Local MP John Spellar has issued a warning to potential purchasers of used vehicles after being alerted to a number of cases where buyers were conned into buying stolen cars.
The Department of Transport is advising buyers to take the following steps to help protect themselves from being ripped off.
Seeing the vehicle for the first time
• Be careful of mobile phone numbers – it’s very hard to trace their owners.
• Watch out for adverts giving a phone number and time to call – it could be a phone box.
• Arrange to …

 
Offenders ‘paid back’ over 50,000 hours to the community in Sandwell in 2009 in projects ranging from decorating public buildings to clearing up litter, fly tipping and graffiti.
Low risk offenders carry out unpaid ‘Community Payback’ work – wearing distinctive orange jackets – as part of community sentences received in court. They are closely supervised on the tasks by Community Payback supervisors from West Midlands Probation Service.
The total number of Community Payback hours carried out in Sandwell between January 1 and December 31 2009 was 50,617.
In monetary terms, if calculated at …

More than half of all patients staying overnight in hospitals in Sandwell and west Birmingham rate their care as excellent, it was revealed today.
Latest figures show that 61.9 per cent of inpatients rated their care as “excellent” and 30.6 per cent considered it “good”. The numbers relate to patients staying overnight in the wards of Sandwell, Rowley Regis and City hospitals.
A total of 5.4 per cent rated their overall treatment as “fair” and 2.1 per cent as “poor”, according to the latest Adult Inpatient Satisfaction Survey.
Respect and dignity on the …

THIS week is Cervical Cancer Awareness Week (January 24 to January 30) and Sandwell Primary Care Trust wants to raise awareness on how important it is for women in the age group 25 to 64 years to attend cervical screening, often known as ‘smear test.’
The NHS Cervical Screening Programme invites women aged 25 – 49 for a screening test every three years and women aged 50-64 every five years.
Dr Nidhi Singh, Cervical Cancer Screening Coordinator at Sandwell Primary Care Trust said: “Our data shows in Sandwell there has been a …

A ROWLEY Regis flytipper who dumped rubbish in Blackheath will have to don an orange jacket and do 50 hours of community ‘payback’ work as his punishment.
David Jeal, aged 44, was taken to court after a shop owner in Long Lane reported the flytipping to the council’s environmental health officers.
Jeal, of Blackberry Lane, pleaded guilty at West Bromwich Magistrates Court to depositing controlled waste on land on March 22, breaching the Environmental Protection Act.
He was ordered to pay £500 and will have to complete 50 hours community payback work within …