Now he has found himself in Channel 4’s latest social experiment, where a string of celebrities were “jailed” in a decommissioned nick alongside former offenders to give them a taste of life behind bars.

[Banged Up]

Felicity Cross www.thesun.co.uk (Extract)

…And, perhaps surprisingly, Neil revealed the experience has finally helped him fight his demons over the porn scandal.

He said in an exclusive chat: “I haven’t maintained any friendships within Parliament. Once you become smelly or tainted, you are avoided.

“Politics is very superficial. It is a very ambitious place and, once you are out of the way, it is just another office door open.

“I probably admire a lot of the reformed criminals more than my former colleagues — I think they are more loyal…..

Consequences of over centralised control of levelling-up funds. – Owl

A multibillion pound fund designed to boost levelling up and replace crucial EU funding is being left unspent by the vast majority of councils, the Observer can disclose.

The main reasons for a significant underspend in the shared prosperity fund were money being handed over too late to spend, a lengthy and bureaucratic process and a hollowing-out of council expertise.

Michael Savage 

The fund, a central pillar of the government’s efforts to boost the most deprived areas of the UK, is designed to provide £2.6bn by 2025. Ministers said it would “reduce the levels of bureaucracy and funding spent on administration when compared with EU funds” and “enable truly local decision making”.

However, new data uncovered using the Freedom of Information Act reveals that 95% of the local authorities that received funding in 2022-23 were unable to spend all of their share. Across the UK, 43% of £429m in funding was not spent. Not a single council in the north of England, Scotland or Wales spent its full investment.

The findings will raise questions over whether the new post-Brexit system is streamlining funding and handing power to communities in the way ministers promised when the fund was launched last year.

The unspent money has been rolled over into this year. However Jack Shaw, affiliate researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at Cambridge University, who uncovered the data, said there was a “big risk” of the mistakes that were leaving councils unable to spend the cash would simply be repeated with an even bigger potavailable this financial year.

He said the main reason authorities were unable to spend their allocations in 2022-23 was because the government gave them less than two months, instead of 12 months. Shaw warned that with significant underspends likely at the end of the programme, money could be recouped and allocated elsewhere across Whitehall. “The issue is not the size of the funding pot per se, but the rules attached to it and the failure to get it out on time,” he said. “Authorities will now have to spend nearly three times more than they were able to allocate in 2022-23 – which raises questions about their capacity and capability to do so, given the reductions in staffing in recent years.

“It’s clear that whoever wins the next election will need to prioritise public services and, in particular, rebuild local capacity.”

His research found that of the 235 groups responsible for taking forward the shared prosperity fund, 223 of them had to request additional time to spend their investment. Only 12 authorities spent their investment in full, including Slough and Woking councils, which have both issued bankruptcy notices.

Shaw and others are calling for the system to be simplified and speeded up, to give councils a fighting chance of actually spending money allocated to improve poorer neighbourhoods.

Professor Graeme Atherton, head of the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up at West London University, said: “Part of the problem is that funding was reduced and distributed rather differently. As has happened with all the levelling-up fund, there are more strings attached than initially appear.

“You have to submit a plan – and the plan doesn’t necessarily fit with local need. Also, the areas that had a lot of the funding had it cut. Once you cut money, it’s then hard to rebalance it. It’s not as straightforward as saying, we’ll just reduce the cost of everything. You’ve really got to start again.

“And then there are capacity issues. Those who have been tasked with spending this money at local authority level are very strapped for capacity. What they need is core funding. They’re being asked to spend other ring-fenced funding and it’s difficult to do so.”

The government has earmarked more than £10bn to programmes related to levelling up – the towns fund, levelling-up fund and the UK shared prosperity fund. Experts said all were behind schedule when compared to their original plans.

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said the shared prosperity fund offers each local authority the freedom to spend money on their own priorities. “The majority of local authorities were notified of 2023/24 payment by 6 July 2023 and were paid shortly thereafter.”

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “The Tories’ version of levelling up is a sham and scam. They have hollowed out local government and tied the hands of local leaders so much-needed funding cannot be spent. Labour will oversee the biggest transfer of power from Westminster in British political history and build local capacity outside of Whitehall, so where powers and funding are transferred, they are made the most of.”

Following last Friday’s huge public meeting, Seaton Hospital campaigners are taking their demand to save the threatened wing to the Devon Health & Adult Care Scrutiny Committee at 10.30 this Thursday, where they will hold a joint protest with campaigners for Teignmouth Hospital. Recommendations from a Task Group on the Teignmouth closure, including a proposal to refer it to the Secretary of State, will be before the Committee, and the Seaton closure has been added to the agenda. 

Campaigners from both towns will address the Committee. They include Martin Shaw and Jack Rowland (both of the newly formed Seaton Hospital Steering Committee), and Cllr Chris Clarance (Chair of Teignbridge District Council) and Viv Wilson for Teignbridge.

• There will be a SEATON / TEIGNMOUTH: SAVE DEVON’S COMMUNITY HOSPITALS protest outside County Hall from 9.30 to 10.15, when campaigners will go into the public gallery.

Contact: Martin Shaw (Seaton) 07972 760254, Geralyn Arthurs (Teignmouth) 07592 357535.

An inquiry into Mid Devon District Council’s failed property development company has sparked a controversy among former council leaders.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

Three Rivers Development Ltd (3RDL), which was set up in 2017 to build “high quality” homes and generate profit for the council, will stop trading after accumulating a debt of more than £21 million.

The council’s cabinet, led by the Liberal Democrats, voted unanimously to recommend that the full council agree to stop trading with 3RDL. The council has also decided to investigate the reasons behind the company’s demise and learn from the past.

However, some former leaders of the council have slammed the inquiry as a “no blame” exercise they say ignores the facts and tries to censor their views. They have accused the chief executive Stephen Walford and the district solicitor of interfering with the scrutiny process and undermining the chair of the scrutiny committee.

In a letter to those involved in the company since 2017, Mr Walford asked them to answer a series of questions that he said would inform a reflective piece on learning lessons for the future. He also said that the district solicitor would review all information provided to ensure it meets the standards of accuracy and integrity.

In his letter on October 10, Mr Walford said: “While there are numerous internal and external reports, both advisory and audit, that record the events of the time, the council is hoping to reflect on the events of the past in order to learn and ensure decision-making in future that is informed by the learning from previous experiences.

“To that end, the chairman would be pleased to receive any written responses you might have to the questions as set out below, in order that it might inform a reflective piece on learning lessons for the future.

“To provide you with some reassurance, it is well understood that the administrative realities were perhaps not the most conducive to providing consistency or indeed the stability needed for a business to flourish. Similarly, the impacts of the pandemic are well documented in the council’s financial monitoring reports of the time, and the current administration has no doubt that the council’s attention was at times concentrated on the national emergency response among many other things.

“This is not about seeking to pinpoint a single or specific decision that could or should have been made differently, or to find fault with any of the thinking at the time. However, the scrutiny committee remains keen to consider any learning points and to that end would be interested to hear from former councillors who lived the journey of that time in order to understand from them their views.”

A series of bullet point questions are then listed with responses open until October 27.

Mr Walford concludes: “Unfortunately, there have been a number of inaccurate or mistaken statements made about this subject in the media of late. Therefore can I highlight that the District Solicitor will be reviewing all information provided in order to ensure it meets the standards of accuracy and integrity that befits the worthiness of the scrutiny committee’s consideration.”

Barry Warren, a former leader of the council and a member of the scrutiny committee, said that he was concerned about the timing and the content of the letter, which he received two days after it was dated.

He said that the letter was not based on any terms of reference and that it diverted attention away from crucial facts such as officer advice and creative accounting figures.

Another former leader, Bob Deed, also criticised Mr Walford’s letter as an attempt to undermine Cllr Gilmour’s attempt to gain a greater understanding of the issues. He said that Mr Walford had taken over the garnering of responses, no doubt with removal of any comment of embarrassment to any officer.

He said: “This is not an inquiry.”

He also posed some questions that he said would assist in understanding the 3RDL predicament, such as whether 3RDL was a vanity project borne out of a desire to move on a senior manager, whether the section 151 officer had a conflict of interest as a director of 3RDL, and whether the current administration had abandoned their good intentions to deal quickly, efficiently and effectively with 3RDL.

He said: “The saying goes that ‘you can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time’. It is simpler than that – two people think that they can fool every other living soul all the time. They can’t and don’t. You have received plenty of good advice from many councillors on 3RDL over the last 6/7 years. If you have any problems now, you have only yourself to blame.”

Mid Devon District Council did not wish to comment further.