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Marks & Spencer, with stores in Kensington & Chelsea, is considering a massive revamp of its food departments in order to increase profits. The news is regarded by many as yet another publicity gaff by the troubled chain.

The changes include putting food contracts out for competitive tender to lower costs and reducing the number of suppliers to increase efficiency. The news has alarmed both its customers and the City who think that one of the company's strongest features is its reputation for premium priced quality food.

Compared to other departments like clothing, M&S;'s food business has been one of the most stable parts of the company with consistently good sales and profits.

There was traffic chaos across west London yesterday when the shooting of a police corporate video closed a major road for two hours.

Helicopters, police motorcycles and limousines took part in the film while motorists were forced to sit in 'nightmare' traffic jams. Rush hour motorists were caught in traffic in the Chelsea, Kensington & Earls court areas out to the M4, the A316 and roads surrounding Heathrow and Brentford.

The Hammersmith flyover was closed for two hours whilst the video shoot was going on. Motoring organizations complained that Scotland Yard had failed to alert it to the road closure, as thousands of motorists were caught in 'nightmare' jams.

Free entry to all national museums is now a certainty after the National History Museum agreed to halt its objections to the plan.

The culture secretary, Chris Smith, who described free admission as "a bit of a personal crusade", was exultant. "It is very good news indeed," he said.
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The Jury at the Jill Dando murder, has been hearing how Barry George tried to join the Kensington & Chelsea Pistol Club in the early 80's but was deemed unsuitable for membership.

In the latest installment of the Old Bailey trial of Barry George the court has been hearing evidence from the police about interviews with George in the months after Dando's death and of a search of his flat in Fulham.

The interviewing officer Dc Gallagher, told the court he had visited George's home six times before tracing him and had left a note asking him to contact police. George said he had thought the note was related to a car accident he had been involved in and had given it to his solicitor.

Detective Constable John Gallagher told the court he was asked to interview George, 41, of Crookham Road, Fulham, to eliminate him from the murder inquiry. George gave his witness statement at his mother's home in Acton as he said his flat was "too messy".

"I didn't go anywhere near Miss Dando's house on the day of her murder and I have no information which can help police," he said in his statement. "I can only add that I was shocked when I heard of her death."

George told police about his activities on the day Miss Dando was shot. He was at home all morning before visiting a Hammersmith and Fulham disability group at lunchtime, he said. He heard taxi drivers talking about "an incident" when he went to a taxi cab office but did not know about Miss Dando's death until he saw a news report, he said in his statement.

Six days after detectives interviewed George, a specialist search team was sent to his flat, some 500 yards from where Miss Dando had lived, the jury heard. Dc Charles Isaacs said a search warrant allowed them to look for clothing, documents and firearms. He said the team broke into the flat when there was no answer from inside.

The jury were shown a video shot during the search of George's flat, which police described as "unhygienic, untidy and disorganised". There were large numbers of binbags and boxes piled high in all the rooms, with clothes and papers strewn across the bare floorboards. Plastic bags, containers and other debris covered the surfaces of the kitchen, containing a mouldy fridge, while the bathroom appeared dirty and damp with objects filling the sink. One officer in the video is seen showing what appeared to be a pornographic magazine to the camera.

Det Cons Charles Isaacs told the jury: "The flat was very untidy. There were papers, debris, clothes and such like on the floor. You could not see the floor. There were lots of binbags containing items stacked up on top of each other in all the rooms."

Details emerging from Government-funded "beat the burglar" projects show crime black spots are beginning to see startling results. Burglary rates in some areas have dropped by 40 per cent in the two years since the Home Office launched the first phase of a £26 million anti-burglary plan.

A scheme covering nearly 4,000 homes in Kensington & Chelsea, has particularly helped people who suffered repeat burglaries - those in bedsits and small flats in the have been especially vulnerable - with the council and police making sure properties get rapid repairs and better locks. Repeat victimisation in the area is down 40 per cent and overall burglary has fallen eight per cent.

More than 85,000 homes in London, in areas where the burglary rate is more than twice the national average, are now being targeted by the initiative and results include a 15 per cent fall in offences on estates in Islington and drops of 10 per cent in Lambeth and six per cent in Haringey, where secret cameras have been installed in some high-risk properties.

Figures for domestic burglary recorded by the police show there were just over 70,000 crimes in London in the 12 months to April this year, down from 79,504 previously.

In spite of major setbacks with rising violent crime and street robbery, Labour goes into the election able to claim that crime has fallen overall by seven per cent and burglary is now 11 per cent below 1990 levels.

But the fear of crime still outstrips the reality - the British Crime Survey, regarded as the truest picture of offending, shows that one in 25 households are likely to fall victim to burglary each year, but one in three adults think they are very likely to fall victim to burglars in the coming 12 months.

Marks & Spencer, the high street store for both Kensington & Chelsea residents has announced falling profits for the third year running. Three years ago the group made a profit of over £1 billion, last year profits were down to £410 million and this year they are down to£145.5 million.

Chairman Luc Vandevelde who waived a £816,000 bonus earlier this year after intense internal and external pressure, admitted that his recovery plans would take longer than expected. "The results will not be seen overnight but our customers will see a gradual and progressive improvement" he claimed.

Sales fell 5.5 per cent last year and internal memos suggest there has been no let-up in the decline since the beginning of the new financial year.

The group has been squeezed by fierce competition from rivals such as Next and Top Shop and by dis-count retailers. Its food and home products divisions fared better, with sales up almost four and 11.5 per cent respectively.

The group has 300 British stores and employs 60,000 people nationwide. It intends to withdraw from most of its overseas operations. A restructuring programme, which involves more than 4,000 redundancies, will cost more than £335 million. Excluding this figure, profits last year were £480.2 million, down seven per cent from the comparable figure last year.

George Davis, who rose to fame as the head of Next in the Eighties, has been drafted in to design a dedicated range for M&S.; Other key fashion appointments have been made and numerous members of the board have lost their jobs and been replaced by new recruits.

Mr Vandevelde, who last year pledged to resign by May 2002 if he had not engineered a recovery, said: "We need to focus on our core customer - the classically stylish woman. That does not mean we will not provide anything for anyone else but she is our focus. The first evidence of this new focus will be seen in the autumn."

Mayor Ken Livingstone's new regulations for cabbies will mean that if they stop for hire they will be obliged to take passengers wherever they want to go in Greater London.

Under existing regulations which have been in place since the 19th century they have it in their discretion to refuse journeys. The Mayor is writing directly to all London's 23,000 licensed drivers to tell them of his plans to scrap the 'six-mile rule'.

Last night Bob Oddy, General Secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) condemned plans to change the six-mile rule. "We feel very strongly about this," he said. "If a driver has done a long hard day we think it is unreasonable that someone can insist he drive a 30-mile journey across London. It would be unsafe. The six-mile rule is basically good sense."

"Scrapping the rule would reduce the number of taxis, he said. "Rather than get caught on a long journey, a driver near the end of a shift will simply turn off the lights and make themselves unavailable."

A campaign to restore a sculpture bequeathed to the nation by the artist Henry Moore has been started by the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

'The Arch' built from travertine marble stood overlooking the Long Water in Kensington Gardens, but since 1996 it has been lying in pieces in a Royal Parks scrapyard. The sculpture was dismantled after structural defects were found in the 19ft high arch caused by ground subsidence.

The 50 tonne structure was due to have been restored to a new site after repairs had been made, however the cash strapped Royal Parks Department has postponed plans to start the work.

A spokesman for the Royal Parks said: "Of course we regret the circumstances that prevent us from restoring and replacing the work. But unfortunately we do not have the budget to do it. The estimated cost of £300,000 is prohibitive bearing in mind there are some £100million worth of projects still outstanding in the eight parks."

Residents living around the Royal Parks are launching a campaign to restore the work supported by Dame Jennifer Jenkins, former chairman of the Royal Parks Review Group and former head of the National Trust.

John Empsom, chairman of the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens is heading the campaign. For more information contact 020 7937 2542.

Parents stormed a council chamber earlier this week and placed a toddler in the mayor's seat in protest at the closure of a council-run nursery.

More than 30 mothers, fathers and young children brought the meeting at Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall to a halt in a desperate bid to prevent the closure of Ladbroke Nursery, in Ladbroke Grove, west London.

As the Conservative-run council passed a decision, one man was arrested in an alleged breach of the peace. One parent said: "We just wanted to spur them on to understand our position."

QPR are negotiating a merger with Wimbledon, the latest twist in the tale of a disastrous season for the west London club.

Those in favour of the merger want everything to be in place for the 2001-2 season.

QPR are currently under administration with debts of £8million and their relegation to the 2nd division will cause the financial situation to worsen.

The move will make good sense for Wimbledon too who do not presently have a home ground, playing their matches this season at Crystal Palace's ground, Selhurst Park.

Tomorrow's 24-hour underground strike will cause havoc for two million commuters and could cost businesses an estimated £100 million, dwarfing the estimated £20million bill for yesterday's May Day protests.

There is more chaos facing the 350,000 users of South West Trains, which runs commuter lines into Waterloo, where the RMT is likely to order a strike tomorrow over different issues, including protests over wearing red waistcoats.

On the Tube, LU believed a deal on working practices, similar to that agreed by the other union Aslef, was virtually secured after yesterday's talks at the conciliation service, Acas. Tube industry leaders believe a major reason for the RMT going ahead with the strike is to ruin the LU announcement later today when it names the private companies it has chosen, on Government order, to renovate the network under the Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Bob Crow, the RMT's assistant general secretary, said: "We are continuing to resist any fragmentation of the workforce under the PPP proposals." Previous one-day strikes have been called to secure guarantees of no job losses and to raise "safety fears" over Tube privatisation.

On the Tube, the announcement of the "preferred bidders" to take over the system's deep level lines, which will be divided into two divisions, signifies a significant step forward in John Prescott's plan to force through PPP. This is against the advice of virtually every known expert besides transport commissioner Bob Kiley and Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Mr Kiley warned today: "How the Government could even contemplate proceeding when it has been clear from the outset that the PPP was so flawed and costly is beyond me. Mr Kiley added: "I cannot do my job unless I have unified management control over the Underground and that, it has become depressingly clear, the Government simply refuses to give me."

The Tube strike will ruin services throughout tomorrow with knock-on disruption continuing well after the the supposed 8pm return to work.