In addition the Environment Agency has an advisory for Budleigh Salterton

Paul Greaves www.devonlive.com

Pollution and sewage warnings have been issued for six of Devon’s beaches after heavy rain and thunderstorms hit the region overnight. Beachgoers are being warned to stay out of the water today (Sunday, September 10) due to the alerts.

An interactive map by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has highlighted the beaches currently affected. It shows where sewage was discharged in the past 48 hours.

The beaches impacted are Teignmouth Holcombe, Torre Abbey and Meadfoot in Torquay where storm sewage has been discharged from a sewer overflow.)

There are also warnings on two beaches in the South Hams. These are Thurlestone South and Hope’s Cove where, according to SAS, “there are two sewer overflows which discharge into the sea which can lead to a temporary drop in bathing water quality especially after heavy rainfall.”

There is a further warning in place for Plymouth Hoe East.

When sea water is polluted with raw sewage discharges, which water companies are legally allowed to do after storms to avoid sewage backing up into people’s homes and businesses, there is a risk of becoming sick with potentially harmful bugs like e-coli.

The warning service alerts potential swimmers and surfers to instances when sewage overflow mechanisms have been opened to avoid being overwhelmed. This leads to surface run-off and household sewage being sent directly into the sea and waterways.

The six alerts are confirmed on South West Water’s interactive map.

It will cost more to be buried, sail a model boat or keep a dangerous animal in Teignbridge as the local council puts up dozens of its fees.

Guy Henderson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

The council says it needs to bump up some of its charges as a way of coping with financial pressures and high inflation. It last put up its fees in February, and normally only puts them up once a year.

But members of the council’s executive committee will hear at their next meeting on Tuesday, 12 September that an extra round of mid-year increases is necessary.

Many of the council’s hundreds of fees for its services will stay the same, but there will be increases in areas such as parking charges.

The cost of being buried in Teignbridge will rise from £882 to £961, while the price of sailing a model boat on Newton Abbot’s Decoy Lake – or fishing in it – will rise by a pound to £10.88 a day.

A licence to keep a dangerous animal goes up from £125 to £135 and there will also be increases in the costs of collecting commercial waste and supplying extra bins.

Parking charges will increase to different fees in different places across the district, but an all-day ticket for a spot in the centre of Newton Abbot will rise from £5.70 to £6.20. Half an hour’s parking will go up from 90p to £1.

Chief finance officer Martin Flitcroft will tell the meeting that the mid-year increase in fees and charges will provide the council with £145,470 in extra income this financial year, and an ongoing increase of £346,050 a year.

The figure represents an increase in income of just over three per cent a year.

A report to the meeting outlines some of the financial pressures on the council.

It says that a likely pay rise for council employees is going to be significantly higher than anticipated, and income from recycling sales has reduced as prices have dropped.

Inflation has been higher than anticipated and there are more costs coming from other areas including leasing a new refuse vehicle fleet.

However, many fees including beach huts, boat storage, taxi licensing and a game of golf on the Shaldon pitch and putt course are remaining the same.

Did “Spreadsheet” Sunak miscalculate or does he really not care about green investment and reaching “net zero”? – Owl

Jillian Ambrose www.theguardian.com 

Britain’s climate ambitions have suffered a blow after no new offshore windfarms were secured in the government’s latest clean energy auction despite there being the potential for 5 gigawatts of projects – enough to power 8m homes a year.

While it did result in contracts for a total of 3.7GW of solar power, onshore wind and tidal power projects, industry sources said the “catastrophic outcome” for the offshore wind sector put Britain’s green energy targets at risk and failed to deliver new jobs and lower energy bills.

So how did things go so far wrong for Britain’s most successful clean energy sector?

Why did no offshore wind developers bid?

None of the UK’s biggest offshore wind developers took part in the auction after many complained to government ministers and officials that the maximum price had been set too low.

The auction awards a 15-year contract to the clean energy projects that bid the lowest price for the clean electricity they go on to generate. This has helped to drive down the price of renewable energy, but in recent months high inflation has caused costs across the industry to rise.

Offshore wind developers warned that the auction’s maximum price, which was similar to previous auction rounds, was now too low for their projects to make any money.

They had called on the government to raise the auction’s starting price, arguing that even at higher costs their electricity would be cheap enough to help lower household energy bills. However, industry sources said ministers and mandarins “ignored” the warnings.

Why is offshore more expensive now?

Until recently, offshore wind was considered Britain’s cheapest source of electricity. In the government’s previous clean energy auction, developers bid £37.35 per megawatt hour (MWh) to generate offshore wind power.

But since then the industry has faced a double economic blow that has compounded costs. First, the cost of building and installing wind turbines has rocketed because the price of materials has risen sharply owing to the energy crisis. Then, the cost of borrowing money to finance the multibillion-pound projects has climbed in line with global interest rates.

The Swedish energy company Vattenfall estimates that in total its costs have increased by about 40%. It said earlier this year that it would cease working on the multibillion-pound Norfolk Boreas windfarm because rising costs meant it was no longer profitable.

So what might a fair price look like?

The cost of offshore wind has tumbled since the government’s first contract auction in 2015, when offshore windfarms secured a guaranteed price of £155 per MWh in 2012 money – the benchmark for these contract auctions. By last year’s auction that had fallen to the equivalent of £37.50 per MWh.

This year’s starting price for the auction was slightly higher at £44 per MWh in 2012 money, narrowly above the previous winning bids but too low for an offshore project built under today’s cost pressures.

That rate works out at about £60 per MWh in 2023 prices. Given the current wholesale market price for electricity is higher than £80 per MWh, the government had significant leeway to offer a more generous level and still get electricity cheaper than today’s wholesale cost.

What is at stake?

The auction’s outcome risks creating a domino effect of failed climate targets, billions in missed investment and higher energy bills.

First, it poses a significant risk to the UK’s plan to triple Britain’s offshore wind capacity to reach 50GW by 2030, or enough to power the equivalent of every home in the UK. This in turn risks derailing Britain’s plan to establish a “net zero” electricity system by 2035. Finally, the UK’s legally binding pledge to be “net zero” across the economy could also become impossible to reach by 2050.

In the shorter term there is likely to be a blow to the UK’s green economy by upending the offshore wind supply chain, which was expected to create more than 100,000 new jobs by the end of the decade.

Finally, UK consumers are likely to have higher home energy bills. The industry trade group, Renewable UK, said the lost windfarms could have saved consumers £2bn a year compared with the cost of using electricity from gas power plans – equivalent to £24 on the average annual household bill.

Why did the government fail to act?

One senior industry source claimed that government officials had not fully grasped the scale of the cost increases faced by offshore wind developers and had suspected that companies were “crying wolf” in order to extract higher prices from the auction.

“The problem with that, if you remember the fairytale, is that there really was a wolf in the end. The government officials now have their wolf,” the source added.

Ministers are also likely to have been wary about increasing the size of the subsidy contracts, which are paid for through energy bills, while the energy crisis continues to pile pressure on struggling households.

What can the government do next?

The industry has called on ministers to adjust the auction rules in time for next year’s round of bidding so that offshore windfarms are able to compete.

RenewableUK said it would need “urgent action” to fix the investment framework, including a reform of the contracts and more support for the supply chains affected by the failure of this year’s auction.

It has also suggested other “fiscal measures” to attract clean energy investment into the UK in the face of global competition.

Mismanaged finances are bad news, but worse is the bankruptcy of ideas of how to reform local government finance.

Paul Waugh inews.co.uk 

In Prime Minister’s Question Time, an embattled Rishi Sunak couldn’t resist seizing on Birmingham City Council’s declaration of effective bankruptcy.

Accusing the Labour-run borough of “losing control of taxpayers’ money and driving their finances into the ground”, the PM had a pre-planned line that Keir Starmer’s party “have bankrupted Birmingham – we cannot let them bankrupt Britain”.

Yet given that Tory-run councils have got into similar trouble in recent years, the risk for Sunak is that what he sees as an open goal is actually an own goal.

When asked whether bankruptcies of Conservative-led Woking and Thurrock were a similar metaphor for their party nationally, the PM’s press secretary suddenly looked more uncomfortable. “It’s important for council leaders to take responsibility for their budgets,” is all she would say.

Of course, it’s in the interests of both Labour and the Tories to play the blame game over these financial implosions. Labour often boils it down to years of Whitehall cuts, while their opponents say it’s really due to local mismanagement of funds.

Sometimes, a council gets into trouble because of ideology. In 2018, Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council was the first in years to go bust, partly because it kept its council tax so ruthlessly low that it failed to raise enough money for basic services.

Yet in some cases, it’s hard to tell the difference between local authorities that issue Section 114 notices, the formal confirmation that they cannot balance their books. Labour-run Croydon and Tory-run Thurrock both made risky bets on commercial property that backfired disastrously, leaving big holes in their budgets.

Part of the problem is David Cameron’s scrapping of the Audit Commission that oversaw financial and administrative competence, something that Michael Gove is belatedly trying to fix with a new Office for Local Government. Other factors are central government failures to grip housing, asylum and social care crises, leaving councils out of pocket with extra pressures.

Birmingham Council’s current woes stem largely from a massive bill for settling equal pay claims. It has already shelled out £1bn, and now has further liabilities of over £700m, after the GMB union successfully sued the council for years of women-dominated jobs (like caterers, carers and teaching assistants) being paid less than male ones.

Glasgow has also had to pay out huge sums after similar court cases and the GMB says it is gathering evidence in 20 more councils, with Cumbria, Coventry and Dundee all under pressure. These aren’t issues of party allegiance but systemic discriminatory pay rates.

Another factor is that some unions see court action as valuable a weapon as industrial action in getting better pay for their members. The GMB has had victories in the courts to force Uber to treat drivers better, Unison won a landmark ruling against industrial tribunal fees, and the TUC scored a victory over ministers on unlawful use of “strike breaking” regulations.

Of course, there’s always a fine balance for unions when it comes to suing councils. The cost of hiring lawyers has to be weighed against just how many new members are recruited as a result. And in Birmingham’s case, it’s union members who will ultimately suffer if bankruptcy leads to deep cuts and redundancies.

In the end, it’s for local voters to work out whether their council or the government is to blame, and it’s no surprise that Woking fell to the Lib Dems and Thurrock to Labour in recent years. The problem is that too often, not enough people know what is going on.

Few people realise that Margaret Thatcher’s very first act as a new MP in 1960 was to introduce a Private Members’ Bill to guarantee press access to council meetings, so at least the public could see what was being spent in their name. “Publicity is the greatest and most effective check against any arbitrary action,” she said.

Unfortunately, as prime minister, Thatcher later waged an 11-year war on councils, both slashing their funding and centralising power. Her fixation with neutering town halls led to the poll tax that ultimately led to her own demise.

But the past decade has seen an even more lethal combination of both reduced local scrutiny and reduced central support.

The quiet death of local newspapers has slashed the scrutiny needed to keep councillors and officials on their toes. At the same time, George Osborne’s austerity cuts seemed deliberately designed to load most of the pain onto councils precisely because fragmented local stories were less visible than national cuts.

The council tax that replaced the poll tax has remained untouched ever since Thatcher’s downfall, with all governments terrified of updating 1990s valuations of properties or reforming the broken system that leaves councils with little real power.

Until both Labour and the Tories fix that system, financial bankruptcies will continue to be matched by a bankruptcy of ideas for reform.