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Welcome to Belper

With its busy shopping streets packed with unique independent businesses, its history and heritage, its parks, reserves and beautiful spaces, Belper in Derbyshire is a great place to visit.

Find out more about this thriving, historic market town here: belper.madhm.uk.

Welcome to Belper

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Pet Poop Planning Permission

In its latest attempt to clear up the problem of dog mess, Nottingham City Council recently declared that any excrement of five inches or longer will require planning permission. Critics of the proposal have been quick to point out that this will deter no one but the most bureaucratically minded of offenders. Nevertheless, the council is pressing on regardless, in spite of the revelation that the policy has already spectacularly backfired after someone applied to convert a Labrador turd in Wollaton Street into a bungalow.

Prime Discovery

The largest prime number has been discovered by a cleaner at the University of Missouri. "I was mopping behind some sort of computer doohicky and it just fell out," said Mrs Sheila Rutherford, who has worked at the University for over ten years. "A great big long thing, it was, with loads of numbers in it and all sort of wriggly."

Thinking that she might have damaged something important, Mrs Rutherford at first tried to push the prime number back into the machine. When this proved impossible she asked one of the security staff, a Mr Kieran McCall, to help her and that was when she first realised the importance of her amazing discovery.

"Kieran 's lovely," Mrs Rutherford explained. "He usually helps me fill my bucket, so I asked if he'd come and give me a hand. When he saw this thing, he recognised what it was straight away. 'It's a prime number' he said. 'It's a what?' I said. 'A prime number,' he said. 'What's one of those?' I said. 'It's one of those things they've been looking for,' he said and then he told me that the University would probably be very grateful and that I'd likely get a reward or something. And I did, which is nice, because it means I can go and see my sister in Florida."

The number has yet to be verified as genuine, but University authorities say that this is just a formality and plans are being drawn up for it to feature in a special exhibition this spring. It will join a selection of hyperreal numbers that were found in an attic in Minnesota in 1982 and Fermat's last theorem which was famously discovered wedged down the back of a radiator in 1995, after being lost for more than 350 years.

Conservatory Plans Spark Nimby Outrage

Controversy surrounds the decision to grant planning permission to a new conservatory in the West Midlands. The proposed structure has three levels, a cinema, a food court, a floor space of 150,000 square metres and two car parks.

Large scale changes to the surrounding road layout, evidence of a significant volume of commercial activity, an extensive advertising campaign and the fact that the complex is four and a half miles from the building to which it's supposed to be attached have led some people to the conclusion that this is a retail development and not actually a conservatory at all.

Responding to these criticisms, local planning officer Sally Hod nevertheless maintained that the application had been considered extremely thoroughly. "It's unusual, certainly," she explained. "Not many conservatories have escalators, for example. But we're quite confident that there's nothing improper about this application. Our experts have examined the plans very carefully, and it clearly says 'conservatory' at the top."