Police station reduced to pile of rubble

A pile of rubble is all that remains of West Bromwich's former police station which has been bulldozed to pave the way for the next step in the £200 million regeneration of the town.

The building in New Street has been flattened to make way for the new Tesco development. Demolition started late last year.

Tesco is behind plans for the major shopping centre and leisure complex, one of the largest regeneration projects taking place across the UK at the moment.

Top retailers, including Next, Primark, JD Sports, Bank, and Outfit have already put pen to paper to say they will be part of the development. Odeon will meanwhile operate an eight-screen cinema.

Vinci Construction, which won a £35m contract for the first stage of the project for a centre anchored by a 144,000 sq ft Tesco Extra, arrived on site in November.

The last brick was removed from the 40-year-old building this week and the rubble will now be crushed and recycled in the new scheme.

Sean Delaney, senior project manager at Vinci Construction, said: "Rubble will be reused in the foundations of the new Tesco store and New Square centre. We are now in the process of crushing the building materials and clearing the site ready to begin laying the footings of the scheme in the next few weeks."

Sandwell's economy boss, Councillor Ian Jones said: "The police station's demolition is the dividing line between one side of the development and the other and now that has gone it will be all systems go," he said.

"Soon we should start to see some structures going up."