A new school for pupils who have may have been excluded or deemed challenging is finally set to open its doors next week. Springwell Alternative Academy Spalding is to open its doors on January 9 in the former South Holland Sixth Form building on Matmore Gate. It was due to open in September 2018 with the school having operated in ...

A charity that helps rescue and look after cats is appealing for donations of food and toys for 2020. The Spalding and District Cat Protection League has been running for 30 years and it’s just had a busy festive period. The group has around 20 volunteers who not only fundraise for their numerous activities, but also rake care of cats ...

I feel I should write at this moment in time to congratulate Messrs Meekings and MacDonald for their campaign over the last three years in the local press. Their dogged repeating of their ideology every other week in the local press (and mostly once in between) enabled John Hayes to increase his majority by over 6,000 votes! This is with ...

Complaints have already started, days after the election, moaning about car parking charges doubled – next it will be about the state of the roads, four-hour waits for the ambulance service to arrive, street lights being turned off at night, not seeing a police officer for months on end, homeless people, food banks and poverty, the list goes on and ...

I have just come across the letter by Charles Acland in the last edition of The Voice. I read it three or four times to check it was not a joke, then checked the calender, no it’s not April 1. Are Mr Sadd and Mr Meekings thoughts so misguided? Let’s look at the last ten years of Tory government. First ...

As central government cuts have led to a 17 per cent fall in council spending on local services in England since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Between then and the end of the decade, grant funding for councils in England has been reduced by £16 billion and there have also been significant cuts for councils in Wales and ...

This is the season to eat and be merry. As a diabetic I often get dismayed that restaurants and eating places do not cater for my condition and are unable to provide sugar-free puddings. It is with great delight that when visiting The Jolly Farmer at Moulton Chapel for a Christmas lunch they cooked me a low sugar /sugar-free pudding. ...

John Tippler returns with some of his memories for readers to enjoy. When I came to leave my first job, a business friend of my boss – seeing that I was still unsure about my longer-term career – chastised me: ‘I knew what I was going to do by the time I was 12’, he said. Maybe he did: I ...

Unused equipment is being sought by a charity looking to create a gym for recently re-homed people to use in Spalding. Framework UK works to re-home those with nowhere to stay in the town. They have 29 beds in South Holland, 15 in Holbeach and 14 in Spalding where those previously homeless stay for between nine and 12 months. The ...

A national charity has opened its new head office in Pinchbeck. Haemochromatosis UK supports the around 380,000 people who have been diagnosed with the genetic condition which untreated leads to patients having toxic amounts of iron in their body. The charity was founded in 1991 and is run by patients. It was previously in Rugby but has now moved into ...

It’s not just Kevin McCallister’s parents forgetting the kids this Christmas – in ending the 42-years-long Star Wars ‘Skywalker’ saga, director JJ Abrams and Disney have left the children in the audience behind, too. With The Rise of Skywalker – Star Wars 9 – Disney goes straight for the hearts of the wealthiest section of its audience, the middle-aged devotees ...

An elderly Spalding woman with dementia who went missing, sparking a huge search operation, died as a result of going into very cold water. Scores of members of the public – many who had no connection to Valerie Ann Bycraft’s family and friends – joined police in scouring the Fulney area for her last March. Appeals for help and images ...

The generosity of the public will make Christmas a much nicer time for those in need as the Give a Gift campaign celebrates its most successful year to date. Spearheaded by Coun Harry Drury, Give a Gift has passed on donated toys to less fortunate children for the last eight years. Harry said: “Even after eight years of doing this, ...

After the community rallied around to help her son walk again, a mum is sending Christmas cards to those in hospital in Spalding who might otherwise be lonely as a way of saying thank you. Melissa Evans of Pinchbeck has even enlisted the children from the Sunflower Lodge Pre-School in Pinchbeck to make cards to hand out to patients at ...

The teacher who assisted when a bus of schoolchildren crashed into a dyke has praised her daughter for her actions in the rescue effort. As reported last week, teacher Lucy Mawer was first on the scene on Friday, December 6 – her birthday – when a bus left the road in Moulton Seas End. Lucy, who is head of plumbing ...

A photography enthusiast from Spalding has provided a different view of the town thanks to their infrared images of the town and its surroundings. Andrew Papiewski has given the town a white glow ready for Christmas thanks to his new view provided by this technology. Andrew said: “Infrared is what interests me the most, but I am not limiting myself ...

As birthday presents go, being given an Order of the British Empire Medal is right up there. That’s exactly what happened to Mark Le Sage last Friday as he celebrated his 53rd birthday at the Spalding Club in Broad Street. Mark, who is well known for his charity work and campaigning, received the award from the Deputy Lord-Lieutenant William Webb ...

Each week I read all of the readers letters in The Voice. I find that Rodney Sadd and Alan Meekings do make some interesting comments but that they are completely biased against the Tory Party. Despite their anti Brexit stance myself and 33,337 people completely disregarded their advice and voted Tory. Only 6,500 decided to take the advice of Mr ...

With the General Election over and the post mortems of what went wrong for the Labour Party to be completed we need to look outward not inwards and upwards not downwards. But I still fear for the uncertainty regarding our manufacturing industry as 2019 comes to a close what has 2020 in store? EU trade negotiations will be crucial to ...

I refer to the article in the Voice (21.11.19) re: Project to create more woodland. I find this article rather ironic in the light of what LCC and SHDC have already done to Spalding and propose to do in the very near future. Let me put this in simple terms so our councillors can understand residents’ frustration. There will be ...