Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is preparing to send 'hit squads' into six Midland health trusts to force managers to slash spending.

The trusts are each set to end the financial year more than #5 million over budget unless they cut costs.

It follows Ms Hewitt's admission earlier this week that the NHS could be #620 million into the red. Figures obtained by The Birmingham Post reveal West Midlands health trusts are responsible for #84.3 million of the predicted deficit.

But the Government is determined to reduce the figure significantly by the end of the financial year, in six months.

It has blamed local health managers for the financial problems, and plans to send in "turnaround teams" to help them cut budgets.

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It had been a pleasant and peaceful village since the Domesday Book was written, but residents in the Warwickshire village of Sherbourne are now facing a life of disruption - because of a colony of bats.

The community has been told a #50 million bypass is to be re-routed within 150 yards of their homes after one of Britain's largest colony of noctule bats was found along the route of the original road.

The village may be designated a conservation area, a special landscape area and be in the middle of green belt land, but no amount of protection can prevent the proposed bypass from going ahead.

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A corrupt Midland dentist who claimed NHS payments for dead and fictitious patients has been jailed for 15 months.

Sentencing Scott Khadun, of Mill Grove, Hampton Lovett, Worcestershire, at Dudley County Court, Judge Michael Challinor told him his "ghost" claims had betrayed the trust of the Dental Practice Board, which makes payments to more than 22,000 dentists.

Khadun was ordered to pay back at least #12,000 in compensation to the NHS but faces a civil action to recover the rest of the money, which police believe could amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

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Rainbow-coloured trains, free crisps and robot ticket collectors to tickle passengers are some of the ideas Birmingham youngsters have put forward for the future of New Street Station.

More than 150 children sent in their ideas in drawings, sculptures, poems and stories as part of the "Imagination Station" competition run by the Birmingham New Street regeneration project.

The real designs for the #350 million upgrade of the cramped station are expected in the new year.

Leader of Birmingham City Council, Councillor Mike Whitby, was on hand at the Thinktank Museum in Birmingham to present prizes, and certificates to winners, who received prizes of up to #250 and #500 for their school or organisation.

"New Street Station is busier than it has ever been, providing a gateway to Birmingham and the West Midlands region and its many opportunities and attractions," he said.

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Paranoia, neurosis and the rise in internet downloading has ended music's "romance" with the record industry.

That is the view of Midland rock legend Robert Plant, the former frontman of Led Zeppelin - a band which sold more than 200 million albums before it disbanded in 1980.

The West Bromwich-born singer told The Birmingham Post that new artists would have the best chance of breaking into the charts via the internet.

The 56-year-old, who lived the rock-'n'-roll lifestyle of drink, drugs and trashing hotel rooms in the 1970s, also dismissed contemporary 'wildmen' of music such as Pete Docherty and Liam Gallagher as "saddos".

Plant said the respective Babyshambles and Oasis frontmen should let their music "do the talking", rather than being involved with a "love affair" with the media.

For more on these stories, get your hands on a copy of Saturday's Birmingham Post