Podington Padel Faces Refusal Again Despite 169 Backers

Bedford is a river town. The Great Ouse runs through the middle of it, the embankment is the town’s front garden, and a good deal of local argument is about what happens on the land either side of the water. Kempston runs into it to the south west, and the villages of the borough spread out around both.

Bedford Borough is a unitary council with a directly elected mayor, which means planning, bins, roads, licensing, council tax and schools are decided in one place by people you can name. Biggleswade and Sandy, over to the east, come under Central Bedfordshire instead, and we say so whenever it matters, because it changes who collects the bins and who rules on the planning application. We read what both publish and report what is in it, linking to the source every time.

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• Bedford house prices: the average home now sells for £332,893, up 6.7% in a year, with median sold prices for every postcode sector from Greyfriars to Ravensden.
• Trains to London: 42 minutes to St Pancras on the fast train, every 2026 walk-up fare, and what a season ticket really costs.
• Roads and travel: the Black Cat and A428 rebuild, current closures, and the Bedford parking rules that catch people out.
• Things to do in Bedford: three museums within a five-minute walk, two country parks and free music on the Embankment, with opening times checked at source.
• Planning: 3.35 years of housing land, a withdrawn Local Plan, and a Government order permitting Universal at Kempston Hardwick.

All five sit together under Local Info. Every figure links to the document it came from.