On the late Frank Branston..

Source: Bedford Borough Council

Frank Branston died five years ago this summer, a point that seem to pass un-noticed by the local press. Or perhaps the increasingly erratic delivery of the local paper failed that day.

Anyway.. what about Frank? What was his legacy five years on?

I've always thought that Frank was a awesome newspaper man but a rather poor mayor. He founded Bedfordshire on Sunday back in the 1970s and used it to shine a spotlight on wrongdoings and corruption in local politics, and he was a major force in cleaning up the town.

Even at the turn of the century when I was actively involved in politics, the horror of the idea of being pasted over the front of BoS was a sobering one. I didn't always agree with what BoS and Frank were saying, but there's no doubt that Frank was passionate about Bedford and always tried to act in its best interests.

But Frank became obsessed with the idea that things weren't happening in Bedford because of the inertia of Bedford Borough Council, an authority that was (and still is) notoriously under No Overall Control. When the last Labour government made directly-elected mayors a possibility, he jumped on the idea and pushed it very hard through BoS. To be fair, the Times & Citizen and many others supported the campaign, but Beds on Sunday seemed to push the hardest.

Eventually there was a referendum on whether or not to have a directly elected mayor which had a pretty pathetic turnout of just 15%. And of course in those circumstances, the 11,316 people who wanted an elected mayor were those who could be bothered to get out and vote, and Frank's idea carried the day.

But who should be mayor? Well, perhaps it was no surprise to find that Frank thought it should be him. And so it went to the vote, and Frank came home with a very healthy majority in both 2002 and 2007.

There was that awkward period where Frank was mayor and his wife still owned the local newspaper.. but we'll gloss over that. Or the way he shafted the Better Bedford Party after his 2007 election.. perhaps we'll leave that alone too.

Now, it's one thing to stand on the sidelines and scrutinise local politics. It's quite another thing to actually try and carry out politics on a local level. Fans of Frank will say that his attempts to improve the town were blocked by bickering councillors, but I think that the realities of dealing with running the town were much harder than Frank had anticipated.

Source: PropertyWeek

Frank turned to the town centre, and his vision of redeveloping Riverside North and the bus station area, but in my opinion his plans were grandiose and frankly monstrous. He wanted a six story neo-classical building right next to the river, the complete demolition of the bus station and the surrounding area to be replace by a new one, a new department store (for whom exactly?) and new cinema (also.. for whom?) in a very modern design that for some unknown reason involved demolishing the only decent building on that side of town, the Pilgrim's Progress.

Frank's untimely death but paid to those plans, although we did get this awful statue thing on Silver Street instead.

Source: Britain from Above / Melgibbs

And there's The Branston Way, the western bypass which is a bit of a disappointing road.. but other than that there seems to be little evidence that Frank was actually mayor.

But despite my reservations about his ability as a politician, Frank did make a huge contribution to the town that he cared so much about, and for the fifth anniversary of his death to go un-noticed is a bit sad.