15/03/2017 Midlands Today

And we will ask why so many more people over the age of 65 are

Good evening. getting married these

The future of Wolverhampton has gone on show on the French Riviera.

It's hoped businesses attending an international property convention

in Cannes will help to regenerate the city and create 2,500 jobs.

It's part of a multi-million-pound redevelopment of Wolverhampton.

As our Black Country reporter Ben Godfrey has been discovering,

the investment has been a long time coming.

Wolverhampton, busy, sharing in the prosperity of the Midlands, this old

market town is now a flourishing centre.

You have to go back a long way to hear people

talking up Wolverhampton as a place of prosperity.

But after years of failed regeneration, of missed opportunity,

A staggering ?3.7 billion is currently being invested

It's the largest investment in over 50 years.

Proving Wolverhampton is coming out of the economic doldrums.

Grim old market buildings are making way for a massive retail

corridor on the Westside, and the decaying railway station

will be rebuilt as part of a ?130 million transport interchange.

And this is i9 - a prestige office development, occupying 50,000 square

feet of land near the historic Chubb buildings.

Today, the plans went on show in Cannes, where international

recession, Wolverhampton was hit the same as other people.

We had a big retail development ground to a halt.

The last few years, we've been moving into

Now we're into the really confident phase where

Around 2,500 jobs will be created in the city centre

when the Wolverhampton interchange is complete.

There's some brilliant work being done about how

Those that can retain the 20, 35-year-olds, if you keep the

publicity the city will naturally regenerate and businesses will move

here. But for many Wulfrunians,

large scale regeneration like this is decades overdue,

so you can forgive some cynicism. You've got places like

Bentley Bridge, St John's retail centre, you can actually

do your shopping without You have people who live

on the street and that is not good You have to take

care of your people. With a growing student population,

the city is becoming one Investment brings new challenges

then, and here the demand for affordable homes has

never been higher. Ben Godfrey, BBC Midlands

Today, Wolverhampton. Staffordshire Police have become

the 12th force to have sent files to the Crown Prosecution Service

as part of investigations into allegations of overspending

during the general election in 2015. They're looking into whether strict

spending limits in target seats were breached

during the Conservatives' The CPS will now decide

if charges should be brought. Unemployment in the region

has bucked the national trend and is on the rise,

according to new figures. The jobless total in

the West Midlands rose by 9,000 in the last quarter -

meaning 160,000 people That's the equivalent of 5.6%

of the working population - BMW workers at the Hams Hall engine

plant in Warwickshire could be going out on strike

in protest at the car maker's plans BMW wants the current scheme

to close at the end of May. Workers say they stand to lose

thousands of pounds. Hands off our pensions!

Hands off our pensions! They've never protested like this

before, but then there's never That's what they reckon they'll lose

if BMW push through with a plan to end the current final salary

pension scheme by May of this year. Last year, BMW recorded record

profits of ?6 billion. In fact, industrial relations

are said to be at their most fraught They say they are proud

of what they call excellent pension provision in the past,

but, crucially, they want to ensure and protect pension

provision in the future. With an ageing population, though,

some argue that big companies like BMW can't afford final salary

pensions any more. Profitable companies,

it's part of the package they offer. Our members have actually given up

some of their pay in the past to make sure this pension

scheme operates properly. Many of the 600 staff

here transferred from BMW's Steven McWilliams was one of them.

The agreement was that when we came over here

they would keep our And we feel let down

that they haven't done that and honoured that agreement

for when we did come over here. Because they needed skills to come

into this factory from day one. A ballot for industrial action

will close at the end of March. Unions say a strike is imminent

unless BMW do a U-turn. Sarah Bishop, BBC Midlands

Today, near Coleshill. 261 motorists have been

given new, heavier fines for using mobile phones

while driving in the West Midlands. In a week-long clampdown,

offenders included 30 lorry drivers, a driving instructor,

and a driver accessing mobile All those caught have

been fined ?200 Fundraisers trying to keep a rare

piece of Wedgwood pottery in Stoke-on-Trent have been given

until July to find the money. Yesterday's deadline

was extended after a ?90,000 But a total of ?482,500 is needed

to stop the First Day's vase from going abroad,

rather than being returned An eco-dome has been built up

in the grounds of a stately home in Warwickshire as part

of a thought-provoking Hundreds of so-called caretakers

have volunteered to live without modern comforts

and technology in the structure It's set across the lake

from the mansion of Compton Verney. In a forest clearing

in the Warwickshire countryside stands the Clearing - a creation

of environmental art facing the I know they seem quite different,

if you look over the river, yes, they are very, very different,

but actually they really balance of the landscape and the mansion

house with something that actually is very 21st century -

for me is really, really important. Built with temporary

planning permission, scrap metal and recycled industrial

plywood, the ?60,000 Heritage Lottery-funded dome will be

in place for three years. But can the experiment

with other people's What we're trying

to do is we're trying to do a project

about climate change. It's the idea that if this world

without traffic jams and central heating and Kim Kardashian

and big supermarkets - is that actually a nightmare or is it

actually an opportunity to live in a Capability Brown

carefully designed this Now it is hoped the people

of the 21st century will get a You don't have to like it -

art's always like that, isn't it? If you make art that pleases

everyone, it's really rubbish art. So, yeah, we're not even

trying to please everyone. We're confident that we've

made a good thing here. From next week, a series

of volunteer caretakers will live in the dome for a week at a time,

turning their back on the comforts of home for a once-in-a-lifetime

experience. I think there's plenty

of people that put their names down to be caretakers,

so we're one of the lucky ones, There's everything

here you need, so... To survive, anyway,

let's put it that way. When you live in a space

like this you make with what you have and you appreciate

everything you have, so it's an exercise of...it's

almost a social experiment If you fancy a peek

at an artistic life off the grid, the dome opens

to the public this weekend. Finally, on Midlands Today tomorrow

at 6:30, we'll meet Herefordshire's

champion jockey Richard Johnson as he prepares for

Friday's Gold Cup. Johnson will be on the joint

favourite Native River He last won the Gold

Cup 17 years ago. That horse, Looks Like Trouble,

lives at Johnson's home For me the Gold Cup

is the race of the year. The Grand National is a fantastic

race, but for me, the Gold Cup, if I could win any race in the UK,

any season, that would be the best Obviously, the Championship

is what I set out every year to try and do, but the Gold Cup

is the blue riband. It is called the Gold Cup and it is

the biggest race of the year. It has been a glorious start to the

festival. We should see lows of around five

Celsius and that cloud continues to picking up continually from the

West. Cold front draped across the north and west of the country

driving in that cloud and it will give us a little bit of drizzle as

we enter the day tomorrow. It will be a cloudy start to the day. A

touch better for a time but very limited sunshine and by the end of

the day, we start to get that drizzle pushing its way down across

the North and west of the region. Temperatures are starting to

struggle a little bit for that. Sunshine certainly not getting back

up to 17 Celsius. We will still be into double figures. Rain is

arriving on Friday, wet and windy. More information on

been. The outlook, rain around, if it stays dry I will be surprised.

Here is Nick with the national headlines.

For large parts of Wales and England there was blue sky and warmth.

Warmest day of the year, a clumsy way of saying the UK had the highest

temperature