Frustration at increase in annual cost and discontent over policies fuelling grassroots dissatisfaction as election looms
Senior Conservatives are braced for as many as 30,000 party members to leave when membership fees rise by 56 per cent, amid signs of wider Tory grassroots discontent (and despondency).
[The Conservative party Leader is chosen by party members from a short list drawn up by Conservative parliamentarians. It is thought that current membership is around 180,000. Will the Tories become more extreme in the future? – Owl]
An interesting letter in this week’s Exmouth Journal:
“I read with interest your recent column on the increasing costs for Policing in Exmouth. Over the last two years I have looked with curiosity for the promise of more police officers in our community, especially as our levy for Council Tax has increased year on year for this purpose.
I wrote to the Police Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall many months ago raising this issue. Her website indicated that she aimed to reply within a short time but nine months have passed and Alison Hernandez dearly found my letter too difficult to make a reply? I explained that I had not seen any police officers for over five years on the Exmouth beat and wondered if they had lost their legs. I explained my reason for this question and admitted I had seen police cars being driven but that I had not been able to talk to a policeman face to face.
I have also been curious to know the whereabouts of the new Exmouth Police Station, reported in the Exmouth Journal at least on two occasions. The first time the announcement was made by our local M.P. Simon Jupp, as though he had been responsible for this remarkable break through. The second time the Exmouth Journal showed a picture of the supposed Police House but with no address.
As I said earlier I had not seen any Police on foot patrol and then lo and behold my wife and I actually met two police officers on foot several weeks ago. I was so surprised, with humour I said to them both, “You are not in fancy dress are you? You are actually police officers?” They smiled and assured me they were. Then I asked them where the new Exmouth Police Station was and they looked at each other blankly and said, “I’m sorry we don’t know”
In the same copy of last week’s Exmouth Journal the Police Commissioner wrote an article setting out her vision for Policing in Devon and Cornwall, part of which had been reported on Southwest Spotlight, saying that she hoped to see more improvements in policing in the two Counties. Well, I would hope so too but I am sceptical about her vision. The last two years seem to prove her vision has been a fantasy at considerable cost to Council Tax payers.”
Peter Eastwood (Name and address supplied to the Journal)
Fears of fire, toxic fumes and explosions – sparking a ‘major accident’ – have prompted calls to refuse plans to store off-grid energy batteries in East Devon.
Councillors deciding on a controversial plan to store powerful batteries in a Devon field will hear concerns that they could cause a major accident, writes local democracy reporter Guy Henderson.
East Devon District Council’s (EDDC) planning committee will meet next Tuesday (August 22) to consider the application for a National Grid sub-station on land off Pound Road at Hawkchurch, just outside Axminster.
Large batteries would store power ready for the National Grid to use as required.
The application has already been turned down once due to a lack of information, and has now been re-submitted.
The latest version of Enso Energy’s battery energy storage system (BESS) plan was considered in July, but a decision was deferred again for more talks with Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue service about how it would deal with a fire if one breaks out.
Among the documents being considered by the committee is a report from Hawkchurch Parish Council which says the plan should be refused.
The parish council says: “We believe there is a risk of major accident. The risks to the population in the event of a fire, possible explosion, and release of toxic fumes, cannot be overstated.”
Parish councillors say there are safety issues with large scale lithium-ion battery installations. If charging or temperature controls fail or get damaged, they claim, batteries are susceptible to a process called thermal runaway – a fire that generates its own oxygen supply and can’t be extinguished.
The report goes on: “We are seriously concerned about any proposed installation of industrial-scale battery storage solutions.”
The parish councillors quote a report from Northern Ireland’s Health and Safety Executive which says: “An explosion from a single BESS container can cause the partial demolition of a house up to 45 metres away. A hydrogen fluoride plume generated by a fire can cause serious injury up to 45 metres away.”
However, a report from officers to councillors says that while there are objections to the scheme on safety grounds, many of the concerns are either regulated by other bodies or can be addressed by imposing conditions to any planning permission.
Enso Energy has said its facility will meet all legal safety requirements, and details can be addressed by planning stipulations.
Firefighters have no objections, and district council officers are recommending that planning permission should be granted, subject to conditions.
In 2019, the last time the assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. Before 2016 the tests were done annually, but the government has now opted not to deliver a complete update until 2025.
A nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies has been delayed by six years, prompting anger from campaigners and politicians, as public alarm grows over the state of the nation’s rivers and coasts.
The assessments, undertaken by the Environment Agency, look at the ecological and chemical condition of rivers, lakes, groundwater, and transitional and coastal waters, and are required under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
In 2019, the last time the assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. Before 2016 the tests were done annually, but the government has now opted not to deliver a complete update until 2025.
Clean water advocates accused the government of trying to hide the data.
Rivers activist Feargal Sharkey said: “The future of England’s rivers has been sacrificed in a cynical act of self preservation by the very same failed government agency set up to protect them.”
The Green party peer Natalie Bennett said the government “clearly recognised the huge public anger about the parlous state of our waterways, but instead of taking action to clean them up, it is instead trying to hide the data”.
She added that the “stench of pollution, the choking of our waters with sewage, plastics and farm runoff is evident to all”, and that the Green party wanted to see a return to more frequent publication of the river health statistics. “Democracy demands transparency, and that’s one more thing this government is not delivering.”
The Guardian and Watershed Investigations, working with the Wildlife Trusts, found that partial results – about 21% of the total assessments delivered in 2019 (20,424 compared with 94,952) – were published this month but not flagged in the usual places on the Environment Agency or Defra’s website. No chemical assessments have been made, fewer ecological tests have been taken, and no canals, coasts, transitional waters or aquifers have been tested.
The incomplete dataset makes it difficult to ascertain an accurate nationwide picture of improvement or deterioration against the previous assessments.
Although the reduction in testing frequency is in line with WFD guidelines, it has disappointed campaigners.
Ali Morse, water policy manager at the Wildlife Trusts, said having “up-to-date data on the state of our waters is crucial to help us target action to protect and restore them.
“Waters are predicted to remain polluted until 2063 because of long-lasting chemicals found at every site checked, but that doesn’t mean we should now stop looking – we need to take action to tackle the pollutants that we can do something about, to monitor to make sure that those aren’t getting worse, and to identify any newly emerging chemicals so that we can put measures in place to prevent their further release.”
Morse said the new data that exists shows that the pressures facing water bodies are not going away. “The combination of issues like abstraction and pollution from farms, sewage works and urban areas, mean that few rivers are healthy. In one of the worst affected areas, the Thames river basin, 95% of the sites with new data don’t meet ‘good’ status, and the figures are similar for the Severn and Anglian river basins too.”
The Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, Tim Farron, commented: “This is yet more evidence of a shocking lack of transparency about the health of our rivers. The government is letting profiteering water companies get away with sewage leaks, while toxic chemicals are finding their way into our rivers. We have no idea just how much pollution is in our rivers and on our beaches. The Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called for the Conservatives to take action, yet instead of doing so they seem to be trying to hide the problem.”
Under the WFD, all water bodies were meant to meet ‘good’ status by 2015. The deadline has been extended to 2027 but it has been known for some time that England’s rivers would miss the extended target date. In 2017, former Environment Agency chair Sir James Bevan told a government select committee that it would not be possible to meet the 2027 date.
Bevan has called for an overhaul of the way the WFD assessments are made, saying it should be less stringent so that more rivers could be given a clean bill of health. He argued that the “one-out-all-out rule”, under which if a water body fails on just one of a number of elements, the whole river fails, masks any improvements that may have been achieved across other parameters.
In the meantime, Defra has set itself a less well defined new target of getting rivers back to close to their natural state as soon as is practicable.
A spokesperson for Defra said the Environment Agency was legally obliged to publish a full set of data for every water body in England every six years. “The last full set was in 2019, with the next in 2025. However, to help with our work, and that of our partners, in the interim we have recently published a limited dataset that was collected between 2019 and 2021.
“We have deliberately targeted most of our sampling at water bodies with suspected problems so that we can get the evidence for investment (for example, from water companies and partners) where it is most needed. We haven’t included chemical or groundwater status which means not all water bodies have been updated.”
The former culture secretary said she would quit with “immediate” effect around 10 weeks ago – but is yet to do so.
She has not spoken in parliament for over a year since Boris Johnson – her close ally – was ousted as prime minister.
Ms Dorries previously said she would follow the former PM out of parliament when she was refused a peerage in his resignation honours, but later she would wait for an explanation before resigning her seat.
Huge numbers of people have now signed a petition calling on her to quit, with over 77,000 signatures as of Thursday.
“Your constituents, local council, the Prime Minister and now the public have all had enough. Either start representing the people of Mid Bedfordshire or stand down with immediate effect, so they can have the representation they deserve,” the petition on the 38 Degrees website says.
A town council in her constituency has also urged her to step down, and prime minister Rishi Sunak has said he believes her constituents are not being properly represented.
Veronica Hawking, Head of Campaigns at 38 Degrees, said: “The 75,000 signatures on our petition represent a clear message from the British public to Nadine Dorries: we’re paying you for this job, and we expect you to do it.”
The mounting anger comes after the standards commissioner ruled that Ms Dorries had not breached rules by failing to speak in parliament for over a year.
Campaign group Unlock Democracy had complained to the commissioner and argued that the Mid-Bedfordshire MP had breached rules by doing “significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its Members generally”.
But website Byline Timesreports that the Standards Commissioner has now ruled “there is no specific ‘service standard’ or exact job description for MPs, or a minimum number of hours of attendance required by the House”.
“It is for each individual MP to decide for themselves how they undertake the role of MP, and the Commissioner could not investigate an MP based on their level of, or lack, of attendance,” the commissioner said.
This is part of our centralised “levelling up” programme.
Doesn’t look like the best way to spend significant sums of money, buy hey, “Big Brother” knows best. – Owl
Proposals to close the underpass outside Exmouth station and add two extra pedestrian crossings nearby have been criticised by the town’s deputy mayor.
The plans are part of the Exmouth Gateway project to improve the area around the station – the ‘gateway’ to the town centre and seafront for rail travellers and road users arriving via Marine Way.
A public consultation by Devon County Council on the plans is due to end on Monday, August 21.
But the deputy mayor, Cllr Joe Whibley, said he will ask for the consultation to be extended, as he thinks many residents are not fully aware of the proposals.
The Gateway project is part of Exmouth’s ‘Levelling-up’ agenda, in which the town was granted £15.7 million for the Dinan Way extension and measures to make walking and cycling safer near the station.
But concerns are being raised about the closure of the pedestrian subway, the extra pedestrian crossings and the traffic-slowing measures.
Resident John Petty has met Cllr Whibley to express his views. He told the Journal: “Although the crossing is the preferred way there are still a surprising number who use the subway; it the only way to go to and from the town without interfering with the traffic, and those of us who are slower can take their time without feeling they ought to be hurrying across the waiting traffic. Why fill it in, removing all the attractive landscaping, only to have to re-landscape it afterwards?”
He and Cllr Whibley think the crossings and traffic slowing will cause congestion and delays.
They are also questioning why Project Gateway doesn’t include any proposals to smarten up the dilapidated bus station, toilets and car park next to the station exit.
Mr Petty said: “This area could certainly provide a much better access to the car parks, a visible taxi rank, a well-defined free parking area for pick up and drop-off, with decent shelter for all these and the possibility of providing cycle and mobility hire.”
He said the Gateway funding is ‘a marvellous opportunity to provide a considerable benefit to the town but, as presented, it appears to have serious flaws and shortcomings’.
More details of the proposals, and the online consultation, can be found on Devon County Council’s website under Exmouth Active Travel Improvements.
Members of the Liberal Democrat council’s cabinet voted unanimously to recommend the full council agrees that 3Rivers Developments Ltd should stop trading. It says forming the business in 2017 was “a poor decision”.
Sold down the river?
Councillors want a “soft closure” of the company rather than calling in administrators, as it offers a better financial return. Two of the company’s projects – St George’s Court in Tiverton and Haddon Heights, Bampton – will be completed in the next six months, which should go some way to save the council’s reputation, they said.
3 Rivers Developments was set up to construct “high quality” local homes while generating a profit for the council, but it was impacted by the pandemic and a deteriorating trading position due to a lack of sales at St George’s Court.
Councillors heard that with no projects in the pipeline, the company is facing a challenging future with rising interest rates and uncertainty in the housing market.
The council had loaned the company more than £21 million and an annual sales turnover of around £3-3.5 million is needed just to cover overheads. In its 2021/22 and 2022/23 accounts, the council made provision for potential company losses of around £5.3 million and it is likely further write offs would need to be made.
Councillors were asked to make an urgent decision following a report on the company by accountants Francis Clark, which was considered in a session which the press and public weren’t allowed to observe. The report was put togther after councillors rejected three variations of a business plan.
Members of the public who attended the cabinet meeting heard concerns from former independent council leader Barry Warren who questioned whether it was right that deputy chief executive of the council and chief financial officer Andrew Jarrett should also be founding directors of 3Rivers.
Cabinet member for finance Cllr James Buczkowski (Lib Dem, Cullompton St Andrews) said it was not unusual for a deputy CEO to be in that position and as head of finance he would expect him to be involved in the discussions around the finance of the company. The decision to set up the company was made by councillors not officers, he said.
“It is clear that poor decisions have been made by councillors in the past, particularly the previous administration, likely due to a commitment bias to a failing and unviable project,” he said. “These poor decisions and sometimes indecisions have resulted in the most serious situation for the council with significant financial implications.”
The company’s property and assets would be sold off over a ”sensible short term period.” A thorough analysis of all the options to close the company were made to maximise the return for the council but “a risk free scenario” could not be guaranteed.
Cllr Rachel Gilmour (Lib Dem, Clare and Shutton) said she is “delighted and relieved” that experts had become involved and asked for a “stringent survey” of the properties to be done by someone independent of the council.
Deputy council leader Cllr Jane Locke (Lib Dem, Canonsleigh) added: “If I were coming here to buy a property and I got reports of the discussions we are having tonight I might be wondering about investing many hundreds of thousands of pounds into a property being built by 3Rivers Development Ltd.
“I hope in order to maximise the income from these properties this council will do what it can to reassure any potential purchasers that they are making a sound investment, unlike this council did, as I would hate to see us discount properties massively just to see them get sold and that all guarantees from buying a brand new property will be honoured in the future.”
The full council will make the final decision on winding up the company on Wednesday 6 September.
The Labour council says it is working hard to get its budget, inherited from the previous Conservative administration, in check and aims to balance the books by the end of the financial year.
Presenting a report for April to June 2023 to cabinet members, Cllr Mark Lowry, who is responsible for finance, said the council is facing pressures from children’s services (£2.8 million) notably home-to-school transport and high-cost children’s placements, people’s care packages (£1.2 million) and community connections dealing with homelessness (£2.4 million).
In addition there are inherited services costs of £1.5 million and the expense of three by-elections which were not budgeted to the tune of £80,000.
The council has enlisted the help of David Northey as head of finance, who has postponed his retirement to help it sort out its finances over the next few months.
“We still have nine months to go,” said Cllr Lowry. “This is not a black hole in the budget, it is forecasting of what would happen if the world stopped revolving today and that’s where we would be. But obviously there is still a lot of work to be done and as is the requirement of this council we have to provide a balanced budget by the end of the year, which I am sure we will achieve.”
He said homelessness is a considerable increase in cost, but it is a national issue. He said there would be reviews to understand exactly what is happening in Plymouth and the problems to be addressed.
The cabinet supported a capital budget of £556 million for the next five years, which will now go to the full council for final approval.
New projects coming forward totalling £7.5 million include:
Theatre Royal Car park solar scheme (£199,000)
improvements to Central Park (£60,000)
Derriford Community Park – phase 1 biodiversity (£107,000)
Plymouth and South Devon community forest (£25,000)
Derriford District Centre (£1.03 million)
highways projects street furniture replacements, tennis improvements £3.71 million)
Local Authority Housing Fund (£1.5 million) which will provide accommodation for refugees and temporary accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.
Why has it taken so long to recognise the problem? Is it now too late?
Ah! Nigel Farage hands in a petition to No 10 – Owl
High street banks will have to ensure customers can find access to cash within three miles of their local communities, and those falling below the minimum service level will face a fine, the government has confirmed.
After the closure of thousands of local branches in recent years, and the switch to digital payment methods, ministers are looking to banks to help protect vulnerable groups and elderly customers by maintaining present levels of cash access across the UK.
The “vast majority” of people are able to withdraw money within one mile, if they live in cities, and three miles if they live in rural areas, the Treasury said. That includes cash withdrawals through cash machines, bank branches and shops offering free cashback.
The government said the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) would make sure banks and building societies were “keeping up to these standards – and have the power to fine them if they do not”.
On Thursday, the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage went to Downing Street to hand in a petition that called on the government to crack down on businesses that have increasingly instituted card-only policies and refused to accept cash since the Covid crisis.
It marks Farage’s latest campaign against banks and payment companies, after Coutts threatened to close his accounts this year. The row snowballed in July after he obtained documents that showed his political views were part of the decision to shut his accounts.
The scandal resulted in the resignation of Alison Rose as chief executive of the bank’s owner, NatWest Group. It also led to the ousting of Peter Flavel as the chief executive of Coutts. Farage said the bank had since offered to keep his accounts open.
Thursday’s announcement on access to cash builds on the wide-ranging Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which gave consumers a legal right to access cash and handed powers to enforce those rules to the FCA.
Andrew Griffiths, the economic secretary to the Treasury and “City minister”, said: “People shouldn’t have to trek for hours to withdraw a tenner to put in someone’s birthday card – nor should businesses have to travel large distances to deposit cash takings.
“These are measures which benefit everyone who uses cash but particularly those living in rural areas, the elderly and those with disabilities.”
The Treasury hinted there may be some concessions to the three-mile guarantee, saying in a press release that the FCA should “maintain this level of coverage, while recognising that needs may differ by location and change over time”.
And while personal banking customers will be guaranteed fee-free access, it is highly probable that businesses in some areas may still face fees for withdrawals and deposits.
The FCA is expected to launch its consultation this autumn, meaning the laws are unlikely to come into force until summer 2024.
Campaigners have long warned that the UK’s dwindling cash facilities – after swathes of ATM and bank closures – are putting elderly and vulnerable people who struggle to maintain bank accounts online at risk.
Access to cash has also become more important during banking outages, which can block card transactions and online bank transfers. About 5.4 million adults use and rely on cash daily, according to Treasury statistics.
Natalie Ceeney, chair of the independent Access to Cash Review, said: “Over the past decade, we’ve been sleepwalking into a cashless society. But digital payments don’t work for everyone.
“Cash remains vital for millions of people and businesses, many of whom are struggling as bank branches close and it becomes harder to access and deposit cash.”
She said the cash access distance guidelines would help “support the specific needs of different communities”.
She added: “That doesn’t mean that nothing will change, but it does mean that where services plan to close, there need to be appropriate alternatives in place before they do so. Positively, the banking industry is ahead of the curve in helping to create new banking hubs and deposit services in communities.”
The banking lobby group UK Finance said: “We support the work the government and FCA are doing here and look forward to reviewing the government’s full policy statement when published.”
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.”
The highly confidential documents included medical details and photographs of a number of people who died in an accident.
Footage of people inside the old Heavitree Road Police Station in Exeter has been posted on the internet.
Police said security measures had been strengthened at the site.
Devon and Cornwall Police said officers arrested a man in his 50s, from the Wiltshire area, on Thursday on suspicion of burglary, abstracting electricity, improper use of public electronic communications and unlawful obtaining and disclosure of personal data.
He has been released on police bail while inquiries continue.
The police station has been closed since April 2020 and the adjoining Exeter Magistrate’s Court is also derelict.
Due to the content of the videos, Devon and Cornwall Police has made a referral to the Information Commissioner’s Office and said it would fully support its inquiries.
The force said: “The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner has taken action to re-secure the former Heavitree Road Police Station site and strengthen security measures.”
The boss of a company behind a major sewage leak at a Yorkshire beach has been handed a 65 per cent bonus increase in a move that has sparked outrage on social media.
Northumbrian Water has come under fire after sewage from its pipes was discharged onto Saltburn Beach, a Blue Flag spot that attracts hundreds of visitors in the summer.
The company blamed heavy rainfall for flooding its pipes, but it remains one of the six worst water companies in the UK according to the regulator, Ofwat.
Despite its poor environmental performance, Northumbrian Water chief Heidi Mottram pocketed a £215,000 bonus, up from £130,000 the year prior, accounts show.
The jump in Ms Mottram’s bonus took her total compensation last year to £781,000.
Northumbrian also paid out £159 million in shareholder dividends during 2022 despite posting a pre-tax loss of £50 million for the year, accounts first reported by the Sunday Times show.
The company, which supplies water and sewerage services to more than 4 million people in the north-east of England, Suffolk and Essex, met or exceeded just five of 12 performance criteria set by the regulator.
It failed to meet targets on water quality, stopping leaks and preventing sewer overflows running into people’s homes, among other issues.
Somerset council forced to close parks, allotments and tennis courts after insurance blunder
The seafront tennis courts have been shut and walkers told to stay away from a popular park. Allotment holders have been barred from their plots and classes at a community centre cancelled.
At what should be its busiest time of the year, the Somerset seaside resort of Clevedon has been forced to close down many of its amenities after its town council lost its insurance.
Notices were posted on facilities run by the town council declaring: “Access is strictly forbidden” and explaining the council did not have any cover for damage or injury sustained at its sites.
“Pretty much everything has ground to a halt,” said the town council chairman, Trevor Morgan. “It’s hit the council for six. We’re in uncharted waters. We have had our insurances revoked, which has meant we are unable to operate on a day-to-day basis. We have lost our public liability insurance, employers’ liability insurance and fidelity insurance. It’s created a really difficult situation and we’re stuck.
“There’s very few insurance companies in the UK that will insure lower tier local authorities. We haven’t got many companies we can go to. We’re finding it challenging at the moment.”
Morgan said he could not reveal why the insurance policies had been revoked. “We’ve been told we can’t make that public at this stage. I’m not being difficult. I can say it’s not anything to do with the actions of our staff.”
As well as amenities being closed, the council’s offices are shut and its four staff members are on indefinite paid leave. Outsider contractors and suppliers are being paid. But lots of fun stuff has been halted.
The seafront tennis courts are closed as is Herbert Gardens, an area of greenery donated to the town in 1865. Six sets of allotments have been shut, meaning lovingly tended fruit and veg may wither in the warm spell. The Barn, which is hired out for activities such as dance and exercise classes, has been closed, apart from a children’s centre area.
It follows a miserable year for the town, famed for its wonderful pier (which remains open).
There has also been a bitter row over a road scheme featuring a bright pathway nicknamed the “yellow brick road” that critics said defaced the town’s Victorian seafront.
Morgan accepted that Clevedon’s reputation had taken a dent. “We’ve had a few turbulent months,” he said. “We’re getting too much attention for all the wrong reasons.”
Thanks to the help of North Somerset council, toilets and a skateboard park have remained open.
“I have been working hard with council staff, some other councillors and North Somerset council to try to avoid this and to find a solution.
“I joined the council to protect and improve our community facilities and services. Town councils in other local towns seem to do this really well. I hope now that all councillors will put the interests of the community above their own to sort this out quickly. Clevedon deserves better.”
Stuart Bannerman, the head coach of North Somerset Tennis Academy, who runs classes and camps on the council courts, said: “A lot of people are affected by this – it’s my busiest time of year. I coach some players who have been training for next week’s Avon championships. They have been affected. I don’t know how long this will go on for. It’s embarrassing.”
All depends on whether you are a public or private sector worker.
And which spreadsheet the Tories are singing from……
Yesterday Rishi Sunak declared that there is “light at the end of the tunnel” as new figures showed that British workers benefited from the fastest rise in basic pay since 2001 in the second quarter of the year. Official data shows that average weekly pay, excluding bonuses, rose by 7.8 per cent in the three months to June, on a par with inflation (8.2% for private sector, 6.2% for public sector). He added: people would soon start to see the benefits with wages growing faster than prices.
Yet throughout the lengthy industrial disputes with teachers, NHS workers and other public sector employees, ministers have repeatedly warned that meeting their demands could exacerbate the UK’s inflation problem.
Expectations are that inflation will fall by a smidgeon but then rise again in the autumn prompting fears over more interest rate rises.
“Funding systems for public services are trying to balance a range of different aims. But if one of the aims is for people to be able to access consistent public services across the country, then the current systems are not fit for purpose.” – Kate Ogden, a senior research economist at the IFS
The government’s levelling up plans for England are being hampered by a funding system that is “not fit for purpose” and deprives the poorest areas of the financial support to match their needs, a leading thinktank has said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the method for allocating money to pay for public services is out of date, based on inadequate data and skewed in favour of the better-off south-east.
Calling for urgent reform, the thinktank said the funding system was doing a “poor job” in ensuring money was being spent in the parts of England where it was most needed.
The IFS said the most deprived 20% of areas were getting a smaller share of local government and police funding than they were estimated to need, while the least deprived 20% were receiving a bigger portion than their needs required.
Boris Johnson launched a white paper on the levelling up policy in early 2022. Last summer, Rishi Sunak admitted taking money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to other parts of the country.
The IFS said that, in 2022-23, day-to-day spending on the NHS, local government, schools, police and public health in England amounted to more than £245bn, the equivalent of £4,310 per person, but there were “substantial differences” between the share of funding that areas receive and the share they would receive if funding was allocated in line with differing levels of need.
Kate Ogden, a senior research economist at the IFS, said: “Funding systems for public services are trying to balance a range of different aims. But if one of the aims is for people to be able to access consistent public services across the country, then the current systems are not fit for purpose.
“Differences in levels of funding for local government, police and public health services across England do not reflect today’s patterns of need as they are based on data that are now years out of date.”
Ogden said that it would take “several years at least” to address the issue but urged the government to set out a timeframe for reforms if it is serious about making funding systems fit for the future and aligning funding for public services with its goals for “levelling up”.
The IFS said the differences in geographical spending were especially stark for local government, after repeated delays to reform the funding system. The most deprived 20% of areas received 9% less than their estimated needs while the least deprived 20% received 15% more.
Wokingham in Berkshire received 45% more local government funding last year than it would have done had money been allocated in proportion to need, while Hounslow in west London received 31% less. This was only partly explained by them setting different council tax levels, the IFS said.
Even if all areas set the same council tax rates, the thinktank said the south-east would still receive a share of funding that was 9% higher than its share of estimated spending needs, and the north-east 5% lower. This meant inconsistent funding across England for services such as social care, housing, transport, leisure centres and libraries.
NHS funding was better targeted, the IFS said, with two-thirds of areas receiving a share of funding within 5% of their share of estimated needs. This reflected the fact that NHS spending was based on relatively up-to-date assessments of what was required in various parts of the country.
A growing numbers of councils have warned that they are running out of funds, leading to tough choices over cuts to local services. Councils including Kirklees in West Yorkshire and Hastings in East Sussex on the south coast have recently joined the list of local authorities sounding the alarm over their finances.
The IFS research showed that the vast majority of areas received a lower share of funding than their share of estimated spending needs for some services, and a higher share of funding for some other services.But a small number of areas received a markedly lower share of funding than their share of spending needs across a range of services. Dudley in the West Midlands received £127 per capita less for the NHS, £122 less for local government and £47 less for police services than if the nationally-available funding were allocated in line with estimated relative spending needs.
A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “Levelling up is a long-term programme of reform that sits at the heart of our ambition as a government. After listening to feedback from local government, we will work with the sector in the next parliament to take stock of the challenges and opportunities they face before consulting on any potential funding reform.
“Through the 2023/24 local government finance settlement, the most relatively deprived areas of England will receive 17% more per household in available resource than the least deprived areas.”
East Devon Watch 