Swimmers are being urged not to enter the water in three different areas of Torbay today due to the likelihood of reduced water quality. An interactive map shared by Safer Seas & Rivers Service, which looks at water quality at over 400 locations around UK rivers and coastlines, highlights the locations across the UK which have pollution warnings in place today (Sunday, August 21).

[These releases are ‘typically 95 per cent rainwater’ is what Southern Water says. Don’t think about the residual 5% – Owl]

Chloe Parkman www.devonlive.com

According to the map, Paignton Sands, Preston Sands and Goodrington all have a pollution risk alert in place. A statement on the interactive map reads: “Paignton Preston Sands. Pollution risk warning: bathing not advised today due to the likelihood of reduced water quality.

“Preston Sands is a large, popular sandy beach backed by a large town green and the town of Preston. There is a sewer overflow that discharges at the northern end of the beach from the Preston Green Attenuation Tank.”

Another statement outlining the pollution risk at Paignton Sands reads: “Bathing not advised today due to the likelihood of reduced water quality. Paignton Sands is a long and sandy resort beach with a harbour at the southern end and a pier to the north. There are two sewer overflows located on Paignton Sands – one at the southern end of the beach and another offshore of the harbour.”

A third statement outlining the pollution risk at Goodrington reads: “Bathing not advised today due to the likelihood of reduced water quality. Goodrington is a popular sandy beach resort making up part of the Devon Riviera backed by Goodrington Park Gardens with rock pools at low tide.

“There is one sewer overflow discharging directly onto the beach in the middle of Goodrington while another discharges 500m upstream in the Goodrington Stream that then meets the sea towards the southern end of the beach.”

For more information visit Surfers Against Sewage here.

The BMA has said it has requested a ‘further suspension’ of the requirement for GPs to declare income above £150,000, which is currently due to launch in April.

Costanza Potter www.pulsetoday.co.uk 

The requirement was originally delayed due to the pandemic and then again in November and April this year, when GPs faced the first and second deadlines to submit declarations.

As it stands, the pay transparency regulations will come into force in April 2023 – but the BMA has said it is pushing for a further delay.

Its latest GP Committee bulletin said: ‘Currently, the individuals in scope of the regulations introduced in October 2021 will need to make a declaration of their 2021/2022 earnings in April 2023 as the provision remains in the GP contract.

‘Individuals within scope of the pay transparency provisions are not required to take any action in relation to their 2020/21 NHS earnings at this stage.’

It added: ‘We continue to request further suspension of the requirement to declare earnings as we believe this is harmful to morale in the profession and could lead colleagues to reduce their working commitments or retire.

‘We also believe that it is inequitable to single out general practice for this requirement.’

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson told Pulse that ‘further information on the implementation of pay transparency in general practice will be made in due course’.

What are the GP pay declaration requirements?

Under regulations published in September, GPs and their staff with NHS earnings above £150,000 are required to declare them annually.

The 2020 updated GP contract revealed that GPs who earn more than £150,000 per year in pensionable income – including partners, salaried GPs and locums – will be ‘listed by name and earnings bands’ publicly. 

But the BMA confirmed in November that salaried GPs were not covered by the requirement to declare earnings above the threshold.

It also said that it was ‘unclear’ how NHS England would ‘police’ declarations and that any evidence sourced for monitoring via ‘illegitimate means’ will be ‘open to legal challenge’.

GPs were told they would have to submit self-declarations annually, starting with income for 2019/20 by 12 November 2021 and then make declarations by 30th April for every subsequent financial year.

The threshold will rise to £153,000 for the financial year 2020/21, £156,000 for 2021/22, £159,000 for 2022/23 and £163,000 for 2023/24.

The BMA previously said that GPs have been ‘singled out’ and that the launch of the requirement ‘breached’ its contract agreement with commissioners.

And GP leaders had previously argued that this is an attempt to name and shame GPs. They pointed out that it does not reflect the hours they work, and warned it could fuel anti-GP sentiment among the public who believe family doctors are paid too much.

The legislation, which came into force on 1 October 2021, was first announced in 2019 as part of the five-year GP contract.

But GPs have been required to publish average individual net earnings on their practice website since 2016/17, following a previous move to increase transparency on earnings.

Truss – the runaway leader in the contest to be the next Tory party leader and prime minister – is insisting she will resist more “handouts” to those struggling most with the cost of living, an approach she describes as “Gordon Brown economics”.

Instead, she says, she will use tax cuts as a way to boost the economy – despite warnings from economists and senior Tory colleagues that this will merely stoke and embed inflation.

Toby Helm www.theguardian.com

Senior Tories have warned that their party will suffer dire electoral consequences under a Liz Truss premiership that fails to address the cost of living crisis, as Labour enjoys a poll bounce suggesting Keir Starmer could be on course for No 10.

Amid signs of mounting panic among high-ranking Conservatives about Truss’s economic policies, several former cabinet ministers told the Observer on Saturday the party would suffer devastating losses in blue and red wall seats unless Truss changes tack, if and when she enters No 10.

After Michael Gove described Truss’s plan to focus on cutting taxes as a “holiday from reality” and announced he was supporting Rishi Sunak, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer gives Labour and its leader a double poll boost, days after he backed a complete freeze on energy bills this autumn. Labour now enjoys its biggest Opinium poll lead in months – eight points – while Starmer has surged well ahead of Truss in the past two weeks when voters are asked who would be the best prime minister.

Two weeks ago 29% of all voters said Truss would be the best PM, against 28% who chose Starmer. This weekend, Truss has dropped to 23% while Starmer, who announced his price cap policy only last Monday, has increased his score to 31%. When the choice was Starmer versus Sunak, 29% backed Starmer and 23% Sunak.

A poll on Saturday for the Times by YouGov, whose current methodology tends to give Labour a higher figure than Opinium’s, showed Starmer’s party enjoying its biggest lead in 10 years, on 43% – 15 points ahead of the Conservatives on 28%.

Truss – the runaway leader in the contest to be the next Tory party leader and prime minister – is insisting she will resist more “handouts” to those struggling most with the cost of living, an approach she describes as “Gordon Brown economics”.

Instead, she says, she will use tax cuts as a way to boost the economy – despite warnings from economists and senior Tory colleagues that this will merely stoke and embed inflation.

In an interview in this weekend’s Observer New Review, the former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke describes the Truss approach as “nonsense” and “simplistic”.

Clarke says: “Everybody would do it if that worked. There’s a slight touch of the Argentinian or Venezuelan government about it. This is not a time for tax cuts because we have enormous public debts. Tax cuts will stimulate growth in demand, but the problems are with the difficulties in supply, so they will push inflation further up.”

Already, the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, and the former Tory leader Michael Howard have gone public to criticise Truss’s approach.

Gove said going down the tax-cutting route would benefit those least in need, and fail the poorest: “The answer to the cost of living crisis cannot be simply to reject further ‘handouts’ and cut tax. Proposed cuts to national insurance would favour the wealthy, and changes to corporation tax apply to big businesses, not small entrepreneurs.

“I cannot see how safeguarding the stock options of FTSE 100 executives should ever take precedence over supporting the poorest in our society, but at a time of want it cannot be the right priority.”

Another former Cabinet colleague of Gove and Truss, who is backing Sunak, said: “If Liz does not change tack and back a real economic package that does more to help those in need, I think we will be in big trouble. But to do so she will need to go back on what she has said in the leadership campaign, which will not be without consequences either.”

A former minister added: “We can write off those ‘blue wall’ seats under Liz. Cutting taxes won’t help us win support in the ‘red wall’ either. You can’t cut taxes and level up.”

Reacting to Gove’s announcement, a spokesperson for the Sunak campaign said the former chancellor was “delighted to have the support of a party and cabinet veteran who has incredible intellectual heft and has shown the radical reforming zeal in every job he has had, that we now so desperately need”.

He added: “Michael also understands the severity of the challenges we face in the winter and we need honesty about that and a plan to tackle it and support people, which Rishi has.”

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats have set up a new “attack Truss unit”, to highlight what they say is her failure to help people with energy costs, in the hope of winning over more voters in the blue wall seats in which they came second to the Conservatives at the 2019 general election.

In his interview, Clarke predicts a serious recession that will be made worse by the wrong tax policies, and suggests that under Truss the country could be in a desperate economic situation at the next election.

“I’ve felt for some time that we’re bound to have a very severe recession. And if we’re not careful, it’s going to be combined with very bad inflation, which does social, as well as economic, damage. Living standards generally are going to fall for the first time for a long time, and the main short-term measures should be to stop us seeing any increase in the number of people becoming destitute in this country. The government shouldn’t be asking themselves, what is the Daily Mail going to be saying tomorrow, but what is the economy going to look like in a couple of years’ time when we have an election?”

The Sunak campaign believes the polls suggesting Truss is home and dry in the leadership race are wrong, and is convinced the ex-chancellor is still in with a chance and is making up ground.

Opinium found that 62% of people support Labour’s policy of freezing energy bills. About 40% of respondents said they would not be able to afford the rise in the cap due to be announced by the energy regulator Ofgem this week without falling behind on other essential bills.

As the country prepares for recession and more, the government dithers over tax cuts

A man is critically ill in hospital after being left in the rain over night for 15 hours while waiting for an ambulance. 87-year-old David Wakeley’s family tried to shield him from the elements with a tarpaulin and umbrellas after being told not to move him.

[Liz Truss personally supported cuts to the NHS, arguing the service “cannot be put on a pedestal” in an article in which she also criticised the “inexorable” rise in doctors’ pay. See here.]

Stay safe! – Owl

Neil Shaw www.cornwalllive.com

Retired welder David Wakeley, 87, who has prostate cancer, is fighting for his life as a result of the serious fall and the long wait in the rain. Son-in-law Trevor Crane, 64, told The Mirror : “The system is just broken.

“As a family we know the NHS staff are great and trying their best but you have to ask how things like this keep happening? It just seems like no one cares and no one is willing to fix it.”

David, who lives in the Cornwall village of Indian Queens, was forced to wait on a cold concrete floor in his garden in the wind and rain under a makeshift shelter because there were no ambulances to help him. He had seven fractured ribs, a pelvis fractured in two places, grazes to his head and a bad cut to his arm.

The first call to 999 was made at 7:34pm on Monday night but an ambulance did not turn up until 11am on Tuesday morning – a total of 15 hours and 24 minutes. David’s family improvised after call handlers insisted their dad could not be moved in case they made things worse.

Son Phil Wakeley, 58, and his sister Karen, 61, got help from neighbours. Phil said: “For an 87-year-old man to be waiting that long on a cold, concrete floor, it is not nice I can assure you.

“I got through it by taking it step by step and focusing on dad and what he needed but I kept thinking this would be bad enough if he was a youngster but we are talking about an old, frail man here who feels the cold.

“It was so difficult to deal with but we did the best we could with what was available, it was horrible.”

He said: “We had to try and make the best of a very bad situation so we managed to get some pillows under him but obviously he was in a lot of pain so we have to do it little by little. We kept ringing to try and find out when the ambulance was coming and we just kept getting put off.

“It struck us that although the weather was ok rain was due to come in so we had to adapt as best we could so we got the neighbour’s football goal posts, I found a tarpaulin sheet in the garage, and we pulled that over the goal and made a bit of a tent.

“But it wasn’t enough for the rain so we ended up having to find three umbrellas just so we could make sure he was dry.

“At one stage he was in so much pain I had to massage his back because it was aching so badly, all the time just trying to reassure him and make him as comfortable as possible.

“He has prostate cancer so he has to wear a bag with a catheter so we had to empty that throughout the night and try and keep his spirits up.

“Because he’s old and suffering from cancer he feels the cold quite a bit but recently we got him a heated blanket and I am so thankful we did because I think that got him through the early hours in the end as the temperatures were falling rapidly.

“All the time we were just waiting, hoping, the ambulance would come soon so this man could get the good care he deserved.”

Phil and his Karen stayed by their dad’s side although they insisted their mum Marlene, 82, go to bed. They are now spending as much time as they can by their dad’s bedside in hospital and “hoping and praying” he pulls through.

Phil said: “I can’t criticise the NHS, I think what they do is great, the paramedics that eventually got here were first class. But there is clearly a big problem with the system overall.

“When my mum went to visit him in hospital yesterday she saw about 20 ambulances idling outside, just waiting, what is happening there, it is just not acceptable. We are still in a state of distress and upset about what happened, I was just thinking throughout the night “I want this ambulance to come quick please’, we haven’t even got the anger yet, we are still just so upset about what has happened to dad and are hoping he pulls through.

“We are a very close family and love our dad very much, we just got together and worked as a team to help him the best we could to help when he needed us.

“You hear other people’s stories but when it happens to you it is just so scary. All we could do is focus on dad and make sure he made it.

“We are now just focused on dad, he has had a lot of painkillers put into him, and it is just a waiting game really. We are just hoping he pulls through and hope it makes it full recovery, we are just hoping and praying at the moment but understand this is not going to be a quick fix and 15 hours on the floor will not have helped him.”

Son-in-law Trevor, who himself suffered a nine-hour wait for an ambulance when suffered a blood infection insisted the Government must do more to abate the social care crisis. He said: “The hospitals are just too full, it feels like they just can’t take you in and if they can’t you have to wait.

“The Government need to address this and provide far more nursing home and care facilities so that if someone does need to come it should never be a problem. Right now all we can do is focus on David and just hope he gets better.”

A spokesperson for the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly’s integrated care system said: “Like other parts of the country, our health and care system continues to experience pressure. ’The reasons for this are complex, including high demand for primary and secondary care, mental health services and adult social care.

“Our teams continue to work together to support people who need our care and we encourage people to use the most appropriate service – including your local pharmacy, minor injury units or 111 online – to keep our emergency departments and 999 service available for people with urgent and life-threatening needs.”

Torbay seafront plans inch forward

Planners in Torbay are calling on residents to give their views about the future of Paignton and Preston seafronts.

It follows fears of flooding caused by climate change but earlier plans met with a storm of protest with some locals describing them as being like a “Berlin Wall.” 

Philip Churm, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

Plans for Paignton Seafront, Promenade (Image: LDA)

After taking on independent design consultancy firm, LDA, Torbay went back to the drawing board and redrafted the plans.

The public consultation, launched on Friday, is now in its third and final phase and it is the last opportunity for residents to give their views. 

More than 450 people took part in the second phase of consultations and Torbay Council is hoping for a similar response this time around. 

Councillor Mike Morey (Ind, Furzeham with Summercombe), cabinet member for infrastructure, environment and culture, said: “It has been great to hear from so many residents and businesses about the plans LDA Design have put together for these two popular seafronts. 

“All of our wonderful coastline brings people to the area, but this part of the Bay is under threat from rising sea levels. 

Plans for Preston Seafront, Promenade (Image: LDA)

“This is why LDA Design are helping us to explore the type of sea defences that are right to protect the town from flooding.”

He urged any residents with an interest in the seafronts or who have been affected by flooding to look at the plans and give their views. 

Images of the proposed seafront at Paignton show a wide, pedestrianised promenade on the harbour side of the pier. 

Designs for Preston include wide pavements and flowerbeds while the Redcliffe side will have  a cycle lane and words from the ‘Paignton Poet’ carved into stone.    

It is hoped that £4.6 million has been secured for the project from the Environment Agency, Section 106 and Future High Streets funding. 

Visitors will still be able to park on Paignton seafront with 115 spaces available including 16 disabled spaces but there will be a loss of 93 spaces.

Residents who want to give their thoughts and ideas on the plans are encouraged to go to Torbay Council’s website. 

Construction should begin towards the end of next year.

Torbay seafront plans (Image: LDA)