JUST as pupils, parents and teachers wrapped up loose ends this week for the school holidays, I thought it was time for a summer clear out at Podium Towers.

Several issues have been smouldering away, slightly under the radar, which due to a combination of sheer indolence – and this column’s own sunshine break – may have gone unheralded.

Not wanting to ignore breaking news though, the new proposals for Warrington’s magistrates and county courts are fascinating for a hack who has haunted both buildings more than most since 1994.

In a nutshell, Warrington County Court looks set to be closed so the Ministry of Justice can move Warrington Magistrates' Court in there, once Runcorn Magistrates’ Court is closed.

This would mean county court cases being shipped out to the sparkling new civil justice centres in Liverpool or Manchester – and therein lies the rub.

I’m not sure many readers will shed a tear if this column railed against the iniquities of making defendants in criminal cases schlep an extra eight miles for hearings – even if the same inconvenience applied equally to witnesses and related parties.

But why should those embroiled in nerve-shredding family and civil claims have to journey 15 more miles to our metropolitan neighbours?

Once again the upshot of any of these government shake-ups is clear. We can save thousands of pounds on the administration of your daily lives, just as long as you, the great British taxpayer, shoulder the burden.

Curiously enough, the proposals to build a new North Cheshire court centre, which would have then replaced the old Arpley Street facility, the now-converted Patten Hall building and the magistrates buildings in Runcorn and Widnes maybe even providing a new home for Cheshire Coroner Nicholas Rheinberg, stopped being mentioned some time ago.

I’m not privy to what might happen to the 28 staff at Warrington County Court. Hopefully they will be offered alternative employment within the system but who knows what sacrifices we must all continue to make as we hurtle towards Second World War status, courtesy of our still-unprosecuted banking friends.

  •  Hours after last week’s deadline, it heartened these quarters to learn Warrington North Labour Party was backing Andy Burnham for the leadership.

Or as one well-informed source would have it, ‘they probably just did that to spite Helen Jones’.

While not wanting to cast any aspersions on the unity or otherwise of Labour in Warrington – Lord knows they’ve done ample over the past two decades without my assistance – it’s cheering to note that some red rosette wearers have forsaken Yvette Cooper.

Hats must also go off to the licensing team at WBC after their prosecution of the supervisor at Porters Wine Lodge, not a stone’s throw from their own front door, for palming off hooky spirits.

Real vodka is enough of a headache without having to risk life and limb on some brew which probably has more in common with your windscreen wash.

The clampdown even led to a hasty redrawing of some of their colleagues’ Christmas bash plans, so such action can only be applauded.

  •  One of the perennial highlights at the HJ is the half-time tussles between the town’s junior sides.

Occasionally these curtailed clashes are more enthralling than the Wire’s onfield endeavours, and they put paid to the theory that the teams with the most freakishly large eight or nine-year-old will always triumph.

Last time around I was enamoured with one of the half-time finalists, Oakwood Avenue, who ran some intelligent lines en-route to the try line. It’ll never catch on, you know.