Shropshire Star comment: Nervous wait after reprieve

And now the announcement that it is not going to close after all is, strangely enough, quite a feather in the shopping centre's cap.

House of Fraser is now owned by Sports Direct which has cast an eye over its retail estate and decided that the Telford store is worth keeping. It is only the second store, so far at least, to have been awarded a reprieve, the other being the flagship store in Oxford Street in London.

To think what this means to Telford, you only have to think what it would have meant if the store had closed.

House of Fraser is one of those prestige, big name, stores which Telford assiduously courted over a number of years - Marks & Spencer was another.

The advent of Beatties, as it was at the time of its opening in 2003, was one of those developments to give the whole shopping environment a lift, and give shoppers another good reason to continue to come to Telford from far and wide to spend their money.

It turns out that vision and ambition in Telford have gone a long way towards ensuring that House of Fraser is staying put.

The creation of a "fashion quarter" in the town centre, due for completion next spring, has played its part in convincing House of Fraser's representatives that Telford is a great fit for their future plans, and far from resting on its laurels the town is working hard to ensure it continues to be a leading player on the regional retail scene.

While the sunbeams are piercing the clouds in Telford, House of Fraser at Shrewsbury, and Beatties at Wolverhampton, remain in shadow.

Their futures are in the balance, although you could consider that being in the balance is an improvement on how things looked a few weeks ago, when survival prospects looked bleak.

While the Telford store is only 15 years old, in Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton the stores are part of the traditional retail fabric and have been familiar to generations of shoppers.

As well as being shops, they are buildings which make a statement on the street scene and the possibility that they could go the way of so many other town centre stores is too awful to think about.

Telford can cheer and celebrate. For Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton, it's a question of keeping fingers firmly crossed.