Martin Shaw

Seaton & Colyton Matters

Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB) which is closing part of Seaton Hospital, is the former Conservative MP for Totnes who lost her seat after switching to the Lib Dems in 2019.

According to Wikipedia, she was ‘ spurred into politics by her opposition to the threatened closure of Moretonhampstead Community Hospital in 2006’.

The hospital is still open today: The Mid-Devon Advertiser (27 July 2006) reported:

‘Friends of the hospital, who raised £500,000 for its refurbishment in the 1990s, promised the trust ‘one hell of a fight’ if [the hospital was closed]. But now the trust has recognised the benefits brought about by new arrangements in which hospital staff and GPs work more closely together. 

The hospital has also started to offer services such as blood transfusions which were previously only available at Exeter’s RD & E Hospital. None of the community hospital’s nine beds have been closed as they are proving cheaper than acute beds in general hospital and trust spokesman, Nick Pearson, said the future was looking bright.

“Offering more services locally is of benefit to local people and it’s also good for the local NHS economy as it provides better value,” he said.

Surely there is a lesson for the ICB here – look again at referring the Seaton wing to Property Services, bring in more services locally, and turn the hospital into a community health hub – or reopen the ward for aftercare and pandemic preparedness.

Thanks to Cllr John Heath for initial research.

Welsh Water has admitted illegally spilling untreated sewage at dozens of treatment plants for years.

Outfall in the River Teifi from Cardigan’s waste water treatment plant

By Jonah Fisher www.bbc.co.uk

The admission came after the BBC presented the water company with analysis of its own data.

One of their worst performing plants is in Cardigan in west Wales.

The company has been spilling untreated sewage there into an environmentally protected area near a rare dolphin habitat for at least a decade.

Welsh Water says it is working to tackle the problems and does not dispute the analysis, which was shared with BBC News by mathematician and former University College London professor Peter Hammond from campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP).

Most of the UK has a combined sewerage system, meaning that both rainwater and wastewater – from toilets, bathrooms and kitchens – are carried in the same pipes. Usually, all the waste is carried to a sewage treatment works.

During heavy rain, to prevent a plant becoming overwhelmed, it is allowed to discharge untreated sewage. But releasing any before a plant reaches the overflow level stipulated on its permit is an illegal breach.

Prof Hammond requested data on 11 Welsh treatment plants and found that 10 had been releasing untreated sewage at times when they should have been treating it.

Cardigan was particularly bad, spilling for more than 200 days each year from 2019-2022.

The data provided to Prof Hammond showed that Cardigan almost never treated the amount of sewage it was supposed to.

According to its permit it has to treat 88 litres a second before spilling – but had illegally spilled untreated sewage for a cumulative total of 1,146 days from the start of 2018 to the end of May 2023.

“This is the worst sewage works I’ve come across in terms of illegal discharges,” he said.

Prof Peter Hammond used Welsh Water’s own data to prove they were illegally spilling

When presented with the findings Welsh Water admitted it has between 40 and 50 wastewater treatment plants currently operating in breach of their permits. It said decisions on which plants to improve were taken with customer bills in mind, and that because there is “no measurable environmental impact” of the Cardigan estuary spills, these have been a low priority.

The outflow point from the Cardigan treatment plant spills into the Teifi estuary and Welsh Water points to Poppit Sands, a designated bathing beach two miles away, that has water quality consistently rated as “excellent”.

The treatment plant in Cardigan spills both treated and untreated sewage into the River Teifi

Environmental groups say testing at Poppit Sands only takes place from May to September and there is no regular monitoring of the impact of sewage discharges in the River Teifi. It is designated as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and is home to lamprey, Atlantic salmon and otters. The Teifi flows into Cardigan Bay, home to one of Europe’s largest populations of bottlenose dolphins.

“Untreated sewage causes a host of problems on our rivers,” says Gail Davies-Walsh of rivers campaign group Afonydd Cymru.

“High nutrient levels coming from sewage lead to algal blooms that lead to the depletion of oxygen in our rivers. And that clearly has knock-on impacts to our fish populations and to other species.”

The regulator, Natural Resources Wales, told the BBC that it has been aware of the issues at Cardigan for eight years and has issued enforcement notices but no fines. It says it is now looking at data from 101 treatment plants run by Welsh Water that have been spilling before they reach their permit capacity.

Welsh Water, a not-for-profit company, said in a follow-up email that it was not under “formal investigation”, that NRW’s figures are “inaccurate,” and that it stands by its total of about 45 treatment plants currently breaking their permits.

Cardigan’s problems date back to 2004 when Welsh Water installed a wastewater treatment system which filters sewage through a membrane. That is not how most sewage plants work.

The sewage network in Cardigan is old and leaky and during Spring tides saltwater gets into the pipes and the treatment plant.

The saltwater causes bacteria to release an enzyme that blocks the membrane. That has meant the plant regularly fails to treat the right amount of sewage and spills untreated sewage.

“We’re not proud of this at all,” Steve Wilson, managing director for wastewater services at Welsh Water said. “It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in – but it’s not for the want of trying. We have been trying to fix this.”

Those fixes have not worked. In 2025 work is due to begin on a new treatment plant for Cardigan, at a cost of £20m.

For Gail Davies-Walsh of Afonydd Cymru there are questions now for both the water company and the regulator, Natural Resources Wales, which is responsible for enforcing permits and, if necessary, issuing penalties.

“Fundamentally this site [Cardigan] has been discharging raw sewage for possibly 10 years and no action has been taken,” she says.

NRW provided the BBC with a timeline of their responses which shows a number of enforcement notices – but no prosecutions or fines. In the last five years the NRW has made no prosecutions anywhere in Wales for illegal sewage spills of this type.

“We have prosecuted Welsh Water on a number of instances for pollution events, just not for low flow spills as is the case here,” Huwel Manley, NRW’s head of operations for south west Wales. said. “But we are working with trying to set national guidance along with England so that we have a more standardised approach as to how and when we take that prosecution route.”

Regulators in England are also looking at flow rates through treatment plants as part of what they say is their largest ever criminal investigation into potentially illegal spilling.

A high court judge has quashed the planning permission of a developer which was meant to be regenerating a key part of Frome town centre.

By Ruth Bradley www.bbc.co.uk

Saxonvale has been derelict for decades and in recent years there have been two rivals proposals for the ten-acre site.

Somerset Council owns the land and Acorn Property Group is its preferred developer.

A judge quashed Acorn’s planning consent, due to an issue with the allocation of land for employment.

That court case had been brought by rival community-based developer Mayday Saxonvale which also has planning board approval for its own plans for the site.,

More than 250 people opposed the Acorn plan ahead of it being passed by Mendip District Council in 2021

Amy Proctor, strategic partnerships manager at Acorn Property Group, said the company remained “committed and positive” to its vision for Saxonvale.

“We are disappointed with the outcome of the judicial review, which ultimately centred on a procedural technicality,” she said.

“For over two decades it has lain vacant, having faced ongoing challenges at the planning stage. The technical challenges for this site cannot be underestimated and events like this will only cause further delay.

“Like so many of the residents of Frome, we are all keen for development to commence.”

Local business owner and Mayday Saxonvale director, Damon Moore, who lodged the challenge, said: “We are incredibly happy with the outcome of this judicial review.

“The decision by the judge acknowledges the critical importance of Saxonvale in providing a genuine town centre extension.

“Judge Jay ruled that Acorn’s scheme for Saxonvale failed to provide the requirement of the council’s own local plan for much-needed employment space to be located on the Saxonvale site,” Mr Moore said.

Acorn Property Group said it was going to put in a revised planning application to the council as soon as possible and it remains in a contractual relationship with Somerset Council.

Mayday Saxonvale said it wanted the council to now talk to it instead.

A spokesperson for Somerset Council said: “We are always disappointed if the Courts decide we got a decision wrong, so we will be carefully considering the technical issues on which this judgment hinged before deciding on our next steps.”

Education in England is in danger of being reduced to a “barebones, boilerplate model”, headteachers have said, after an embarrassing £370m government bungle forced them to plan for further cuts.

Sally Weale www.theguardian.com

Some heads are looking at cutting teaching assistants (TAs), who often work with children with special educational needs (SEN). Others are considering delaying infrastructure projects and reducing pupils’ enrichment activities in order to balance their books.

“The impact of not just this error, but other funding shortfalls and cuts is that education is in danger of becoming reduced to a barebones boilerplate model or basic schooling,” said one Essex headteacher, James Saunders, whose school will receive £50,000 less than anticipated.

The Department for Education (DfE) was forced to apologise this month after an error in forecasting pupil numbers resulted in the schools budget for 2024-25 being inflated by 0.62%. As a result of the downward adjustment, schools will receive £370m less than they were told in July.

The schools minister, Nick Gibb, minimised the potential impact of the error on schools when he spoke in the Commons this week, saying the July figures were merely indicative and schools had not yet received funding for 2024-25.

Gibb said the total amount of funding schools receive would remain unchanged at a record £59.6bn for 2024-25. But headteachers have said they are having to revisit their budgets and are facing tough decisions as a result of the error.

Darren Gelder, executive headteacher of Grace Academy Solihull, a secondary school with 1,000 pupils, said: “It’s beyond the pale really. Someone at that level making this sort of mistake with such huge consequences is just unbelievable. The implications of that for every school in England is beyond words.

“Most academies run as pretty efficient businesses, with a reliance on understanding what income is likely to be. So when that changes, plans have to change. We’ve had to go back now and look – how do we continue to deliver a balanced budget with less income?”

Gelder and his team are reviewing all their financial plans – for everything from lighting to carpeting, ICT and staff. “It would be foolhardy to think that there aren’t consequences. We are looking at all those budget lines, things that we were hoping to replace. We will be carefully looking at our staffing budget, and it will be the support staff – sadly – more than likely we would need to look at.”

Steve Hitchcock, headteacher at Saint Peter’s Church of England primary school in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, said he just laughed when he heard about the DfE error. He said Devon schools as a whole would be £5m down on what was anticipated. In Cambridgeshire, schools would get £4.4m less, a local Labour MP, Daniel Zeichner, told the Commons.

Hitchcock said: “This is just par for the course now. We’re always having to deal with less money and things coming out of left field, so I’m trying not to worry about it. But based on what I’ve seen, I think we’re probably going to lose a teaching assistant.”

Losing a TA will affect children with SEN the most, as well as children still needing to catch up after Covid. Hitchcock said his budget was already so squeezed he has had to go to the parent-teacher association (PTA) and crowdfund for everything from paper to educational psychologists and dyslexia assessments.

He used to work to a three-year budget, but as money dwindled and pressures mounted, he scaled back to a two-year budget, then down to one. “I honestly don’t bother planning beyond each term now. I’ve gone past getting angry, upset, or losing sleep. We’ve got no control over this.”

Glyn Potts, headteacher at Saint John Henry Newman RC College in Oldham, expects his budget to be £75,000 adrift as a result of the miscalculation. “We’re in a no-win situation. If we do cut it’s likely to be something around classroom provision for children with special educational needs because we’ve invested in that area.”

Manny Botwe, headteacher of Tytherington secondary school in Macclesfield, said his school was £44,000 down. He will have to look at infrastructure projects and appointments the school had hoped to make, including additional pastoral workers to help improve attendance – a government priority – and support children with SEN. “Whenever there are cuts to the budget, these are the youngsters who are most affected, because we make the most adaptations for them.”

Saunders, who is headteacher of Honywood school in Coggeshall, Essex, which has already been hit hard by the Raac concrete crisis, said: “My fear is that we could lose all of the things that make schools unique – the opportunities to provide enrichment, social and cultural capital through extending the curriculum.”

The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “The schools budget debacle is more evidence that this Conservative government has given up on delivering the high and rising standards our children need to achieve and thrive.”

James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “Years of real-terms funding cuts and the continued impact of inflation mean that many schools still face really difficult decisions when budgeting, affecting everything from staffing to learning resources. The error in school funding estimates means there will be even less wriggle room in budgets than school leaders had expected when the final amounts are confirmed in December.”

A Devon school is among a further 41 in the UK where traces of the dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) that has affected more than 200 schools in the UK has been discovered. Exmouth Community College now joins Colyton Grammar School and Petroc College in Devon as having the dangerous material in its building.

Elliot Ball www.devonlive.com 

In September, headteacher Tom Inman issued a letter to parents confirming the discovery of RAAC. However, he stressed that the material had only been found in “one small part of the Gipsy Lane site”. He said that this area was an extension on an older building and affected four science laboratories.

Mr Inman said: “In line with the updated guidance, we have informed the DfE and closed this area as a precaution whilst further assessment and actions take place. Whilst RAAC is present, our surveyor is content that the building is showing no signs of failure, and therefore whilst we will not use the space there is no immediate danger. We are making the necessary changes to student timetables to minimise the impact on learning for students.”

The initial list of schools, which was finally released at the start of September after days of confusion, confirmed 147 education settings in England had been forced to put mitigations in place as of August 30. That rose to 173 as of September 14.

Education unions have been pushing for more information for weeks amid fears the true scale of the crisis is not yet known. The Department for Education finally published a new update today (October 19).

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said in a statement: “As of 16 October, there are 214 education settings with confirmed RAAC in some of their buildings. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders, 202 settings (94%) are providing full time face-to-face education for all pupils. 12 settings have hybrid arrangements in place.

“This may involve some remote learning on some days as not all pupils can currently receive full-time face-to-face education. There are no education settings with confirmed RAAC where all pupils are in full-time remote learning.”

She added: “I want to reassure pupils, parents and staff that this government is doing whatever it takes to support our schools and colleges in responding to RAAC and minimise disruption to education.”

Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said: “The number of schools with RAAC continues to rise, and we are nowhere near the conclusion of this saga. Parents and the wider public need reassurance that the Department for Education has this problem under control. Their reluctance to publish on time speaks volumes, demonstrating that there is a failure at the heart of the Government to take seriously the various crises facing education.”

Paul Whiteman, NAHT General Secretary, said the rise in the number of affected schools was a major concern because of the disruption for children, parents and staff.

“While ministers have made promises over funding and support for schools, there is no clear timeline for when work will be completed and there appears to be no end in sight to this crisis,” he said. “The Government must set out clearly when it will provide the longer-term funding our school buildings desperately needed.”

To all who raised 50% of the original cost of the Hospital in the 1980s and helped to fund it ever since, the dealings of the ICB must look like daylight robbery. – Owl

seatonmatters.org 

I have sent the following reply to the ICB over its report (which I reproduced in my last post). This reply has gone to our MP and I am sending it to the press.

Thank you for sharing the report, which I am making available locally. I cannot understand, however, why it was not published together with the Board’s minutes and that it has taken pressure from me and possibly others to produce it.

I appreciate that you are consulting with partner organisations but it is wholly unacceptable that you have still not outlined any plan to communicate this decision to, or consult with, the local community in Seaton, Colyton, Beer, Branscombe, Axmouth and surrounding areas which depend on this hospital, who contributed half of its original cost in the 1980s, and have helped to fund it ever since – overall donating some £5 million at current prices.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the constant turnover of NHS organisations and leaders since 2017, the report provides a very incomplete and distorted account of the background. It states that the beds were removed ‘following full public consultation’ and notes the numbers of consultation events, responses to surveys and letters from the public. It fails however to mention that the consultation events in Seaton showed overwhelming opposition to the proposals; that the opposition to the closure of the beds in Seaton was greater than to any other closures; and that the local MP, town council and councillors of all parties were adamantly opposed.  

The report also fails to mention that the CCG originally originally proposed to keep the beds in Seaton, the furthest of all the affected towns from an acute hospital, changing its mind at the last minute in March 2017 and switching the retained beds to Sidmouth. No plausible rationale was presented for this switch, so that the decision was widely perceived as a political fix because Sidmouth, unlike Seaton, was then in a marginal constituency. The report fails to mention that because of this, the decision was the subject of especially strong criticism at the Devon Health Scrutiny Committee, which rejected by only one vote a proposal to refer the decision and the wider plans to the Secretary of State.

It is particularly outrageous that the report provides no explanation for the scandalous failure of the ICB and its predecessors, together with the RD&E, to make proper use of the former ward over the last 6 years. If poor use has been made of taxpayers’ money, that is not only because NHS Property Services is charging outrageous rentals (could you clarify for that £300,000 p.a. really refers to this wing of the building alone?). It is also because you have failed to take the opportunity to improve local health provision, which is weaker than in many comparable areas of Devon, although Seaton has the most elderly population in the county (after Budleigh Salterton) and lower life expectancy than neighbouring towns like Sidmouth. 

Not only has the NHS left Seaton with a lower level of services than any other community hospital in East Devon, but clinics have been allowed to be discontinued and proposals to introduce new services – like one to locate FORCE chemotherapy here which I myself made – were ignored. It is also very disappointing that the report claims that no viable proposals have been received for the use of the ward, ignoring the detailed, costed proposals for using the hospital made by Seaton Area Health Matters, chaired by Councillor Jack Rowland – a body which was set up with CCG and RD&E encouragement after the 2017 events, but in which you subsequently failed to maintain your interest.

I think I speak for a very large section of the local community when I say that it is essential that this decision becomes an opportunity to reverse the neglect of Seaton Hospital, rather than a confirmation of it, and that we expect the ICB itself to play a full part in putting the hospital on a better footing, not least to compensate the local community for your and your predecessors’ neglect over the last 6 years.

I trust that you will make this letter available to the Chair and other members of the Board. I have copied it to Richard Foord MP and Cllr Paul Arnott, Leader of East Devon District Council, and I shall be making it available to the press as well as locally.

He says: “It presents a distorted history of the hospital and cannot be accepted” see this associated post where Martin spells out his reasons.

Looks like a win for the bean counters as they shuffle money from one public sector purse into another.

Meanwhile the NHS hospital beds are down 3,000 despite ministers promising to increase them by 5,000 “before winter”. – Owl

seatonmatters.org 

Following my request, the Devon Integrated Commissioning Board (ICB), successor to the CCG which closed Seaton Hospital’s ward in 2017, has made public the report which was used to make the decision on 4 October to potentially hand the ward building back to NHS Property Services, which could lead to its demolition. In the interests of public information I am publishing this in full. The first page is reproduced as a photo – the remainder of the report continues as text.

However this report presents a distorted history of the hospital and in a following post I will spell out precisely why it cannot be accepted.

The beds were removed following full public consultation when new ways of looking after people in the local community – often in their own home – were brought in and they have been very successful.

The Your Future Care consultation ran from 7 October 2016 until 6 January 2017 and was led by the then-Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). It focussed on proposals to provide more care and support for elderly and frail people at home and in the community. The aim was to prevent unnecessary admissions to hospital and, if patients need to go to hospital, to get home as quickly as possible, improving their chances of a better recovery.

Throughout the consultation period, the CCG attended over 70 events and public meetings. More than 2,000 people attended these events and discussed the proposals. 1,552 responses to the survey were received, in addition to more than 650 letters and emails.

Separately, ownership of Seaton Community Hospital transferred from the then- Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust to NHS Property Services in 2016 when the community services contract moved from NDHT to the then-Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust.

NHS Property Services charges market rent and other property costs on empty space in its buildings. Where there is no tenant, these ‘void costs’ are paid by the integrated care board, in this case NHS Devon.

Since the Your Future Care consultation, vacant space at the hospital, including the empty ward and linked office space, has cost the NHS in Devon around £1.5millon – poor use of taxpayers’ money. The ward has been fully decommissioned, with utilities disconnected to reduce service charges.

Working with health, care and community partners

This year we have been working with local health, care and community partners to see if they are interested and able to take on the space. These partners include:

o NHS Devon commissioning colleagues o Devon’s acute trusts
o Devon’s mental health providers
o Local GPs

o The Eastern Local Care Partnership
o Local voluntary, community and social enterprise sector groups o Other commissioners
o Other interested parties

With all partners who have expressed an interest in occupying the space, we have been clear that any proposal would need be viable financially, which means being able to cover the cost of bringing the building back up to useable standard, reconfiguring it and then paying the annual rent and service costs. We estimate that the cost of bringing it back into a usable condition would be significant.

Generally, hospital buildings need to be built and maintained to a higher standard than normal commercial buildings, which means they can be comparatively expensive to occupy.

This has meant some local groups would like to occupy the space but can’t afford to and no viable schemes have been received from any of the partners we have approached about occupying the ward.

With that in mind, and faced with ongoing stark financial challenges, we have started the process of surrendering this space so we can save the money that is not currently able to benefit patients. We took a decision on this in September, which effectively means we are in the process of handing the former ward area back to the building owner, NHS Property Services.

No NHS services affected

No NHS services are affected by this work. All services at the hospital continue as normal and there is no proposal to change any services. Local people should continue to attend appointments at the hospital as normal.

Next steps

The current position is that negotiations with NHSPS continue on what will happen next as the handback process is not straightforward.

We have always been very happy to talk to prospective occupants of the space if they have a financially viable scheme to take it on – and we remain so.

Ideally, a solution will be found that involves a positive future for the former ward but the NHS in Devon is under significant pressure to tackle its financial challenges and any possible solutions need to be found as quickly as possible, mindful of the ongoing and significant financial burden the empty space places on our finances.

There are many possible ways forward and all of them are being explored. If the ward was handed back to NHS Property Services, it would be for NHS Property Services to determine what to do with the building.

We continue to meet with local partners to talk about this work.

[And he will be a whole lot more jittery this morning when he wakes up to the two by-election “safe seat” defeats. – Owl]

From Claire Wright’s facebook page

Full text of facebook post:

Marginal seat drama: Simon Jupp LOSES HIS HEAD over Seaton Hospital!

Richard Foord MP is the MP for Seaton and is working hard for his constituents, most recently over the threat to Seaton Hospital.

Simon Jupp, however, seems to be panicking somewhat.

He’s been rushing around taking credit for successes in Richard’s constituency for some time.

Just a few examples are:

Honiton Police Station reopening (that his own govt closed under austerity!)

Jupp then boasted his ‘campaign’ had achieved a railway station at Cullompton. He even got his Tory mate, Mark Harper, to praise him in the Commons!

But the latest example really takes us to new heights of behaving like one of those whirligig beetles you see in ponds.

Richard Foord asked a question at PMQs yesterday about the threat to Seaton Hospital…. But Jittery Jupp had got there first! Sunak’s reply ludicrously commended Jupp’s ‘work’ on the issue!

Jupp then rushed to post a misleading video on social media of Sunak’s answer, which cut out Richard’s question!

Jupp later deleted my comment on his Facebook page directing people to Richard’s post for an honest version.

The full PMQs excerpt of this ridiculous charade saw Jupp smirking and giggling as Sunak praised him for his non work for an issue that’s not in his constituency.

What shameless scam will he come up with next I wonder?

We will have to wait for the next instalment in the Jittery Jupp soap opera!