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Award for campaigning weekly's court success

The Sutton Coldfield Observer is celebrating a double victory after a campaign launched by the newspaper helped save the town’s magistrates’ court from the axe – and then won a Newspaper Society Award.

The Birmingham-based free weekly, part of Northcliffe’s Central Independent Newspapers, won the Newspaper Society’s Free Weekly Campigning Award at this week’s Weekly Newspaper Awards in Stratford Upon Avon.

The award came just a week after legal chiefs gave in to pressure and overturned the decision to close the town’s magistrates court, following the Observer’s Keep Justice Local Campaign.

Editor Gary Phelps said: “When we entered the campaign into the awards, we were still waiting for a decision to come through from the Lord Chancellor’s department. In fact, it still looked like the courthouse would close.

“So it has been an incredible two weeks for ther paper, really – first we found out that the campaign had been successful, and then it won an award.”

“The closure of a courthouse isn’t exactly a sexy subject so there was always a risk that the campaign wouldn’t catch the public’s imagination. But when the petition forms began to come in we knew we had touched a raw nerve.

“Sutton Coldfield has only been part of Birmingham since 1974, and I think our readers saw the closure of the court as further erosion of their town’s character.

“At the end of the day a courthouse is much like a police station, fire station or hospital – most people are happy if they never have to use them. So to get 5,500 names on the petition was a phenomenal amount.”

The Observer launched the campaign last August, after it was announced the courthouse was to close as part of a regional package of streamlining measures.

The building was one of a number around Birmingham earmarked for closure, with case loads being transferred to a new ‘super-court’ to be built in the city centre.

Headed up by reporter Laura Mackin, the Observer campaign ran a series of hard-hitting comment pieces and interviews to accompany a petition calling for the building to be saved.

Arguing that closing the court would make a mockery of the old adage that ‘justice should be seen to be done’, the paper also pointed out that the move would waste police time and money, hit the area’s economy, chip away at the town’s character and make life harder for witnesses and victims of crime.

The paper won cross-party backing from local MPs and Birmingham City Council, as well as gathering support from the city’s coroner and Victim Support. All of the magistrates sitting at the courthouse threatened to resign if the closure went ahead.

Petition forms were sent out to local groups and reporters even took to the streets, alongside local magistrates, to get residents to sign up. It eventually topped 5,500 names, and was delivered to the Lord Chancellors offices by Sutton Coldfield MP Andrew Mitchell.

Then, last week, after months of waiting, the town heard that Sutton Coldfield courthouse would be the only one of those earmarked for closure to survive the cull.

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