If you’ve been watching Masterchef, you’ll have seen Yelverton’s Thomas Elson-Knight make the final five, but there’s been loads going on in the Tavistock area this week — here are the big stories in this week’s Tavistock Times:

• The education of young people in Tavistock is set to be enhanced now two schools have joined forces to share expertise and best practice.

• A budding chef from Yelverton cooked up a storm and impressed judges to reach the final five of this year’s series of BBC’s Masterchef.

• The borough council has voted to close the toilets at Tavistock bus station as part of efforts to save more than £250,000 from its budget over the next three years.

• The first stage of saving much-loved community building Kingdon House for future generations is complete.

• A notorious rogue builder has been branded a cowboy by a judge and jailed for ripping off his customers, including one in Yelverton by trading under a false name.

• A pilot project between Dartmoor National Park Authority and the Environment Agency could prevent flooding in local villages, including Peter Tavy and Walkhampton.

• Times reporter Sam Hughes looks back at the life of Ron Gard, a well-known Tavistock man involved with the escape attempts from the German prisoner of war camps that inspired the film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.

• It was a great day of racing at the Lamerton Hunt point-to-point — see our spread of pictures and a round-up of the day's events.

• EIGHT pages of local sport including coverage of the Tavy 13 and Tavistock AFC’s quest to win the South West Peninsula Premier Division.