Mobile community Covid testing centres offering results within an hour are set to visit Honiton, Exmouth, and Axminster after a successful trial in Exeter.

eastdevonnews.co.uk 

A new unit was tried out at Devon and Cornwall Police’s Middlemoor HQ on Friday, February 19.

It has been bought by the county council and, from this week, is hitting the road offering rapid testing to the public in areas with the highest rates of coronavirus.

More mobile facilities are ‘expected to come online soon’, says the authority.

They will be available in Honiton, Exmouth, Axminster, Okehampton, Tavistock and Ivybridge ‘in the coming weeks’.

Devon County Council (DCC) says mobile testing centres will be a ‘vital part’ of its efforts to offer rapid testing.

It will target anyone who leaves their home to work or volunteer, and who may come into contact with others.

A DCC spokesperson said: “Around one in three people who have coronavirus do not show any symptoms and may unwittingly be spreading the infection.

“Regular rapid testing identifies those non-symptomatic carriers of the virus – and anyone regularly in contact with others is encouraged to take these quick tests twice a week to prevent the potential spread of the virus.

“And if they do test positive, they are required to self-isolate immediately to prevent them from transmitting it to others.”

Devon’s director of public health Steve Brown said: “These new mobile test centres will help us to offer more rapid Covid-19 tests in more locations to those who need it.

“The tests are quick, painless and easy to book with results back within an hour via text or email.

“By being regularly tested it could prevent you unintentionally passing the virus to others.

“But please remember, while a positive test will require you to self-isolate at home, a negative test does not remove the need to continue following national guidance around social distancing, wearing a face covering, and washing your hands properly and regularly. These simple steps are still vital in preventing the transmission of the virus.”

The mobile centre trialled at Devon and Cornwall Police’s Exeter HQ saw specially-trained members of the constabulary test Middlemoor-based officers and civilian staff.

Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Steve Parker said:

“We welcome the co-operation of Devon County Council in providing this testing service to our officers and staff.

“Working closely and collaboratively with our partners has been a critical part of the multi-agency response to the pandemic throughout the last year.

“The support will enable at least some of our staff to have a test and allow them to be reassured if they are negative for Covid-19, but also take immediate, preventative action if they test positive.

“We continue to explore any avenue which could help protect our staff from exposure to Covid-19 and in turn enable us to continue to provide frontline service delivery to the communities of Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.”

More information on community testing in Devon is available here.

Town halls would be able to seize empty shops and bring them back into use, under Labour plans to revive decaying high streets.

www.independent.co.uk

The party will accuse the government of overseeing “a decade of decline” that has weakened the economy and society – vowing to give local councils beefed-up powers to act.

Under changes to come into force in August, restaurants, banks, gyms, creches and offices will also be fast-tracked for residential use.

That policy will see high streets “sold off to the highest bidder for poor quality housing without planning permission”, the shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds will allege.

Vowing to fight back instead, she will say in a set piece speech: “Britain’s high streets are at the heart of local communities

“It is not just a string of shops and post offices, it’s a place that people want to have pride in. The high street goes to the heart of Labour’s vision to make Britain the best place to grow up and grow old in.”

Labour believes a new “empty shops order” can enable councils to seize the initiative and ensure premises are used either for shopping, small businesses or “other enterprises”.

The idea was put forward a decade ago by Mary Portas, the broadcaster appointed by David Cameron to carry out a high streets’ review, but never enacted.

Ms Dodds will propose that town halls would first work with the owner of an empty shop, to restore it to use – but, if that fails, take it over and carry out any necessary works.

Councils would be permitted to charge rent and, after recouping the cost of carrying out any improvements, that rent would then pass to the property owner.

Last summer, the prime minister sparked a row by announcing that redundant buildings would be demolished and rebuilt without a normal planning application.

Pubs, libraries and village shops “essential to the lifeblood of communities” would be protected – but the move was condemned by campaigners who protested it was already far too easy to build poor quality homes.

Speaking in London, Ms Dodds will say: “The Conservatives have presided over a decade of decline in Britain’s high streets that has left our economy insecure and the foundations of our society weakened.

“Labour’s plan would help secure the future of the high street. It would give local communities a proper stake in their town centres, support new businesses to open up on our high streets and help rebuild our economy post-pandemic.”

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall is urging people to report incidents of dog theft to police officers in order to help them better understand the scale of the problem in the region.

Police commissioner urges public to report dog thefts

Molly Dowrick www.devonlive.com 

Alison Hernandez, who has been the commissioner for Devon and Cornwall Police for almost five years, says she has heard “numerous” accounts of potential dog theft incidents in the region – but officers appear “sceptical” about the size of the problem.

Ms Hernandez has penned an extensive report on the need for “harsher penalties” for pet theft and is urging local people to complete a national survey on dog theft.

She says she wants to stamp out pet theft in the South West region and is calling for urgent reform to ensure pet theft is treated as seriously as it should be.

In her statement – which you can read in full on her campaigns website here – Ms Hernandez says pet theft is currently the worst it has ever been, with 80% of pets stolen never being returned to their owners.

Ms Hernandez said: “Pet theft is not treated with the seriousness it deserves and reform is urgently needed.

“During the pandemic, dog ownership and prices have risen significantly – pet theft is now the worst it has ever been, rising in some areas by 250%.

“Tragically, just one in five pets are ever returned to their owner. Only about 1% of pet thefts lead to charges.

“I know how much my family love our cat Mylo and would be devastated if he was stolen, along with many cat and dog owners.”

She continued: “Because punishments are often related to the monetary value of a pet, they usually result in trivial fines rather than imprisonment.

“Although the Theft Act of 1968 allows a maximum penalty of up to seven years, this never seems to happen. The majority of prison sentences awarded are less than six months. This Act is over 50 years old and may need amendment.

“Pet theft is Low Risk and High Reward, attracting organised crime.”

Ms Hernandez comments come after a Freedom of Information request from our crime reporter Carl Eve which disclosed that Devon and Cornwall Police logged 73 dog theft crimes in 2020, covering a total of 78 dogs.

Of these incidents, the most common place for a dog theft crime was a dwelling (36 incidents) and from a road (12 incidents), though other dogs were reportedly taken from farms and gardens as well as a dog taken from each of the following categories: a beach, a business, a shop, a stable.

Ms Hernandez’s comments come after people across the region have flooded neighbourhood groups on social media with reports of alleged dog thefts.

Last month, many Plymouth residents said they feared their homes had been marked as targets for potential dog-snatchers after spotting strange cable-ties affixed to lampposts allegedly outside homes with dogs.

But police soon confirmed that there was no evidence to suggest people putting up cable-ties had a sinister motive or that these the cable ties marked houses for dog thieves.

Tips to keep your dogs safe from theft

from the RSPCA:

• Don’t leave your dog outside a shop on his own or in a car alone
• Teach your dog a reliable recall for when you are out walking
• Check your garden to make sure it is secure and if you have a gate then fit with a lock
• Neuter your pet as this can reduce the likelihood of roaming
• Make sure your pet is wearing a collar with an ID tag and that it is up to date: it is a legal requirement for a dog to have an ID tag with your name and address on it (The RSPCA also recommends including your mobile phone number on any ID tag as this can help reunite you with your pet quickly should he ever get lost or stolen)
• Microchip your pet and keep the details up to date, so that if your pet does go missing or is stolen then there is a higher chance they can be reunited. It is a legal requirement to have your dog microchipped in England and Wales.

Frustrated by the government’s reluctance to hold a public inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic any time soon, and worried about a “rapid rewriting of history”, a group of legal and medical professionals have taken it upon themselves to conduct their own.

Chris York www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

The People’s Covid Inquiry will on Wednesday night begin the first of eight virtual hearings to be held over the next 16 weeks, examining every aspect of how the pandemic has affected the UK and what Boris Johnson’s government did and didn’t do to stop it.

The initiative, organised by the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public (KONHSP), comes amid growing calls for an immediate public inquiry so that lessons can be learned and applied in an attempt to limit further loss of life.

When asked last month if a public inquiry would be held, a government spokesperson told HuffPost UK ministers had been “clear” that there would be “opportunities in the future to look back, analyse and reflect on all aspects of this pandemic”.

They added: “As the prime minister has said, this will include an independent inquiry at the appropriate time.”

When that “appropriate time” actually is has not been specified.

“We don’t think the government will hold a public inquiry for a long time, until it’s not politically damaging to them,” Dr John Puntis, a consultant at Leeds Teaching Hospital and Executive Committee member of KONHSP, told HuffPost UK.

“They couldn’t come out of one well.”

Wednesday’s inaugural session is titled: “How well prepared was the NHS?” It will examine Conservative policy in the decade leading up to the pandemic as well as how the government coped when it began. 

It will be chaired by Michael Mansfield QC and feature health experts as well as frontline workers and bereaved relatives who will share their own personal experiences.

• Jo Goodman – co-founder Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice
• Professor Sir Michael Marmot  – director, UCL Institute of Health Equity, UCL Dept of Epidemiology and Public Health
• Holly Turner – children’s mental health nurse/CAMHS
• Professor Gabriel Scally – president Epidemiology and Public Health Section Royal Society of Medicine, visiting professor of Public Health, University of Bristol, member of Independent SAGE
• John Lister – health journalist and campaigner

“It’s not just about experts,” said Puntis. “It’s also about taking testimony from ordinary people so we have nurses, frontline workers, bereaved families – it’s about giving them on opportunity they wouldn’t necessarily get in an official inquiry.”

Puntis acknowledges that without the resources available to the government, the People’s Covid Inquiry can’t hope to conduct as thorough an examination as a full public inquiry could achieve, but he says doing what they can now is crucial.

“It’s important to have it now while it’s fresh in people’s memories and document it and then this will be a body of evidence that we will pass on to the Department of Health [and Social Care] and the Commons health select committee,” he said.

“We then hope this will prompt them to hold an inquiry or feed into a subsequent and much better resourced inquiry.”

A major concern has been prompted by comments health secretary Matt Hancock made this week when he denied there had been a shortage of PPE in the early days of the pandemic.

“History’s already being rewritten,” Puntis said.

“Last spring and summer there were healthcare workers who could not get PPE. I’ve got junior doctors in my family who did not have the right PPE – they still don’t, actually.

“And you’ve now got Matt Hancock saying: ‘No, there wasn’t a shortage.’ I am very worried about this rapid rewriting of history.”

Every two weeks for the next 16 weeks, the People’s Covid Inquiry will examine a different area, including: 

• Is ‘Zero Covid’ possible?
• Impact on the population 
• Impact on frontline staff and key workers
• Inequalities and discrimination
• Privatisation of the Public’s Health 

At the time of writing, 120,757 people had died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19. But alongside the grim daily death tolls, the government has been keen to share news of the so-far-successful vaccine rollout and the PM’s roadmap out of lockdown announced on Monday.

“The vaccination rollout is being framed by the government as: ‘Forget everything bad that’s happened, we’ve done a great job,’” Dr Puntis said.

“Whereas actually, the death toll absolutely refutes that.”

The government is battling ‘vaccine hesitancy’. How does sneaking through a massive deal with a controversial spy tech firm help?

Mary Fitzgerald www.opendemocracy.net

Imagine you’re doing something unlawful – how do you avoid getting sued? Lately, if you’re Boris Johnson’s government, it seems you try sneaking it through before anyone notices.

Unfortunately for them, it didn’t work this time. We’ve just issued a lawsuit over their £23m NHS data deal with controversial ‘spy tech’ company Palantir.

We’re taking the government to court because, right before Christmas, they quietly gave this CIA-backed firm a major, long-term role in handling our personal health information, and in England’s cherished National Health Service.

The government claimed the initial Palantir ‘datastore’ deal, signed last March, was a short-term, emergency response to the pandemic. But December’s new, two-year contract reaches far beyond COVID: to Brexit, general business planning and much more.

And, as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals today, it comes after years of Palantir lobbying top UK and NHS officials, courting them in London, San Francisco and Davos – over dinner and watermelon cocktails.

Health secretary Matt Hancock and his advisers must have known it wouldn’t look good.

Palantir is best known for powering US intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its founder Peter Thiel, a Trump-backing Silicon Valley billionaire, famously once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Palantir’s tech has been accused of creating ‘racist’ feedback loops in US ‘predictive policing’ software. Its own staff have criticised its role in Trump’s brutal deportations of undocumented migrants.

How does all this sit with the current drive to combat ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among Black, Asian and migrant communities in the UK? Striking quiet deals with firms like Palantir, especially with no real public dialogue, risks demolishing trust in the NHS among the very communities where the government now urgently seeks to shore up trust.

As Kailash Chand, former deputy chair of the British Medical Association, put it: “The secrecy around what the government is doing with NHS data, working with companies like Palantir, will damage what trust is left amongst ethnic communities, for migrants, and in the NHS family as a whole. It makes it difficult for people like me to convince ethnic minority people that this is being done in their best interests.”

The NHS is at a crossroads

This isn’t just about Palantir. The future of the NHS is being written now, in the latest chapter of the pandemic. The government has put us on notice that sweeping changes to our health service are on the way. They present both opportunities and grave risks.

The government has a legal duty to consult us, citizens and NHS users, before they strike massive deals which affect that future. In doing so, they need to take important steps (like conducting ‘data protection impact assessments’) to ensure our health information and our rights are protected. They haven’t done this for the Palantir datastore: that’s why we’re bringing this case.

More broadly, our elected leaders need to explain their long-term plans for our cherished NHS – enabling genuine public debate about them.

The government’s published plans for overhauling the NHS include new rules for handling the nation’s health data, and involve handing over almost all power over the NHS to Matt Hancock. By scrapping many NHS procurement rules, they open the door for big tech firms to take ever-greater slices of the NHS pie – including access to our health data for profit, and unaccountable influence over vital healthcare decisions. These are issues in which the public deserves a say.

Our NHS: worth more than a watermelon cocktail

How did we get here? Was it really, as some suggest, that the government suddenly turned to Palantir in an emergency because there was no other choice?

It seems not. As the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s reporting reveals, Palantir has been intensively lobbying top UK and NHS officials.

On 2 July 2019, the night before the launch party of NHSX – the UK’s flagship digital health initiative – emails released through Freedom of Information show Palantir hosting the chair of NHS England, Lord David Prior, for dinner and cocktails. (Prior is a Conservative peer and former junior minister.)

Palantir’s UK chief, Louis Mosley, emailed his pitch the very next day: “I’m more convinced than ever that the UK is uniquely placed to pioneer the next generation of medical discoveries and treatments.” [The next two paragraphs of Mosley’s email are, strangely, redacted].

Prior responded just hours later to thank Mosley “for the watermelon cocktails” and added: “[redacted] If you can see ways where you could help us structure and curate our data so that it helps us deliver better care and provides a more insightful data base for medical research, do be in touch.”

The correspondence is clear. The UK government was keen to lay a path in the NHS for Palantir – undermining official claims that the Covid datastore was an emergency fix with no long-term plans in prospect.

Health data, yes – but only with public trust

There are countless ways in which trustworthy and public-spirited use of data could benefit the NHS, and all of us, in tackling disease and delivering better public health outcomes. Several important patient juries on the use of health data consistently show that people are cautiously open to data use for the right reasons: to improve care, and so long as benefits are distributed equally and fairly to all patients.

But proceeding without public trust undermines our chances of achieving any of this. It doesn’t help that, under the new Palantir contract, we have no idea what is going into the long-term datastore: for the first time, the government has completely redacted the list of health-data sources fed into it.

This approach carries echoes of the ‘care.data’ debacle from 2013 to 2016. This was another massive health data centralisation plan involving big private firms that failed because the government didn’t consult on its plans and communicated them badly – and lost public trust as a result. So many people opted out (some 1.2 million patients) that the NHS abandoned the programme.

The NHS story could go two ways. We could channel all the solidarity and goodwill – expressed not just in thousands of claps and posts but in community support groups and voluntary initiatives – to build an NHS that is well-funded, well-staffed and fit for the future. But this future is only possible if we, the public, are in the driving seat.

If our legal challenge is successful, it’ll be an important step towards making sure our NHS health data can be used only in ways the public can trust. After a year of repeated ‘COVID cronyism’ scandals and massive failures – from Serco’s disastrous mishandling of ‘test and trace’ to last week’s ruling that Hancock acted unlawfully over PPE – it’s time for a different approach.

Plans to install electric vehicle charging points across seven car parks in the district are set to go before East Devon District Council’s (EDDC) Cabinet.

eastdevon.gov.uk 

This is one of a number of exciting projects, recommended for approval or investigation by the authority’s ‘Car Parking Task and Finish Forum’ (TAFF).

An investigation into how the car parks can be used at off peak times, such as the occasional evening cinema, farmers market or car boot sales has also been recommended by TAFF.

It is hoped it could generate additional income while also providing exciting services that residents and visitors can enjoy, although mindfulness would be needed so it does not encroach on existing businesses.

As well as this, the TAFF are keen to look at whether a small area of some car parks could be considered for hiring out electric bicycles so residents and visitors could explore the local area on two wheels rather than four.

The group has also recommended a number of trial contactless machines be installed to minimise the need for residents to touch buttons while paying for parking.

If given the go-ahead is given by Cabinet, the first part of the project will see charging points installed across seven car parks that are able to serve 14 vehicles at a time.

The TAFF hope the charging points will serve both residents and visitors alike, whilst reducing carbon emissions as the public move to using more electric and hybrid vehicles – supporting the EDDC emergency climate declaration and action plan.

The installation of the charging points comes as part of the Innovate UK funded Exeter Rapid Charging Project to install and operate up to 30 further rapid charging units in EDDC’s public car parks in 2021.

The TAFF has also supported further plans for another six or seven car parks to be considered for future expansion of charging points to meet any gaps in provision.

Drivers will need to pay to use the charging points but will not have to pay for parking as long as they don’t exceed their charging time.

Councillor Val Ranger, who is the vice-chairman of the Car Parking TAFF and ward councillor for Newton Poppleford and Harpford, said:

Members of the TAFF were keen to congratulate officers for the work done on the future provision of electric charging points in our car parks.

TAFF have been working to ensure that public car parks owned by EDDC are effectively managed and providing a valuable service whilst paying for themselves.

Mindful of the sanitary situation and how best to protect car park users and council staff, East Devon council is keen to offer contactless solutions for paying parking charges to anybody who wishes not to touch the machines.

The TAFF suggested trialling these entirely contactless in some car parks with several machines, reducing or removing the need to touch buttons or screens when paying for parking.

Paying for parking remotely from a mobile phone for example also removes the need to queue at machines and allows users to top up and extend their parking time from the beach or restaurant without having to return to their vehicle.

Contactless card payment can be faster than paying in coins also- a benefit in busy car parks.

TAFF will also be reconsidering the signage at car parks, and fitting more prominent and clearly worded signs to advise residents of the lower cost options available to them such as annual permits.