Chef undeterred by car crashing into new bakery

The owner of a new bakery into which a car smashed leaving it boarded up has insisted "one way or another, we're going to sort this out".

Chef Adam Purnell said his Baked Bean venue in Ironbridge, Telford, had been due to open in mid-January, but that "would probably be set back".

The crash happened at the junction of Madeley Road and Waterloo Street early on Monday.

On Tuesday, Anthony Barnet, 49, of High Street in the town, admitted a series of criminal charges before Telford magistrates and was remanded on bail for sentencing.

Barnet pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, driving whilst disqualified, failing to provide a specimen, driving with no insurance and criminal damage to a building.

He will be sentenced at Shrewsbury Crown Court at a date to be fixed.

Mr Purnell, also known online as The Shropshire Lad, said he would not be put off by the "disheartening" setback.

He said he was "just trying to get to the bottom of it, crack on and open as soon as we can".

The chef, who already runs nearby Embers, said renovations to the premises had been at an advanced stage.

"We've decorated and started to build some of the counters and things that are going to go inside... but we're now going to have to have a full new front put on the building.

"We've still got to have a structural engineer check that the building's sound, so yeah, it's going to set us back for sure."

He praised Telford and Wrekin Council for helping and "get things moving as soon as we can".

However, Mr Purnell said he could not be sure how long the work would take, and how far the resulting delay to opening would be.

"There's a lot of variables at the minute, so it's difficult to say. Hopefully we won't be set back too far, but it might be a few weeks".

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