Petrol panic and rage on the road
The beginning of autumn saw the return of some popular events in and around Maidenhead – but motorists were getting irate as huge queues snaked from fuel stations.
Service providers warned residents to think twice before buying petrol as traffic was brought to a standstill – with a UK-wide lack of fuel tanker drivers contributing to the panic.
Many residents were also kicking up a stink with the council as the Royal Borough announced in September that it would be moving black bin collections to fortnightly from October.
It wasn’t all controversial as the borough waved goodbye to the summer.
Many popular events returned after a long hiatus due to COVID-19, such as the Maidenhead Half Marathon, Cookham Regatta, Norden Farm’s Kite Festival and the wacky Gravity Grand Prix in Cookham.
Robyn Bunyan became the new town manager for Maidenhead, promising to reignite the area as it emerged from COVID.
Goodwill sweeped across the borough as organisations teamed up to help stricken refugees fleeing Afghanistan, with a drop-off point for goods at John West House seeing a ‘huge response’. In care, an industry body based in Berkshire wrote a damning letter to health chiefs highlighting ‘unprecedented’ difficulties within the social care sector, comparing working as a carer to being ‘crushed in a moshpit’ due to shattering staff shortages.
In crime, a Birmingham man was jailed for seven years after throwing bottles of flammable liquid at a property in Maidenhead and assaulting a police officer.
Police called the incident in November last year ‘frightening’, adding that children were inside the property when 23-year-old Kamran Ali went on his rampage of attacks.