Following two deaths and a series of incidents in the past eight years, Bromsgrove's Barnsley Hall Hospital driveway was closed to the public. Hospital secretary William Tedstone said people with no interest in the hospital used the drive as a short cut between Stourbridge and Birmingham roads. Over the past eight years both a member of staff and a patient had been killed in accidents caused by drivers taking short cuts. The hospital had locked gates to be put across the driveway.

Bromsgrove tennis coach Leslie Irving found his third visit to Wimbledon as an umpire more than lucky. Among the tennis stars he met were men's singles finalists Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. He said Borg was shy and reserved, while McEnroe was not the ogre many might have expected. This year Mr Irving took the chair for a game and was also a centre court line judge. It was as a line judge that he saw Sue Barker knocked out.

A call for cash to aid the town's ailing museum plunged Bromsgrove councillors into difficulties of how best to cope with the crisis. The problem was whether to help Dennis Norton, owner of the Norton collection, by a direct grant or by discretionary rate relief. Councillor Robert Oulsnam said he had every sympathy with Mr Norton. It had, he said, been recommended to donate a direct grant of £325, but since then he had taken another look at the financial situation and had found there was only £200 in the kitty. So the committee voted to grant Mr Norton £200 and the balances be donated when the estimates for next year were finalised.

Regional health chiefs and a brewery company lodged strong objections to an alternative scheme for a proposed motorway link at Lickey End. West Midlands Regional Health Authority and Bass, Mitchell and Butlers Ltd expressed disapproval. Health chiefs complained that the proposal represented a further intrusion onto hospital land, isolated by a sliproad loop. The brewery said the alternative scheme would mean construction of a roadway across the existing car park at the Forest Inn and demolition of outbuildings.