Industry

People playing padel in the West Midlands say they need more courts to be built or the growth of the sport will slow down.

The blend of tennis and squash has been growing in popularity in recent years and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) estimates there are currently about 800 courts and more than 400,000 players in Britain.

Three indoor courts have been opened in Tipton with bosses at Sandwell Leisure Trust saying they want to make the sport less expensive in the area.

Umar Razah uses them but wants to see more as he believes the lack of them "is impacting the growth of the sport".

One of Birmingham's oldest buildings will host a street food evening next month.

Digbeth Dining Club (DDC) will hold the pop-up event on 27 June in the grounds of Blakesley Hall, a Grade-II listed Tudor farmhouse in Yardley.

DDC has previously held pop-ups at Midlands landmarks such as Warwick Castle and the Black Country Living Museum.

Blakesley Hall, built in 1590, is steeped in history according to the Birmingham Museums Trust.

DDC said it had partnered with the trust, which looks after nine museums on behalf of the city council, in order to put on the event.

DDC runs an annual summer tour of pop-up events across the Midlands, with more than 40 events planned for this year so far.

A Victorian market has been praised as a "special" part of its town after being named the best in Staffordshire.

Longton Victorian Market, in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, won the Market of the Year honour at the Our Staffordshire Business, Charity, Community and Food Awards 2025.

The 150-year-old site fended off competition from six other markets, including runners-up Cannock Market and Tunstall Market.

Dr Allison Gardner, Stoke-on-Trent South MP, said: "This is a fantastic recognition of the incredible traders, local produce and community spirit that make the market such a special part of Longton."

The awards, run by Our Staffordshire News, were held on 14 April, with more than 30 honours presented during the ceremony.

Councillor Finlay Gordon-McCusker, of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, said the honour showed how important markets were to communities.

"All of our traders and our dedicated markets team work tirelessly to make sure our markets remain at the heart of our town centres, so I would like to pass on my huge congratulations to them," he added.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of a woman was found at a house in Hampshire.

Police were called at 09:40 BST on Thursday to reports of a man walking along the M40 motorway, near junction 3 in Buckinghamshire.

Officers attended and the man told them about the death of a woman in Timsbury Crescent, Havant, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said.

The body of a woman in her 40s was subsequently found at the property.

The man, aged 48 and from High Wycombe, remains in custody. Officers are carrying out enquiries at Timsbury Crescent.

The woman's next of kin has been informed.

Two firefighters who died in a blaze at an Oxfordshire business park have been named as Jennie Logan and Martyn Sadler, while a member of the public who died is David Chester.

Ms Logan, 30, Mr Sadler, 38, and Mr Chester, 57, from Bicester, died after explosions were heard at Bicester Motion – a former RAF base – on Thursday.

Both firefighters worked at Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service and Mr Sadler was also part of the London Fire Brigade, Thames Valley Police said.

Two more firefighters sustained serious injuries and remain in hospital, Oxfordshire County Council said.

The fire was reported at about 18:30 BST on Thursday and rapidly spread through a former aircraft hangar at the site.

At its height, 10 fire crews were tackling the blaze.

The police have launched an unexplained death investigation, but are not currently treating it as a criminal matter.

Assistant Chief Constable Tim Metcalfe described the deaths as "an absolute tragedy" and said the thoughts of everyone at the force were with the families, friends and colleagues of those who had died.

Officers will remain at the scene for a number of days to ensure the public remain safe.

At the scene on Friday, a visibly emotional Chief Fire Officer Rob MacDougall said he spoke with "a heavy heart" when he confirmed the deaths.

He added: "Our thoughts are with the family friends and colleagues affected during this time.

"I'm immensely proud and grateful for the exemplary multiagency response and the unwavering bravery demonstrated by the emergency services personnel."

London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe described it as an "incredibly challenging day" for UK fire services and said it highlighted the high-risk nature of their work.

He said: "This is clearly an incredibly difficult time for us all; we have lost a well-respected and much-loved colleague who exemplified courage and selflessness in the service of others.

"Our thoughts are with all the families, friends, and colleagues impacted by this tragedy. We are doing everything we can to provide support to Martyn's family and colleagues."

He added: "Our sincere condolences go out to Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service who also sadly lost a firefighter at this incident, with a further two colleagues in hospital."

The family of murdered GAA official Sean Brown have said they had a "very positive" meeting with the Tánaiste (Irish Deputy Prime Minister) Simon Harris and that they left him in "no doubt" about their ongoing campaign for a public inquiry into the murder.

The meeting at Government Buildings in Dublin on Monday took place on the 28th anniversary of Mr Brown's death.

The father of six was abducted and shot dead by members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) as he locked gates at Bellaghy GAA club, County Londonderry, in 1997.

He was 61 years old when he died.

Mr Brown's 87-year-old wife Bridie attended the meeting, alongside her daughters Siobhan Brown and Clare Loughran.

Speaking afterwards, Siobhan said the tánaiste had been "very empathetic" about their father's case.

She said: "We have made it known what we need."

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal affirmed a previous court ruling compelling the UK government to hold a public inquiry into his killing.

The government said it intends to seek a Supreme Court appeal over the ruling ordering it to hold a public inquiry.

A previous court also ruled that the government's refusal to hold an inquiry was unlawful.

There have been two police investigations and a Police Ombudsman investigation into Mr Brown's murder.

Tánaiste commends Brown family

During the meeting, Harris told the Brown family the absence of an effective investigation into Sean Brown's death was "simply unacceptable".

He also commended Bridie Brown and her family on their tireless campaign for truth over the last 28 years.

Speaking afterwards, he said the anniversary of Mr Brown's death was a stark reminder his family have "waited far too long for truth and accountability".

"I reiterated this point, as I have previously, to the secretary of state for Northern Ireland in a phone call with him last Friday," he said.

"I say it again today and I will continue to use every channel available to me to pursue this matter.

"In the absence of an effective investigation into his death – which the UK government agrees has not yet taken place – the passage of time makes this increasingly pressing."

GAA President Jarlath Burns was also part of the delegation in support of the Brown family.

He said he was also there to represent the support of "all GAA people".

Mr Burns said he was "heartened" by what he heard from the tánaiste, adding that the Irish government had lent its support "right from the beginning" and the campaign knew that "it will continue".

Last year during an inquest, it emerged that more than 25 people, including state agents, had been linked by intelligence material to Mr Brown's murder.

In March 2024, a coroner said the inquest could not continue due to material being withheld on the grounds of national security.

He decided that redactions of intelligence material meant he could not properly investigate the circumstances of the killing.

The coroner later wrote to the then secretary of state, Chris Heaton-Harris, requesting a public inquiry into the case.

Police are appealing for information after a group robbed and assaulted three men in a Gloucestershire town.

The incident happened at about 22:00 BST near to the King's Head Hotel on Market Place, in Cirencester, on Wednesday.

Gloucestershire Police said a group of four or five men wearing yellow hi-vis jackets approached the three men, who are all in their 20s.

A conversation between them started before one of the men wearing a hi-vis jacket punched a man in the other group.

It has been reported that he also used a stick to hit the victim.

A two-day festival celebrating farming history has opened at Guernsey Museum.

This year's History Fest theme is billed as a celebration of life on the farm and it is being run alongside another exhibition at the museum called Guernsey Milk Tales.

The events aim to educate visitors about traditional Guernsey skills and industries.

Miffy Lane, access and learning manager, said: "We're so excited to be hosting History Fest here for the second year running."

Guernsey Milk Tales, a temporary exhibition located at the Brian White Gallery and Foyer, is on until 14 September.

Ms Lane said: "Inspired by the farmer's market, this is a unique way to celebrate spring and to take a moment to appreciate our island's traditional industries."

The upcoming county council election in Nottinghamshire is an unusual one as it looks set to be the council's last – at least in its current form.

When the government announced in December it wanted to overhaul how local authorities are organised, you'd have been forgiven for thinking it would be little more than a drab restructuring and would all happen without much attention being paid.

But now, what started as a row between those most closely involved in local government appears to have spilled out into the public at large and, therefore, to voters.

Or as one local leader put it recently – "people are stirring".

It means an issue which is not, in itself, directly relevant to how Nottinghamshire County Council is run has now become a big talking point in the election campaign.

For what is an incredibly finely-poised authority, could it be enough to tip the balance in favour of one party or another?

How close is it to reality?

The plans are still at a very early stage.

So-called "interim proposals" with three potential options were submitted to central government last month.

Council leaders have emphasised the submission was a progress report rather than tangible plans, and some have expressed frustration at the timeframe in which they've had to come up with suggestions.

In other words, what eventually happens could end up being completely different to any of those three options.

But regardless of all the uncertainty, the BBC has been told it has been one of the big topics of conversation on the doorstep, and it is perhaps a more divisive issue in Nottinghamshire than other areas for two reasons.

The first is council reorganisation has been on the cards in the county in recent memory.

Similar plans driven by then-county council leader Kay Cutts back in 2018 were met with criticism and ultimately failed to get off the ground.

That was a very different scenario – the Conservative government at the time seemed fairly lukewarm towards the idea, whereas now it's the Labour government pushing the plans centrally.

It does mean, however, that some key local voices are already primed to have this argument.

The second reason is the well-documented financial problems at Nottingham City Council, which Nottinghamshire County Council envelopes on all sides.

The city council doesn't have elections this year and its leaders insist its financial situation is improving, but it's not hard to see how its circumstances could have a bearing on the election outcome for its nearest neighbour.

Whilst nothing is confirmed, some of the options for reorganisation would see the city combining with surrounding boroughs to create a new, larger council.

The suggestion alone has prompted concerns from some who worry they'd end up being "absorbed" by a city with a chequered history – concerns which some politicians have been quick to seize upon.

It's a ready-made attack line for parties other than Labour, who whilst campaigning for the county council elections can point across the border into the city and give warnings about what its "expansion" could mean.

What do different parties say?

The current county council leader, Conservative Sam Smith, was among the first to break cover when the plans were unveiled by central government.

He favours the so-called "county only" option, which would see the smaller district and borough councils scrapped and Nottinghamshire turned into a unitary authority, but the existing boundary with the city would remain in place.

"Any city expansion will mean residents of Nottinghamshire will pay more tax because there will be less people paying in so the new authority will charge more, but they'll receive less services," he said.

"The Conservatives have been absolutely clear that no services should be cut as a result of local government reorganisation and nobody should pay more."

He has been joined in his calls by the county's only remaining Conservative MP, Robert Jenrick.

The position of local Labour politicians is more nuanced.

While the city council's leader has backed a "Nottingham + 2" model, the Labour group leader at the county council, Kate Foale, adopted a more cautious tone.

"There are all kinds of models being suggested, but the Labour government has only asked for a progress report, we don't have to decide until November," she said.

"Until we've seen the evidence of what will have the best impact for our residents throughout the county, then we cannot make a decision."

Labour leader of Gedling Borough Council John Clarke, meanwhile, has been quite open in saying he doesn't want the area to join the city.

All Labour voices, however, have rejected the Conservatives' characterisation of the plans as a "takeover" by the city council – arguing that all councils in the area would actually be scrapped and new authorities established in their place.

Leader of the Ashfield Independents, Jason Zadrozny, is a long-time critic of local government reorganisation, but now seems resigned to some sort of change.

"The government are forcing this to happen, it's going to happen come what may. There is the big elephant in the room that people are very nervous of being associated with the city," he said.

He said he preferred options in which the county is divided into two or three councils, but was completely opposed to a Nottinghamshire-wide unitary authority, encompassing both the current city and county.

"It's too big. People need to know they can liaise with their council and their councillors," he said.

At a national level, Reform UK has been critical of the government's plans, particularly in areas where it has meant elections have been delayed.

Locally, they are calling for a full public consultation before any decisions are made.

The party's only current county councillor, John Doddy, said: "Nobody has gone out to Nottinghamshire and said – do you want a unitary council?

"My position on this quite simply is that if the people want it, as a representative of the people I will happily give it to them."

For the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, their positions are fairly similar and unambiguous – both think the whole thing is a waste of time.

Lib Dem candidate David Watts said: "We are opposed to the government's plans. They want to do away with a vast amount of local democracy and people really value their local areas.

"If there is an issue somebody has, they can pick up the phone and talk to somebody they know will deal with it. That's the sort of representation we want, and that's what you won't get if all the borough councillors are done away with."

The Green Party's Ben Gray called the plans "uncosted, undemocratic and unnecessary".

"There's no real promise that we're going to see greater efficiency. It's hinted at but there's no evidence to back that up," he said.

"It is evidence to reduce democracy though, taking decisions away from the grassroots up into larger and larger councils just isn't going to deliver the democracy we deserve."

Arguments over local government reorganisation will doubtless continue until well after polling day.

It seems strangely apt, however, that the campaign for the upcoming election has become so entwined with the debate which, ultimately, looks set to end with the authority being abolished entirely.

Polling day for the Nottinghamshire County Council election is 1 May.

More information and a full list of candidates is available on the council website.

Detectives investigating the disappearance of a woman who went missing in the Republic of Ireland almost 30 years ago have begun a search at a second location.

Fiona Pender, 25, was seven months pregnant when she disappeared in Tullamore, County Offaly, in 1996.

Earlier this week, gardaí (Irish police) said they had reclassified their missing person investigation to a murder inquiry.

Having completed a search of land near Killeigh in County Offaly on Tuesday, the search moved to the Slieve Bloom mountains close to Clonaslee in County Laois on Wednesday. Killeigh and Clonaslee are about a 10-minute drive apart across the county boundary.

The new site is a piece of open ground which will be "subject to excavation, technical and forensic examinations," a garda statement said.

Ms Pender was last seen at about 06:00 local time 23 August 1996 at her flat on Church Street, Tullamore.

She was 5'5" in height, had long blonde hair and was said to be looking forward to the birth of her child.

She was wearing white leggings and bright coloured clothing when she went missing.

The previous search, on open ground about 5km (3 miles) from Tullamore, began on Monday and ended on Tuesday evening.

Irish broadcaster RTÉ reported that the operation was concentrated on bogland at Graigue, near the village of Killeigh.

Gardaí said the results of the searches were "not being released for operational reasons" but added that they had kept Ms Pender's family updated.

They repeated their appeal to "any person who may have previously come forward who felt they could not provide gardaí with all the information they had in relation to this matter, to contact the investigation team again".

Who was Fiona Pender?

Fiona Pender grew up in Tullamore, County Offaly, in a family that has suffered a number of bereavements.

She had two brothers, but just over a year before Fiona went missing her brother Mark died in motorcycle crash.

At the time of her disappearance in August 1996, Fiona was working as a hairdresser and living with her boyfriend in a flat in Church Street in her hometown.

She had spent the previous day "shopping for baby clothes with her mother in Tullamore," according to her missing person profile.

"She was in good form and was looking forward to the birth of her baby," the garda website states.

As soon as she went missing, the Pender family began a long campaign seeking the public's help to find Fiona, led by her mother Josephine.

In 2000, almost four years after Fiona went missing, her 50-year-old father Sean Pender was found dead in the family home.

His widow believes he took his own life, telling a Tullamore reporter: "He couldn't live without his children."

The investigation into Fiona's disappearance continued for 28 years without success, despite a number of searches and digs in different areas.

In May 2008, a hillwalker came across a makeshift cross which had been recently put up in Monicknew Woods in the Slieve Bloom mountains.

Two planks of wood had been hammered together and written on the cross were the words: "Fiona Pender. Buried here, August 22nd, 1996."

Gardaí began a search of a two-acre site in the area, assisted by soldiers and cadaver dogs, but there was no sign of Ms Pender's body.

Fiona's mother Josephine died aged 68 in 2017, having never discovered the fate of her only daughter and her unborn grandchild.

The Irish Times reported that a "candle of hope" was placed on the altar during her funeral "in memory of all missing people".

In tribute to her daughter, a section of walkway along the Grand Canal outside Tullamore is known as the Fiona Pender Way.

What has changed with the latest searches?

Analysis by BBC Dublin reporter Kevin Sharkey:

Can an area around the Slieve Bloom Mountains in the Irish midlands yield a clue about what happened to Fiona Pender in the summer of 1996?

That is a question being asked locally and around the country as gardaí begin a second search this week to try to locate the remains of the hairdresser and part-time model who was preparing for the birth of her baby when she disappeared.

The hope at the beginning of each search since the young woman went missing almost 29 years ago has been that it might finally end her family's long and agonising wait for a breakthrough.

To date, every search has ended in disappointment.

The latest search, in County Laois, is just across the county border from where another search concluded in County Offaly on Tuesday.

What is different about these two searches is that they are the first digs conducted by search teams since the investigation into the disappearance of Ms Pender was upgraded to murder at the beginning of this week.

To date there have been no convictions in relation to Ms Pender's disappearance nor her suspected murder.

However, over the course of the 28-year missing person investigation, five people have previously been arrested and detained.

The investigation team have also taken more than 300 statements and "discovered and collated thousands of documents".