yeovil will be partially shut tomorrow. Huish Episcopi Academy at Langport will be partially shut when NEU members walk out on strike.

A new way to help victims of domestic abuse has been introduced in Somerset. Help is now being provided more quickly, with victims encouraged to visit new 'pop-up' advice hubs for support.

No trains will be running between Castle Cary and Taunton stations between Sunday, April 30th and Wednesday, May 3rd due to track improvements. GWR says only Weymouth trains will run through Castle Cary with Taunton trains replaced by a coach service.

An uninsured driver from Chard has been banned from driving for six months. Appearing before magistrates in Bath, Andrew Collins, of Windsor Crescent, was also fined six-hundred-and-sixty pounds with costs of one-hundred-and-ten pounds.

A group of patients and professionals from NHS Somerset's Psychosis service are sailing along the English south coast this week as part of a challenge called Voyage to Recovery. They left Portsmouth on Sunday and aim to arrive in Dartmouth by Friday.

An Ilminster girl has come runner-up in a national singing competition. Lucy Speke was competing in the Rotary Young Singer of the Year contest held in Manchester. Lucy, who’s 17, will be performing in the Broadway Amateur Theatrical Society’s production of Billy Buckett at Broadway village hall, during the first week of May.

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