Fluorescent dye will be added to the water at Exmouth beach after the community called for an investigation into a sewage outlet.

Fluorescent dye test for the water off Exmouth beach aims to address pollution fears

Becca Gliddon eastdevonnews.co.uk

South West Water (SWW) has announced it is dye testing water off Maer Rocks,  Exmouth, from 8.30am on Wednesday, June 14, after residents raised concerns about black sewage seen on the beach.

Exmouth Town Council, backing the testing, said the aim of the dye testing was to ‘demonstrate the water company’s commitment to openness and transparency’, pinpoint the location of the storm overflow pipe – where extra rainwater or wastewater is released into rivers or seas – and to ‘create confidence’ through showing how the set-up works.

SWW said the yellow-green florescent dye was harmless to water quality and wildlife and would ‘take some time’ to move through the water network.

A South West Water spokesperson said: “On 14 June, we will be carrying out investigative work at Maer Rocks in Exmouth involving dye testing.

“The work follows a request from the local community for us to confirm the location of the discharge point from our outfall pipe.

“As a result, customers may notice some yellow/green discolouration to the sea near Maer Rocks on Wednesday morning.

“We would like to reassure local residents and visitors that the dye is harmless and other than a temporary colouring, will not affect bathing water quality or the wider ecology of the beach or Exe estuary.

“We thank customers for their patience while we carry out this work.”

Exmouth Town Council said the timing of the test had been planned to ensure optimum tidal conditions for the process to take place.

It said the testing would prompt the council to push for a simpler alarm system, because there was ‘much confusion’ over the current method.

Councillor Olly Davey, town mayor, said: “ We are really pleased that South West Water has agreed to carry out the dye testing.

“This will go a long way to reassure the local community and help with understanding the issues involved.

“We will also be pushing for the alert system to be clarified and possibly simplified as there is much confusion over when a discharge actually takes place.”

The town council said recent reports of sewage, turning sand black in the the area of Maer Rocks, was found to be rotting seaweed.

A town council spokeswoman said: “South West Water internal tests and the Environment Agency’s independent investigation have conclusively shown that the reported incidents were unrelated to South West Water’s infrastructure or sewage systems.

“However, in an effort to address any concerns from residents and demonstrate its commitment to openness and transparency, South West Water have decided to conduct dye testing in the area.”

Further vindication for Cathy Gardner. – Owl

The care minister, Helen Whately, has declined to back Matt Hancock’s claim that the government threw a “protective ring around care homes” at the start of the pandemic.

Robert Booth www.theguardian.com 

Whately worked under the former health secretary in the first 18 months of Covid, but she avoided endorsing her former boss’s assertion, which will be tested at the public inquiry which starts in earnest this week.

Asked whether Hancock was right in May 2020 when he told parliament “we absolutely did throw a protective ring around social care”, Whately told the Guardian she wanted to “use my own words which is that I look back on doing everything I felt that we could to help care homes and social care more broadly at an incredibly difficult time”.

In the first wave of the pandemic there were almost 27,000 “excess deaths” in care homes in England and Wales compared with the 2015–19 average. The virus penetrated care homes so widely and spread so fast that 13 homes in England saw two dozen or more Covid deaths each in just 11 weeks at the start of the pandemic, official figures have revealed.

Evidence sessions examining the UK’s preparedness for the pandemic start this week and Hancock, who resigned from the government in June 2021 after breaking lockdown rules, is due to give evidence this month.

Lawyers for trade unions are expected to highlight the chronic underfunding of social care and its fragmented provision in an opening statement to the inquiry this week. Government policy at the start of the pandemic of not requiring the isolation of untested hospital patients discharged into care homes has already been ruled illegal in the high court, where judges described it as “irrational”.

“I look back on it, how hard it was at that time when we were trying to get PPE out to social care,” Whately said. “We had so few tests available.”

She added: “I know looking back on it, it was very hard in the early days … We were really doing all that we possibly could. Still, it was really hard because people who were living in care homes were particularly vulnerable to Covid, as we know.”

Labour’s Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, seized on the comments as an admission by the Conservatives of “what the country could see: their ‘protective ring’ was an insult to the staff, families and care home residents who were not only vulnerable but voiceless”.

She said: “For the 43,000 families mourning the loss of a care home resident, nothing will bring their loved one back. But they will be looking to the inquiry for answers and lessons to be learned.”

Leaked WhatsApp messages have already revealed Whately warned Hancock against restricting visits to care homes in October 2020 saying it would be “inhumane” and some elderly people were “just giving up”. Earlier, on 8 April 2020 she urged Hancock: “We should be testing all care home residents and staff who have had Covid contact, irrespective of symptoms.”

However, care homes were not able to start testing residents or staff without symptoms until the end of April. She also complained to Hancock that PPE supplies were “all over the place” and that discharging hospital patients into care homes was “my biggest concern”.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, who preceded Hancock as health secretary, has also been called as a witness in the module starting this week on pandemic preparedness, alongside David Cameron and George Osborne, who are set to be asked about the impact of their austerity policies from 2010 onwards on the nation’s readiness.

The module on care homes is not due to start hearing from witnesses until spring 2025.

Broader government handling of social care, which looks after over a million people in England, has been widely criticised.

It is estimated that an extra 480,000 care workers are needed in England by 2035 and there are already 165,000 vacancies. In 2020 when Hunt was out of government under Boris Johnson and chaired the Commons health and social care select committee, he said the annual social care budget must rise by £7bn by the end of 2024. The Health Foundation charity estimates the funding gap will be £9.3bn by next year but last autumn the government raised spending by equivalent to £3.75bn a year.

Whately told the Guardian there had been “big, big workforce challenges” over “many years”.

“The thing that I hear from the frontline is we need to be able to pay the care workforce better,” she said. “And for that, we need better funding to come through from local authorities for the care rates.”

Asked if the latest £7.5bn increase in central government funding over two years was the right amount, she said: “I want to see social care really well funded, but I’m not making the decisions for how all of government is funded. I will argue the corner for my sector.”

Today in England about 10,000 people live in the worst inadequate care homes, where problems are often caused by lack of staff. Asked if she accepted staff shortages were causing pain and suffering, she said: “You’ll understand if I choose my own words, but I know … for some providers, staffing is one of their big challenges. Really good care homes have staff there for a long time but others are finding it really difficult. I think we’ll see quality of care improve if we can help providers retain staff.”

She said increasing recruitment of care staff from overseas by adding them to the shortage occupations visa list was helping in the short term, but it was not a long-term answer.

“I want everyone to be in a good, if not outstanding, care home,” she said. “That is why I think the workforce reforms and the funding for social care are really, really important. But I don’t think anybody sitting in my position could come in and fix it in 24 hours. This is a long-term problem.”