BY early September the collapsing economy had unleashed a flood of home repossessions engulfing the St Albans district. The Review revealed how no fewer than 142 homes in the district had been seized by building societies in the first six month of the year, with the rate accelerating as the headlines became ever more doom-laden. Lesley Gordon of St Albans Citizens Advice Bureau said: “The pressure is great, especially as mortgage costs go up.” MP Anne Main warned: “St Albans has lots of young people who may lose their homes. This causes other problems and puts strain on relationships.”

Thanks to an astonishing sequence of events and an earlier story in the Review, a Wheathampstead man was reunited with a valuable gold watch, given to his grandfather almost 90 years before. The watch, which had been stolen in a break-in at Doug Edgar’s golf club was found in a car boot sale in Surrey, and recognised as the one whose devastating loss the Review had reported in February. Mr Edgar, whose grandfather was an early pioneer of the game, said: “It’s an unbelievable chain of events.

“That someone from Harpenden was at a car boot sale in Surrey the same day it was being sold and then for her parents to remember the story from the paper – it really is quite something.”

Also in September the Review reported how a perverted burglar who stole women’s underwear and left indecent pictures of himself on a mobile phone in neighbours’ homes had been jailed for seven years.

Judge Michael Baker told Martin Collier of Nicholas Close, St Albans: “Your actions were disgusting, and the sexual element should not be overlooked.”

IN October we reported on how road safety campaigners had been told they could not get speed controls on a dangerous bend until at least four people had been killed or seriously injured. Brian Stubbs of the Jersey Farm Residents’ Association said: “The criteria of waiting for someone to die before action is taken are wholly indefensible and morally wrong.” Although there have been seven crashes in Holborn Close since 2002, the county council has refused to install speed humps.

Also in October a week-long inquest concluded police were not to blame for the death of a 19-year-old woman in a head-on collision in Welwyn Garden City. Charlotte Edwards, a former pupil of St Albans Girls’ School, was more than two-and-a-half times over the drink-drive limit when her Volkswagen Polo hit a police car on the night of June 19.

Also in October, the Review reported how St Albans District Council had wasted thousands of pounds on a failed attempt to stop a landlord allowing customers to drink in his garden. Jass Patel of Mokoko in Verulam Road, St Albans, successfully took his fight to the Appeal Court after local magistrates had backed the council.