Festival Bargains

Good news for the retail bit of Festival Park in Stoke-on-Trent. The long-disused PC World is to become a £2m Home Bargains, providing some healthy competition to nearby stores. Most important for gardeners will be the effect of setting up a four-way competition with the likes of Morrison's summertime mini-garden-stuff shed, garden bits at the large Poundand, and the long-established B&Q DIY store. No opening date yet for the new store, but a planning application is said to be in and "2020" is the target. It should bring yet another tranche of jobs to the site, too, which is always welcome.

It's already had the effect of closing the "shortcut steps" which went from the green part of Festival park, dropping a walker onto what used to be PC World's back-loading bay. The steps have been dug out and the slope graded to soil, and I imagine that now it'll either be planted by St. Modwen in the spring or left to green up naturally. No great loss, as almost no-one ever used those steps.