Extraordinary meetings are suddenly becoming very fashionable – democracy in action in a lockdown world. -Owl

Boris Johnson met three times with a billionaire property developer months before he approved one of his major controversial housing schemes in London, despite objections to the development from the local authority.

Thomas Colson www.businessinsider.com

Woman whose dad died in care home to take government to court over coronavirus

The national publicity Cathy Gardner’s story has received today (BBC and The Guardian) has helped to boost crowdfunding so that a new target of £50K has been set. She has already had to commit to the next formal set of legal actions because of time constraints. This is when costs begin to mount and crowdfunding becomes critical to her ability to continue.

The Government can be expected to reply at the last moment to spin things out. – Owl

Keep spreading the news! Holding the Government to account on Care Homes is something we should all support – Dr Cathy Gardner is leading the way on our behalves.

Coronavirus: Government sued over care home deaths ‘disgrace’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-53012565

A woman who said goodbye to her dying father through a care home window is suing the government over his death.

Dr Cathy Gardner’s father, Michael Gibson, 88, died of probable Covid-19 related causes on 3 April.

Her case, which accuses the government of unlawfully exposing thousands of care home residents to serious harm, will be filed at the High Court today.

The Department for Health and Social Care said it could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

Dr Gardner, from Sidmouth, Devon, said her father’s death was part of a “national disgrace”.

She added her case was about everybody, including care home residents, staff and the family members of those who had been put at risk or died.

More than 14,000 people have died from coronavirus in England and Wales care homes since the start of the pandemic.

The government has faced criticism for policies allowing patients to be discharged from hospitals into care homes without being tested for Covid-19.

Lawyers representing Dr Gardner sent a pre-action letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, NHS England and Public Health England on 2 June, demanding they admit those policies were unlawful.

The government has until Tuesday to respond but lawyer Paul Conrathe, representing Dr Gardner, said the case needed to be lodged on Friday before receiving a reply due to time limits.

“Legally the state is required to protect its citizens, protect their right to life,” he said.

“Our view is not only did they not protect them but they actively exposed them to harm.”

Mr Gibson, who had Alzheimer’s, was a resident at the Cherwood House Care Centre, near Bicester, Oxfordshire.

Changing advice

• On 19 March, NHS guidance said “unless required to be in hospital, patients must not remain in an NHS bed”
• On 2 April, the rules on discharging to care homes were clarified, saying “negative [coronavirus] tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home”
• From 15 April, the government said all patients discharged from hospitals would be tested for coronavirus

Dr Gardner, who praised the care he was given there, was able to see him through a window the night before he died.

She said: “This was heart-breaking, it’s not how I imagined his last days would be.”

His cause of death was recorded as probable Covid-19-related but he had not been tested.

Dr Gardner’s lawyers claim that prior to his death the care home had been pressured into taking a hospital patient who had tested positive for Covid-19 but “had not had a temperature for about 72 hours”.

Dr Gardner, a microbiologist with a PhD in virology, said: “Somebody needed to take the lead and I thought … I can so I should.

“It is a national disgrace and it needs to be held up as such and not just brushed under the carpet.”

Dr Gardner, who is also chair of East Devon District Council, is crowdfunding to help cover legal fees and has so far raised £10,000. [Now raised to £50K – Owl]

England’s chief nurse was dropped from one of Downing Street’s daily coronavirus briefings after refusing to publicly back Dominic Cummings, senior sources have told The Independent…

…Separately Whitehall officials are critical of what they see as No 10’s grip on the daily briefings and the way the science and health advice is being used.

(Owl recalls a correspondent recently describing the civil servants who flank the daily No 10 briefing as “alter boys” and “alter girls”)

Extract from the Mirror 11 June

Durham County Council received a string of complaints about the home Boris Johnson’s aide travelled 250 miles to stay in at the end of March.

Now the council has said it found “historic breaches of planning and building control regulations”.

But it did not say what those breaches were, and said no enforcement action would be taken because of a time limit on doing so.

The council has referred separate complaints ” in respect of non-payment of Council Tax” to the Valuation Office for “consideration and review”.

Readying the NHS and adult social care in England for COVID-19 – National Audit Office (NAO) Press release

For Meg Hillier’s (Chair of the Public Accounts Committee) comments see this post.

Years of failed efforts to integrate NHS and social care hampered the response to the coronavirus crisis, according to the first independent report into preparations for the pandemic.

This article is based on a National Audit Office (NAO) report published today. Owl publishes the NAO press release separately.

Meanwhile Dr Cathy Gardner’s Judicial Review takes another step forward.

Kat Lay, Health Correspondent www.thetimes.co.uk 

The National Audit Office report into the work done to prepare services showed that care home residents were “an afterthought”, Meg Hillier, the chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said last night.

The report said that 25,000 hospital patients had been discharged to care homes at the height of the pandemic. It said: “Due to government policy at the time, not all patients were tested for Covid-19 before discharge, with priority given to patients with symptoms.” It also found that one in three homes for the elderly had suffered virus outbreaks.

Ms Hillier said: “Care homes were at the back of the queue for both PPE and testing so only got a small fraction of what they needed from central government. Residents and staff were an afterthought yet again: out of sight and out of mind, with devastating consequences.”

The report highlighted a “problematic” relationship between social care and the NHS. It said: “We have reported on successive efforts to integrate the two sectors: there have been 12 government white papers, green papers and consultations, and five independent reviews on integration over the past 20 years.

“Going into the pandemic, meaningful integration was still to occur, however, and the lack of it has made responding to the crisis more difficult in a number of ways.”

Issues included a lack of clear data available from social care because of its fragmented nature, with about 20,000 independent providers.

The report found that only a fraction of necessary PPE reached care homes and hospitals from central stocks, and that calls for gowns and eye protection to be added to government pandemic stockpiles had not been heeded.

Central stocks had supplied only 20 per cent of the gowns, 33 per cent of the eye protection and 50 per cent of aprons that models had suggested were needed in health settings under a “reasonable worst-case scenario”, the report said. It added: “Central stocks distributed to social care accounted for 15 per cent or less of the modelled requirement for any item of PPE, apart from facemasks.”

Ms Hillier said frontline health workers had been “badly let down by the government’s failure to prepare properly”. She added: “Shockingly, the government squandered the last opportunity to add to the central PPE stockpile, even after the NHS had gone to the highest level of alert.”

The report, which covers the period since the NHS moved to its most severe incident level in January, also found that despite testing being available for health staff in some form since the end of March, ministers still did not know how many NHS or care workers had been tested in total.

Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the Commons health and social care committee and a former health secretary, said: “It seems extraordinary that no one appeared to consider the clinical risk to care homes despite widespread knowledge that the virus could be carried asymptomatically. Places like Germany and Hong Kong took measures to protect their care homes that we did not over a critical four-week period.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: “We have delivered over 1.7 billion pieces of PPE and continue to ensure supplies reach the frontline. The modelled PPE requirements presented in this report are theoretical worst-case estimates — it is misleading to compare them to figures on centrally procured PPE which do not account for equipment supplied through other routes or existing local stocks.”

Just posted on the Guardian web site in the past few hours.

“Dr Cathy Gardner launched a high court claim on Friday after her father, Michael Gibson, a retired superintendent of births, marriages and deaths, died in an Oxfordshire care home in early April. He became infected after a patient who tested positive for the virus was discharged from hospital into the home.”

Owl understands that Dr Cathy Gardner has had to commence proceedings in the High Court. There is a strict timetable of when various formal steps have to be taken and Owl assumes that she is now seeking a “permission” from the High Court. This is a paper exercise in which a High Court Judge reviews the case to see whether it is an arguable one in court and therefore can be pursued further.

When Sky News reported the story a week ago they quoted independent barrister James Robottom as saying “I’ve got absolutely no doubt that permission will be granted by the High Court to proceed to judicial review.”

At this stage costs begin to mount and Owl would encourage all those who care about the state of our Care Homes to back the  crowdfunding of her case to the hilt.

Robert Booth www.theguardian.com 

Matt Hancock is facing legal action from the daughter of a man who died from Covid-19 in a care home in which the health secretary is accused of a “litany of failures” and misleading the public with his claim to have “thrown a protective ring” around care homes.

Dr Cathy Gardner launched a high court claim on Friday after her father, Michael Gibson, a retired superintendent of births, marriages and deaths, died in an Oxfordshire care home in early April. He became infected after a patient who tested positive for the virus was discharged from hospital into the home. 

The request for a judicial review alleges failings “have led to large numbers of unnecessary deaths and serious illnesses” and have been “aggravated by the making of wholly disingenuous, misleading and – in some cases – plainly false statements suggesting that everything necessary has been done to protect care homes during the pandemic”.

The move comes amid growing anger among families of care home residents at policies they believe may have caused their loved ones to become infected. Several have raised complaints with hospitals and care homes about infection control, including the discharging of Covid-negative residents into homes with outbreaks.

Thirty-five councils have also blamed virus spread on discharges with hospital patients sent to homes that did not have sufficient protective equipment and/or facilities to isolate infected residents.

Other cases include a decision to discharge John Heywood, 83, from Addenbroke’s hospital in Cambridge into a Peterborough care facility with an outbreak. He contracted the virus and survived, but his family have lodged a formal complaint with Addenbroke’s.

“I was really upset and angry,” said his daughter, Sarah Hayward. “I called the [hospital] discharge planning team and they said there was no obligation to tell us if there’s Covid in a home. I felt it was out of our control. It didn’t make sense. How on earth could they do that?”

Addenbroke’s said it would launch a full investigation, but only after the Covid-19 crisis has passed. In a statement, Cambridge University hospitals medical director, Dr Ashley Shaw, said: “Our discharge planning team take great care in ensuring that decisions are made in the best interests of patients, and that the facility to which a patient is being discharged is able to support the patient’s needs at that time.”

In another case, the family of Hughie Leyland, 90, believe he contracted the virus and died aged 90 at the Westwood Hall care home in Wirral after it accepted discharged hospital patients. 

“You don’t put people from a hospital where they may have had the virus into a place with the most vulnerable people,” said his daughter-in-law, Charlie Leyland. “If this was one mistake, that’s one thing, but it has been happening all around.” 

Leyland entered the home on 23 March, at a time when Department of Health guidance stated that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers/ admissions into the care home”. It was not until 16 April that the government announced NHS patients being discharged into care homes would be first tested for Covid-19. Leyland died on 19 April.

The home owner, Springcare Ltd, said: “Our overall experience of the testing programme introduced by the government has been poor. Guidance on testing people prior to discharge from hospital … changed when the virus was most virulent and there was heightened media coverage on the rising number of cases in care homes of residents who were testing positive or symptomatic.”

The Care Quality Commission is also investigating claims that “a patient’s positive Covid-19 status was known to the hospital but not disclosed at the point of discharge” – a potential breach of the Health and Social Care Act. More than 15,000 people have died from known or suspected Covid-19 in UK care homes.

In the letter initiating her claim that Hancock, the secretary of state for health and social care, breached his legal duty, Gardner’s lawyers allege “policies and measures adopted by the health secretary, NHS England and Public Health England have manifestly failed to protect the health, well-being and right to life of those residing and working in care homes”.

Gardner said she hoped her case would focus attention on decisions to order care homes to accept hospital discharges, the struggle to access enough personal protective equipment and a lack of comprehensive testing. She is crowdfunding for legal costs, which she estimates could reach £60,000. 

“By the time the government said they were going to introduce testing [for hospital discharges on 15 April] people had already died. My father died on 3 April. The time to protect the care homes was at the beginning.

“I want to hold them to account and this seems to be the best way of doing it. We are looking for an admission of wrongdoing and policies to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Her case alleges: 

•  The government breached its obligation “to take appropriate steps to safeguard the lives of those within its jurisdiction” and to do “all that could have been required of it to prevent … life from being avoidably put at risk” as set out in the European convention on human rights. 
• The government breached the National Health Service Act 2006 requiring it protect “the public in England from disease or other dangers to health” and the Equalities Act – equal and fair treatment of individuals with protected characteristics of age and disability and also potentially race.

It highlights the Department of Health and Social Care’s February guidance to care homes that it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected” and the advice in March that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home”.

The case highlights the Public Health England guidance to care homes on 13 March that did not ban visits and instructions from NHS England on 17 March that “community health providers must take full responsibility for urgent discharge of all eligible patients identified by acute providers” and health ministry guidance in April that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers/ admissions into the care home”

It also demands to see the evidence behind Boris Johnson’s statement on 13 May, that “we brought in the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown”, and said Hancock and the other agencies “formulated and applied a policy in respect of care homes that is different to the policy that they have publicly declared”.Hancock has previously said that “from the start, we have worked hard to protect those in social care”. He told parliament last month: “We will not rest in doing whatever is humanly possible to protect our care homes from this appalling virus, to make sure that residents and care colleagues have the safety and security they deserve.”The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England said they could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

More disappointing news for farmers – the Government appears to be giving only token support – Owl

“..despite ministers pledging from early March that they would help the farming industry with a recruitment campaign, a Freedom of Information request shows that no money was spent on the drive in April and just £16,500 up to 18 May, the latest date for which figures are available.”

The director of public prosecutions, Max Hill, is being threatened with legal action over the failure to investigate Dominic Cummings for alleged breaches of the lockdown rules.

Director of public prosecutions threatened with legal action over failure to investigate Dominic Cummings

Matthew Weave www.theguardian.com 

A legal team, headed by the barrister Michael Mansfield, has twice written to Hill, expressing concern that no action has yet been taken against Cummings after a Guardian and Daily Mirror investigation revealed the prime minister’s chief adviser travelled with his family to Durham and Barnard Castle during the lockdown.

The letters were sent on 3 and 8 June on behalf of Martin Redston, a 70-year-old London engineer who is concerned that the lockdown laws should apply to everyone irrespective of their position in government.

Replying to Redston’s second letter, Hill’s office confirmed his complaint had been passed to a special crime division of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and a full response would follow in “due course”. But it stopped short of saying the matter was being actively considered, as requested by Redston’s legal team, which also includes the firm Hackett & Dabbs.

In a new letter to Hill sent on Tuesday, Redston’s lawyers claim the failure to provide a substantive response were grounds for a judicial review. And it threatened to begin proceedings if no action is taken by Hill by 4pm on Thursday 11 June.

The letter said the demand for urgency was “proportionate” given “a very serious loss of public confidence in the due process of the rule of law” at a time of a continued public health emergency that requires public compliance. It also warned any delay risked losing evidence such as CCTV footage and credit card records relating to Cummings’ movements in the north-east.

The letter also pointed out that in his statement from the rose garden of Downing Street, Cummings admitted returning to work at No 10 on 27 March after tending to his wife who was displaying symptoms of coronavirus. He then admitted travelling to Durham with his wife to seek childcare for their four-year-old son, the letter pointed out.

A spokesman for Hill and the CPS said: “We have responded to the letter today referring those involved to the relevant police force as investigating alleged offences is a matter for the police not the CPS.”

Redston’s lawyers point out that under the CPS’s own policy it may receive an allegation of an offence from a member of the public and can refer such cases to the police.

Redston, whose complaint is being funded by donations to Crowd Justice, said: “The prime minister was absolutely unequivocal when he said people needed to ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives’. The rules were entirely clear and should apply to everyone.”

He said he was prevented from attending a friend’s funeral due to the lockdown restrictions. And he has also been unable to see his grandchildren since the start of the outbreak.

After recovering from coronavirus, Cummings admitted travelling to Barnard Castle with his family on 12 April to test his eyesight.

An initial three-day investigation by Durham police into Cummings’ travels found that he might have breached health protection regulations when he took a 52-mile round trip to the town.

But it said Cummings’ 516-mile round trip from London to Durham and back had not broken health protection regulations. The force decided to take no further action after making no finding in relation to “stay at home” government guidance.

On Sunday, a separate campaign for a new investigation into Cummings over alleged breaches was launched, by lawyers with the backing of health workers and some families of coronavirus victims.

• The headline of this article was amended on 11 June 2020 because an earlier version referred to the director of public prosecutions as the “UK’s top prosecutor”. The position relates to England and Wales, not the UK.

This article from the BBC critical about the efficacy of the NHX contact tracing app appears on the same day as a much more bullish article from the Times.

Is No 10 briefing in two different directions? Is this one of Dominic Cummings’ “do the unexpected” cunning plans? Or is the Government in disarray?

Owl is posting both for comparison and contrast – first the BBC: 

Coronavirus: Ministers consider NHS contact-tracing app rethink

www.bbc.co.uk

Concerns about the risks of deploying a go-it-alone UK coronavirus contact-tracing app are causing further delays.

A second version of the smartphone software was due to have begun testing on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday, but the government decided to postpone the trial.

Ministers are considering switching the app over to tech developed by Apple and Google.

But countries testing that model are experiencing issues of their own.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock had originally said the NHS Covid-19 app was to be launched across England – and possibly other parts of the UK – by 1 June.

But he subsequently said the government had decided it would be better to establish a network of human contract tracers first.

However, the BBC has discovered that one of the main reasons the initiative is running behind schedule is that developers are having problems using Bluetooth as a means to estimate distance.

Even so, they still believe they are better placed to tackle the challenge than counterparts overseas who are working under constraints imposed by the two US tech firms.

Bluetooth handshakes

Contact-tracing apps are designed to prevent a second wave of infections by keeping a log of when two people are in close proximity to each other and for how long.

If one of the users later tests positive for the disease, the records are used to determine how likely it is they infected the other. If required, an alert is triggered to help prevent the further spread of the virus.

The UK has adopted what is known as a “centralised” approach, meaning that the contact-matching process is carried out on a remote computer server. One benefit is it offers epidemiologists more data to tackle the pandemic. France and India are other countries to have adopted this model.

By contrast, Apple and Google’s “decentralised” approach carries out the matches on the handsets themselves, on the grounds this better protects users’ privacy.

Poland switched its app from a centralised to decentralised approach on Tuesday. Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Latvia are among others to have adopted the tech giants’ design.

Both systems rely on Bluetooth “handshakes” to work.

Number 10 is concerned that iPhones will not always detect each other because of a restriction Apple has imposed on apps that do not adopt its model.

But the UK team has devised a workaround and is more concerned about other limitations of using Bluetooth.

Train trouble

Some of these issues were outlined in a study published by Trinity College Dublin last month.

It highlighted problems with using received Bluetooth signal strength as a means to estimate distance.

Researchers warned signal strength “can vary substantially” depending on:

• how deeply a handset is placed in a bag
• whether the signal has to pass through a human body to reach the other phone
• if the two people are walking side-by-side or one behind the other
• if the devices are indoors rather than outdoors
• whether the smartphone is surrounded by metal objects

The report highlighted troubling results when Singapore’s TraceTogether app was tested.

Image copyright PA Media Image caption Ireland’s police force is among organisations trialling a contact-tracing app ahead of a planned national rollout

An experiment within a stationary train carriage found that when users moved from a distance of 3.5m (11.5ft) to 4m, signals became stronger rather than weaker because of the way metal objects were reflecting the radio waves.

A trial in a supermarket also found the received signal strength was the same whether two people were walking close together or 2m apart.

Follow-up tests using Apple-Google’s tech are currently under way.

“The work is ongoing, but preliminary results are broadly consistent with previous observations,” said Dr Brendan Jennings, who has been tasked with assessing the effectiveness of Ireland’s Covid-19 app.

Hidden data

The team behind Switzerland’s SwissCovid app is carrying out tests of its own.

Its Bluetooth measurement chief believes the issue can be partly addressed by taking a range of readings over a period of five minutes or more.

But he added that Apple and Google had placed curbs on what could be achieved.

“The Google and Apple API [application programming interface] limits the amount of raw information that is actually exposed to the app,” Prof Mathias Payer told the BBC.

“For maximum utility, we would get all the different measurements, but this has privacy implications.”

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Swiss MPs have given permission for the country’s contact-tracing app to be launched nationwide

Apps using Google and Apple’s tech do not get to see the actual signal strength but rather one of three values, based on calculations used to normalise the different ways Bluetooth behaves on different handsets,

By contrast, the UK team can currently obtain the measurements directly.

Those responsible believe a further advantage of their centralised approach is that the data can be processed on the server involved, since it would be too taxing a task to be done on smartphones.

But part of their challenge is communicating this to Baroness Dido Harding – who heads up the wider Test and Trace programme – and 10 Downing Street itself.

A spokesman for the prime minister declined to comment.

Now the Times

Tracing app cuts spread of coronavirus on Isle of Wight

Oliver Wright, Policy Editor www.thetimes.co.uk

Contact tracing and the NHS’s covid smartphone app have identified infections and reduced the spread of the virus, official figures suggest.

An analysis of the integrated system, that is being used on the Isle of Wight, appears to show that it has succeeded in containing the infection during a month long trial.

The findings are likely to be highlighted by an official evaluation of the project to be published next week and will increase pressure on the government to launch the app across the country.

There have been reports that Downing Street is cooling on the new NHS Covid 19 app amid delays to the nationwide roll out.

However this was denied yesterday by senior government sources who insisted that the app still had an important role to play in containing the virus while easing lockdown restrictions.

Official government data of confirmed cases of coronavirus, broken down by local authority areas, show that at the start of the trial on the Isle of Wight on May 7 there had been 154 cases on the island.

Over the following month, during which time the app and tracing system was in place, a further 47 cases were identified – a rise of 30.5 per cent.

Across England, during the same period, the number of confirmed cases of Covid 19 only rose by 12 per cent.

But the data also reveals that the vast majority of the new infections on the island were picked up in the first few weeks of the trial.

How the NHS Covid-19 contact tracing app works

Between May 7 when the system was put in place and May 26, 45 new cases were identified. However since then only two new infections have been identified.

This, experts said, could be evidence that the integrated system was successful at picking up more cases early and eventually halting the spread of the virus on the island.

The figures could be influenced by the greater use of tests on the island, which were only made available nationally to everyone with symptoms nationwide on May 18.

Nevertheless the data does give hope that the integrated system can work to control infection rates as the lockdown begins to ease.

Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia said the figures suggested that the rate of infection on the island had declined “more rapidly” than might have been expected.

“It is very hard to draw a definitive conclusion because the overall case numbers on the island are small which makes it hard to prove in a statistically significant way,” he said.

“But it does look promising.”

The island’s MP Bob Seely described the results as “fascinating”.

“Clearly these results need to be studied carefully, but one interpretation of this data may be that the app helped to identify cases – as it is designed to do – and by identifying more cases in the population more quickly it has helped people to take action earlier which has prevented the further spread of the virus, which has resulted in a steeper decline.

“One should be cautious, but it may show that the Island has not only provided a place to test the app effectively, but has also shown the effectiveness of the app too.”

The data comes amid reports that Downing Street is cooling on the concept of the app after initial enthusiasm.

Senior government figures admitted that they had perhaps been “too keen” on the app to begin at the expense of more traditional contact tracing.

“If you look around the world you see that the emphasis everywhere is on more traditional techniques to trace contacts. That doesn’t mean the app doesn’t have a role to play but it is not a single solution.”

Supporters of the programme point out that as lockdown restrictions ease so more people will come into contact with people that they do not know making the app more valuable as a way of controlling the virus.

They also denied suggestions that NHSX, which developed the app, was preparing to scrap it in favour of a system designed by Apple and Google.

“To change tac at this stage would lead to significant delays and there are no other advantages in doing so.”

Lord Bethell of Romford, the minister for innovation, said: “We will publish an evaluation soon explaining the lessons we have learnt and the changes to the app we have made as a result.

“The app will complement the NHS test and trace programme, helping control the spread of the virus by rapidly and anonymously alerting contacts who users may not know, and who would be missed through standard contact tracing methods.”

Owl wonders how many readers will have followed this correspondent’s example and written to their MP?

See East Devon Watch article

From a correspondent to their MP (not Jupp):

I have been alarmed to read in the last couple of days, news that there are plans being laid out at the moment to divert planning decisions from local councils to business groups owned by the government; or as the Times describes it;  ‘Jenrick and Johnson’s senior aide, Dominic Cummings, have set up a panel of experts to advise on radical reforms to planning laws that will hand control of decisions from local councils to development corporations owned by the government’ – The Sunday Times, June 7th.

Taking planning decisions away from democratically elected bodies who have sworn to represent their constituents and instead giving it to private individuals and business people obviously completely undermines the democratic process and further alienates local communities and people.  Allowing those with pecuniary interests to be in charge of decision making is quite frankly, very disturbing indeed and risks not only the role of local government, but also the countryside, the environment, our local economy which depends on tourism, our children’s health which depends on clean air, our biodiversity, our history, our faith in government and the democratic principle etc etc.  I cannot think of a worse way to solve the housing crisis than to give it to an opaque body with very vested interests.

I appeal to you as our representative at parliament and someone who has shown themselves willing to listen to local people, to raise this issue at Parliament with great urgency as once this has gone through, all our communities, towns, villages and countryside will be at risk.

Nothing to see here! – Owl

“Stuart Timmiss, [Durham] council’s head of development and housing, said: “While there have been historic breaches of planning and building control regulations, current legislation places a time limit on any enforcement measures and as a result no further action will be taken.”

“However, the council has not specified exactly what breaches of planning and building regulations it did find – and it has not been made clear whether any happened during the time Mr Cummings’ parents have lived there.”

Why I broke with Boris Johnson

“The NHS Trust behind Musgrove Park Hospital has issued a ‘heartfelt apology’ after some patients there were told they had tested positive for Covid-19 when, in fact, they may have been negative….

Trudi Grant, Director of Public Health at Somerset County Council : “Without these false positive cases we’re as confident as we can be that there hasn’t been an increase in new cases in Somerset and, in fact, the trend continues downwards, which is great news for all of us.”

Patients given false positive coronavirus results at Musgrove Park Hospital

Coronavirus came to UK ‘on at least 1,300 separate occasions’

A new study showes that less than 0.1% of those imported cases came directly from China. Instead the UK’s coronavirus epidemic was largely initiated by travel from Italy in late February, Spain in early-to-mid-March and then France in mid-to-late-March. 

[When we didn’t even ask for their names or contact details, let alone test them or ask them to self-isolate. Yet now we are “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted” and insisting on 14 days quarantine. Many believe that this policy which has huge economic consequences and makes no sense has simply been introduced because it is thought in No 10 to “please the crowd”. Does this Government know what it is doing? – Owl]

www.bbc.co.uk  

Coronavirus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, a major analysis of the genetics of the virus shows.

The study, by the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium (Cog-UK), completely quashes the idea that a single “patient zero” started the whole UK outbreak.

The analysis also finds China, where the pandemic started, had a negligible impact on cases in the UK.

Instead those initial cases came mostly from European countries.

The researchers analysed the genetic code of viral samples taken from more than 20,000 people infected with coronavirus in the UK.

Then, like a gigantic version of a paternity test, the geneticists attempted to piece together the virus’s massive family tree.

This was combined with data on international travel to get to the origins of the UK epidemic.

 They found the UK’s coronavirus epidemic did not have one origin – but at least 1,356 origins. On each of those occasions somebody brought the infection into the UK from abroad and the virus began to spread as a result.

“The surprising and exciting conclusion is that we found the UK epidemic has resulted from a very large number of separate importations,” said Prof Nick Loman, from Cog-UK and the University of Birmingham.

“It wasn’t a patient zero,” he added.

The study showed that less than 0.1% of those imported cases came directly from China. Instead the UK’s coronavirus epidemic was largely initiated by travel from Italy in late February, Spain in early-to-mid-March and then France in mid-to-late-March.

[The study estimated that approx. 34% of detected UK transmission lineages arrived via inbound travel from Spain, approx. 29% from France, approx. 14% from Italy, and approx. 23% from other countries. The relative contributions of these locations were highly dynamic.]

“The big surprise for us was how fluid the process was, the rate of and source of virus introduction shifted rapidly over the course of only a few weeks,” said Prof Oliver Pybus, from the University of Oxford.

The study estimates 80% of those initial cases arrived in the country between 28 Feb and 29 March – the time the UK was debating whether to lockdown.

After this point, the number of new imported cases diminished rapidly.

The earliest one could be traced back to the beginning of February, but it is possible there were cases even earlier that could not be picked up by the analysis.

The study also says the controversial football match between Liverpool and Atletico Madrid, on 11 March, probably had very little impact on bringing the virus into the country.

An estimated 3,000 fans flew in from Spain to watch the game, but there were 20,000 people flying in from Spain every single day in mid-March.

“[It] shows that individual events such as football matches likely made a negligible contribution to the number of imports at that time,” the study says.

The imported cases each started off a chain of transmission where the virus is passed from one person, to the next, to the next and so on.

However, the study shows lockdown has massively disrupted the spread of the virus.

“If there’s good news here, these chains of transmission were and are being suppressed and going extinct as a result of social distancing and we continue to see that now,” Prof Loman said.

“Unless we get some certainty around income levels recovering or certainty of any additional help from the government in terms of this year’s budget or future years’ budgets, there a risk at some point in the future we may be faced with having to look a Section 114 notice,” says Jon Triggs, head of resources at North Devon Council…..

North Devon Council is run by the Lib Dems, but all but two of Devon’s parliamentary constituencies are represented by Conservative MPs. Again, it appears Tory cuts are coming back to bite their local parties and voters.”