A number of people have taken to social media to post pictures of the publications, with one sent from Ruth Edwards’s constituency in Nottinghamshire and another from Andrew Griffith’s patch in the South Downs.
Similar publications were picked up by voters ahead of the by-elections in July, with residents from Selby and Ainsty, Somerton and Frome and Uxbridge and South Ruislip all being canvassed.
Ahead of the 2019 general election, the Conservatives deployed a number of mischievous tricks to win voters over.
They created a fake Labour manifesto website and diverted Google users looking for the real one to it and they rebranded one of the party’s official Twitter accounts to resemble a fact-checking service during a live TV debate.
An analysis by campaign group, The TaxPayers’ Alliance, compared council tax rates with Office for National Statistics figures on local earnings and Land Registry house price data.
It found the council tax disparity meant some UK residents had been landed with a burden five times heavier than others.
West Devon faced the highest council tax to salary ratio, with the average Band D council tax of £2,347 more than 10 per cent of the median gross pay of £21,639, the analysis found.
Nottingham came in a close second, where the average council tax bill of £2,412 is 10.84 per cent of local average earnings of £22,243, followed by Pendle in Lancashire, and Torridge in northwest Devon.
The four lowest-charging councils were all in London, relative to both house prices and median pay.
On the other end of the scale, the council tax percentage in Wandsworth is around five times lower, at 2.16 per cent with a bill of £921.
This is despite the median annual pay for the south London borough being £42,665 – twice as high as West Devon residents.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers are struggling with the unsustainable burden of council tax. But far from falling on those with the broadest shoulders, it appears that the most hard-pressed households are bearing the brunt of rising rates.
“The least local authorities can do is freeze council tax next year to give residents much-needed breathing space.”
It sounds a progressive, imaginative project. A beautiful hilltop allotment site that would serve the people of Bristol keen to get out in the fresh air and grow their own fruit and veg, but who cannot find plots in their city.
However, members of a planning committee have dealt a severe blow to the scheme after people who live near the site in the well-heeled village of Abbots Leigh launched a fierce campaign against the privately run project, arguing it would blight their idyllic green belt area.
During a passionate North Somerset council planning meeting, the team behind the scheme said they simply wanted to make the joys of gardening and independent food production accessible to all.
But residents and councillors expressed concerns that it would affect wildlife such as rare bats and endangered skylarks, and said they were worried about an 80-space car park planned at the site.
The meeting on Wednesday ended with councillors rejecting the plan. Christian Samuel, one of the founders of the business behind it, Roots, accused councillors of letting down would-be allotment holders keen to get their hands on one of the 700 plots.
“I feel sorry for the people who are desperate to get out there and grow their own,” said Samuel at the conclusion of the meeting. “What has happened in there is a real shame.”
There is little doubt there is a need for more allotments. According to research from the University of Sheffield, there has been a 65% reduction of allotment land in the UK since the mid 20th-century.
There are an estimated 330,000 allotment plots in the UK, mostly council-owned. In 2021, the average wait for an allotment was two years and eight months, with a waiting list of about 100,000 people.
It says that with waiting lists for allotments stretching to more than 10 years in some parts of the country, its mission is to provide green, soulful spaces for everyone.
The business’s first two sites were in Bath. For the first, the team divided a farmer’s field into plots and provided seeds, tools and courses. As well as growing veg, allotment holders have taken part in yoga sessions and community picnics.
The Tuckers Meadows site proved hugely popular and a second, Avon Views, was launched in the city.
Bristol, 12 miles from Bath, is known for its green credentials. With many more people wanting to grow food than there are local authority allotments, it seemed to be the obvious place for another Roots project.
Roots found an 8-hectare (20-acre) site in Abbots Leigh, just outside the city boundaries, close to the Clifton suspension bridge, and planned 700 plots at Leigh Woods Meadows. Six hundred spots have already been snapped up.
But people in Abbots Leigh had concerns. A letter to the council signed by dozens of villagers complained that the allotments were not for local North Somerset people but were being marketed to Bristol residents.
“It’s a stunningly beautiful location, loved by thousands, but soon to be lost for ever if Roots’ plans go ahead unchecked,” the letter said.
The complainants characterised Roots as an “aggressively growing business” backed with venture capital, adding: “They want to do one thing and that is make money out of huge private allotment sites on greenfield agricultural land.”
The residents said people in other areas where Roots was planning to open were “looking very closely” at the North Somerset decision.
The tension became so acute that at one point the police were called when people blocked work vehicles heading into the field.
Roots accepts it is a business – but argues it is one for good, hoping to open up land to people who want to grow their own, be part of a vibrant community and learn more about the no-dig movement.
Plans have been drawn up for sites in London and Birmingham but it is looking at expanding “everywhere”.
Jenna Ho Marris, a Green councillor, told the meeting there was “a lot to like” about the concept but said Roots was a business “with a fast-moving expansion plan” and the decision in Somerset could set a precedent when other local authorities considered similar schemes.
Councillor Terry Porter, himself an allotment holder and grower of prize vegetables, said the rental price of the plots (from £9.99 to £34.99 a month) meant it would not be accessible to all.
Members of the planning and regulatory committee voted unanimously against the project over concerns about the car park.
Samuel called the decision a travesty. He said Roots would appeal but the refusal would put back the scheme by months.
“We are trying to build a growing community that shows food production and nature can coexist without large scale destruction via pesticides,” he said. “The council has let allotment holders down.”
The chair of Abbots Leigh parish council, Simon Talbot-Ponsonby, said he was relieved. “But it’s not the end. They will keep fighting. Allotments are a good thing but not at that scale.”
United Utilities has been fined £800,000 after illegally abstracting 22bn litres of water in Lancashire, causing damage to an important aquifer that will take years to recover.
The illegal removal of water from the Fylde aquifer, which happened during a period of dry weather in 2018, is likely to have negatively affected river flows.
An aquifer is rock or sediment that holds groundwater – rain that is held below the surface of the soil and collected in empty spaces underground. Aquifers feed rivers to keep their flows at a healthy level, and are also important sources of water when reservoirs or other sources run low.
There are strict limits on the amount of water that companies can take from aquifers, as rivers can be damaged and an important emergency water source for local people is lost if they are drained. Campaigners have previously said water companies should be fixing leaks in the system and building reservoirs rather than over-abstracting water from the environment.
United Utilities was prosecuted at Warrington magistrates court and was given the fine on Tuesday after the Environment Agency found the company had taken more water than its abstraction licences allowed in the Franklaw and Broughton borehole complex.
Carol Holt, the Environment Agency area director for Lancashire, said: “While water companies are allowed to abstract water from the environment, over-abstraction, especially during times of prolonged dry weather, has damaging impacts to our environment.
“Our actions as regulator have led to today’s sentencing and we will continue to strive for a better water sector across the country to protect our precious water supplies now, and for the future. We are transforming our approach to regulation, holding the water industry to account and working with water companies such as United Utilities Water Ltd to help them improve.”
The water company said during the hearing that it had made internal improvements so that over-abstraction would not happen again, and committed to supporting a number of local Rivers Trust schemes. It has made a voluntary £3m contribution to environment initiatives.
Grant Batty, the water services director at United Utilities, said: “We apologised for the breach in water abstraction that happened five years ago in 2018. We did not exceed the amount of water we could abstract on a daily and yearly basis, but we did inadvertently breach a three-year rolling limit on the abstraction licence. As soon as we discovered this, we established additional controls to ensure it never happens again. We took action straight away, pleaded guilty and also made a £3m voluntary contribution to local environmental improvement projects.”
Turns out that the £250m for 900 NHS beds announced with a fanfare this week is not only a small step in reversing the historic loss, but is a re-announcement from January.
“This investment is part of the NHS urgent and emergency care recovery plan, published in January 2023, which set out plans to provide over 5,000 additional permanent, fully staffed hospital beds in total, with the NHS on track to deliver this by winter. These new 900 beds are part of this commitment.” – Government Press release
The strikes continue…….
And:
Community diagnostic centres ‘cutting NHS waits’ don’t exist yet
Dozens of the government’s flagship community diagnostic centres said to be reducing record NHS waits are not even open yet, openDemocracy can reveal.
In fact, our investigation has found some of the health centres, known as CDCs, are years away from opening. We could only find evidence of 73 centres that are up and running – and some of those are in mobile units.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) this month claimed 114 centres were open across the country, saying they were helping cut NHS waiting lists by offering more tests for patients. Ministers have also touted the plans as proof that the private health sector can be used to boost capacity in the NHS.
But local NHS hospital trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) responsible for 32 of the CDCs listed as open have said they will not be operational until later this year or even next year.
And one CDC in Slough is not due to open until 2025, NHS Frimley Health Trust confirmed. Despite this, it still appears on the government’s list of operational centres.
Nearby Heatherwood Hospital, which only opened last year, is also counted on the list, but the trust said “there isn’t going to be an additional diagnostics centre there, but it does a lot of diagnostics”.
Long-time NHS campaigner John Lister told openDemocracy the findings “strip away the veneer of spin from DHSC and ministerial statements”.
“This explains why, according to government figures the 114 CDCs they claim have already come on stream are only delivering an average of just over 500 procedures each per week: many of them don’t even exist!” he added.
“The grim reality is that the delays in diagnosis and treatment flow from 13 years of under-funding of the NHS, and are worsened now by the decision to squander public money on profit-seeking private units rather than expand and upgrade NHS units.”
The ICB covering Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire also confirmed to openDemocracy that there are no community diagnostics centres in the area, even though the government lists a centre open there.
Staff at the location of one CDC listed in Leeds said they had no knowledge of it, while in Blackpool, an existing health centre said plans to upgrade it had never got off the ground.
In Derbyshire, a local NHS trust said three centres, which the government list as open, are not yet operational. At Florence Nightingale Community Hospital in Derby a “new purpose-built CDC suite” is “expected to be completed by summer 2024”. A centre in Tamworth at the Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital is “expected to be completed by the end of the year”, while the CDC at Ilkeston Community Hospital is “expected to be fully operational by January 2024”.
In Coventry, the NHS announced in May that the existing City of Coventry Health Centre will be transformed into “a modern, state-of-the-art facility” opening in early 2025. In addition, the trust said it planned to open a new Endoscopy Unit at the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby later in the year. But the government has listed both of the centres as already open.
Two centres in Essex – one in Thurrock and a second in Braintree – were also announced by the NHS earlier this year, with the local trust saying they were “due to open in 2024”. They are both listed as already open by the government. Mid and South Essex NHS trust cautioned that “like many parts of the country, our challenge will be recruiting the additional staff needed for the [Thurrock] Centre so we are starting to look at staffing plans now”.
A centre in a former department store in Poole is open, but it appears to have been listed twice by the government.
A spokesperson for NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB confirmed two centres in York and Selby are not open until the end of the year, despite the government claiming otherwise.
And NHS Somerset told us it only has one centre in Taunton and that two centres listed by the government in West Mendip and Bridgewater were actually “health and wellbeing hubs”. While NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB confirmed that two centres in Barrow and Morecambe listed as open by the government had in fact “no confirmed date” for their opening.
openDemocracy also found announcements about new centres opening in Cambridgeshire, Ealing, Greater Manchester, Kent, Cornwall and the Isle of Wight in autumn and in 2024. Again, these are all listed by the government as already being open.
A further nine CDCs in Barking, Wisbech, Corby, South Warwickshire, Gateshead, Bolton, Andover and Somerset are still in construction but their trusts said they have opened temporary mobile units in the meantime.
openDemocracy could not establish whether three of the 114 centres are open because no information exists about them online and their trusts did not reply to our requests for comment.
And it is not clear whether six of the 114 centres even exist because both the DHSC and NHS England refused to provide openDemocracy with the full list. A list that was published by the government in June only lists 108 CDCs.
The latter said the list was for operational purposes only and that we should use Google to identify the centres that had not been revealed.
The development of CDCs was a key recommendation of a review of NHS diagnostics capacity published in 2020.
Mike Richards who carried out the review said the facilities should be “located away from acute hospitals, in easily accessible locations, including town and city centres”.
But several of the centres appear to be in existing hospitals, including one in West Berkshire which admitted the funding was used to replace its “ageing machines” rather than open a new community location.
In July, a damning report by the public spending watchdog found the government was not going to hit Boris Johnson’s promise of building 40 new hospitals by 2030.
Days later, Rishi Sunak doubled down on the claim, saying: “Not only are we going to deliver on our manifesto commitment to build 40 new hospitals across the country by 2030, we are not stopping there; we are also delivering 100 hospital upgrades across the country, and crucially more than 100 new community diagnostic centres to speed up treatment for people.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “A total of 114 centres across the country have helped to deliver over four million additional tests, checks and scans since July 2021 – and we’re expanding current capacity by delivering up to 160 centres by spring 2025.
“The majority of these sites are permanent, and alongside these we’ve opened a number of temporary sites while construction takes place to accelerate capacity and ensure patients receive the diagnosis they need quicker.”
East Devon Watch 