“The population increases from 3.5 million to an estimated 10 million in the region in the summer.”

“The company said 10% of households in the region have a hot tub.”

Consumers in Cornwall and Devon will be offered cheaper bills in return for cutting their water use as the region struggles to cope with a rise in the number of new residents who work from home.

Alex Lawson www.theguardian.com 

From next year, South West Water (SWW) – which was fined in April for dumping sewage illegally into rivers and the sea – will offer residents new tariffs designed to encourage reducing water use amid concerns about the strain caused by increased numbers of tourists and home workers.

The company, owned by Pennon Group, will trial several new offers, including an “environmental tariff” that will “reflect the higher cost of peak summer demand” but offer discounts over the winter when water is less scarce.

Residents in the south-west were subject to a hosepipe ban that lasted for more than a year and was lifted only in September as reservoirs were replenished. SWW data shows its customers’ household consumption has risen nearly 13%, from 312.4m litres a day in 2019-20 to 352m litres a day in 2022-23.

SWW said the population had swelled by 300,000 over the past 10 years and was expected to grow by a further 530,000 by 2050. “The assumption is this has been driven by retirees or, following the pandemic, those able to work from home all or some of the time,” it said.

The boom in working from home kickstarted by Covid lockdowns brought fresh impetus to a trend for Britons leaving cities in favour of working remotely in the countryside or coastal locations, notably in Devon and Cornwall.

The counties were also popular holiday destinations when UK-based trips dominated the travel industry during the pandemic. However, both trends exacerbated tensions between second homeowners and day trippers, and permanent residents of the south-west.

SWW estimates that the number of second homes is as high as 40% in tourist hotspots, and typically 10% in other coastal areas. It says the population increases from 3.5 million to an estimated 10 million in the region in the summer.

In a recent submission to the regulator Ofwat, Pennon said: “Customers have told us they feel they are paying a premium for the high peak summer demand we experience when visitors come into the area.

Most SWW customers use water meters, rather than paying on fixed tariffs. SWW’s planned “eco tariffs” would reward low consumption levels with discounted tariffs. Those on social tariffs, which offer lower rates for vulnerable customers, will not be included in the trials.

The company said 10% of households in the region have a hot tub, which was another post-pandemic trend. But a spokesperson said it was not currently planning to trial specific tariffs for hot tub owners, although “customers who use more water because they have a hot tub will see higher bills as a result”.

SWW has been one of a number of water companies criticised over its record in polluting England’s waterways and the accurate reporting of leaks. Susan Davy, the chief executive of Pennon Group, gave up her bonus in May in the face of public opprobrium.

Pennon – which also owns Bournemouth Water and Bristol Water – has proposed raising bills from £504 a year in 2025 to £620 in 2030 for SWW customers. The group plans to invest £2.8bn on improvements, including cleaning beaches for swimming and resurrecting plans for the Cheddar Two reservoir.

A new group will try to identify lessons that could be learned following the controversy surrounding a council-owned housing company.

Four Mid Devon councillors will form the group to delve into losses from 3 Rivers Developments to ensure the authority gains knowledge from its foray into the residential property market.

Bradley Gerrard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

The council set up and wholly owned 3 Rivers to build houses for sale  in 2017, but decided earlie this year to ‘soft close’ it, preventing it from embarking on new projects but allowing it to complete ongoing schemes in Tiverton ansd Bampton.

Challenging trading conditions in the construction and housing sectors proved problematic for the company, with the firm shutting down projects amid rocketing prices for materials, facing struggles with restricted site availability, and being affected by rising interest rates and their subsequent impact on the housing market.

The company’s latest published accounts at Companies House show that pre-tax losses ballooned to more than £1.9 million in the year to 31 March 2022 compared to a loss of nearly £96,000 the prior year.

It has to published new accounts by 31 December.

Mid Devon District Council’s scrutiny committee tackled the divisive issue this week, with an at-times fractious debate on how to progress.

Councillor Nikki Woollatt (Ind, Cullompton St Andrews) questioned the committee’s chair, Councillor Rachel Gilmour (Lib Dem, Clare & Shuttern), about why some letters had already been sent to people with knowledge of 3 Rivers, seemingly before the entire scrutiny committee had considered them.

“I consider this overstepping your role,” she said.

“When did the committee decide that these letters should be sent? These things are supposed to be decided by the committee.

“I have an issue with the whole agenda item as I don’t think it is clear what is required of us in scrutiny. The wording is a statement with no instruction, and I would have expected us to have to agree and adopt a terms of reference.”

Cllr Woollatt, who is stepping down from the scrutiny committee, added that she was “dismayed” at how possible terms of reference for a ‘lessons-learned’ exercise had been drafted without the committee’s knowledge and that “activities have taken place behind the scenes.”

The council’s chief executive, Stephen Walford, said the draft terms of reference were intended to enable discussion by the scrutiny committee, and were not intended as being set in stone.

“Trying to set the terms of reference with a blank sheet of paper at a scrutiny committee meeting would have been quite challenging, and would have had less structure than now,” he said.

“The draft is a reflection back to you of all the areas of concern that have been discussed previously.”

Mr Walford added that the committee could amend the terms of reference, or the working group could add to it.

Cllr Woollatt proposed that a small working group be set up that could meet more informally and work in a more focused manner before bringing their findings back to the scrutiny committee.

Cllr Gilmour emphasised her preference for a “quick and thorough” process given how long the 3 Rivers issue had dragged on.

“3 Rivers has been hanging around for years and has caused anxiety and there’s been what has been described as a toxic atmosphere,” she said.

“At one point, the Local Government Association had to be brought in to mediate, as councillors couldn’t speak to each other, that’s how bad it was.”

Councillors highlighted the importance of a transparent process to ensure that the council’s integrity was maintained, with some wanting the working group to be made up of members with no formal links to 3 Rivers or previous administrations involved in its creation.

A vote to set up a working group passed by six votes to four, with councillors Andy Cuddy (Lib Dem, Tiverton Lowman), Gordon Czapiewski (Lib Dem, Tiverton Lowman) Rhys Roberts (Cons, Cadbury), and Gill Westcott (Green, Canonsleigh) against.

The working group will report back to the scrutiny committee in December.

A Mid Devon District Council spokesperson said: “The ‘soft close’ process will enable 3 Rivers to finish its two ongoing projects in Tiverton and Bampton and will ensure that all contractors, suppliers and tradesmen are paid in full, and all associated company property warranties will be honoured.”
 

Incumbent PM made joke about Rishi Sunak’s department because of its focus on lifting restrictions, according to diary entries

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

Boris Johnson referred to Rishi Sunak’s Treasury as “the pro-death squad” as he sought to gain support for a gradual end to Covid restrictions, the official inquiry into the pandemic has been told.

The inquiry also saw messages between two senior Downing Street officials complaining that Johnson was too slow to tackle a second wave of the virus, with one saying: “We are so fucked.”

Johnson and others inside No 10 used language that “pejoratively termed as pro-death” the Treasury, then led by Sunak, because of its focus on lifting Covid measures, according to diary entries by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser at the time.

Stuart Glassborow, Johnson’s deputy principal private secretary at the time, a role that involved liaising between No 10 and the Treasury, was questioned about a meeting in January 2021, where Johnson set out his ambitions for the gradual easing of Covid restrictions.

“The PM is on record as saying that he wants tier 3, 1 March; tier 2, 1 April; tier 1, 1 May; and nothing by September, and he ends up by saying the team must bring in ‘the pro-death squad from HMT’,” said the entry, read out by Dermot Keating, a counsel to the inquiry.

Glassborow said of Vallance’s words: “I wouldn’t dispute what he’s recorded, but I don’t recall the phrase at all.”

Glassborow, who spent more than a decade as a civil servant in the Treasury and returned there after leaving No 10, also professed no knowledge of Johnson’s reported view that Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people”, another detail from Vallance’s diary that was revealed last week.

Subsequent evidence on Monday heard that advisers inside No 10 were increasingly worried during early 2020 that ministers were too slow to consider a lockdown, and then became alarmed that autumn that a second wave was not being treated seriously.

Ben Warner, a data scientist brought into No 10 by Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s then-chief adviser, told the inquiry he was worried about “a lack of scientific capability within the different teams and groups that I was working with”.

The inquiry was shown WhatsApp messages during September and October 2020 between Warner and Lee Cain, Johnson’s head of communications, in which they bemoaned Johnson’s decision to not impose a so-called circuit-breaker lockdown, to slow the pace of infections, saying this repeated the errors of spring.

“I feel like we have accidentally invented a time machine,” Warner wrote to Cain. In an earlier message, Cain said: “We are so fucked. Why are we not acting in London and urban areas now? Same errors as March.”

Warner replied: “Agreed. Feel like we are where we knew we would be three/four weeks ago.”

In evidence about decision-making at the start of the pandemic, the inquiry was shown pages from a report on Exercise Nimbus, a February 2020 theoretical planning operation about Covid, which was told that leaving the virus unchecked was “effectively rendering it a ‘survival of the fittest’ situation”.

It also saw a page from a notebook entry Warner made at the same time, in which he wrote: “NHS fucked in any scenario”, something Warner said may either have been his own personal view or a reflection of the wider sentiment among officials.

Another piece of evidence described Johnson and Cummings castigating Mark Sedwill, at the time the cabinet secretary, in mid-March 2020 for being “miles off the pace”, as Johnson termed it, in terms of realising the threat from Covid.

“YOU need to tell Sedwill this,” Cummings told the prime minister in a WhatsApp message on 14 March, a Saturday. “The fucker shd be in the office now.”

Asked about the messages, Warner said: “I agree with that entire message.” Sedwill is scheduled to give evidence on Wednesday.

That display of contempt for the public will not be forgotten easily

Professor Stephen Reicher (professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews. He was an adviser to the UK and Scottish Governments concerning the behavioural science of Covid, and a member of Independent Sage)  inews.co.uk

I thought I was now incapable of being surprised by the UK’s response to the pandemic. I was wrong.

Over the last few weeks at the Covid inquiry, and especially this week, we have been exposed to revelation after revelation pointing to the dystopian dysfunctionality at the top of government. We have learned of absence, complacency, denialism, dishonesty, disinterest, division, ignorance, incompetence, lack of preparation and, according to former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara on Wednesday, “an absence of humanity”. But what underlies and unites all this, and more, is a pervasive and persistent culture of contempt. Contempt for each other.

Perhaps the most lurid stories, both in terms of the language and the content, have concerned the views that those in the inner circle had of one another. Boris Johnson was an egotistical fantasist who was out of his depth, a “trolley” who constantly changed direction; Matt Hancock was a vain and competent liar, Carrie Johnson was a spoilt princess, Cabinet ministers were called “useless f***ing pigs” by Johnson’s advisor, Dominic Cummings and Cummings himself was called a “f***ing piece of shit” by a ministerial adviser. To call this government a nest of vipers is unfair to vipers.

There was also contempt for women. Cummings denied that his attacks on Helen MacNamara were misogynistic on the grounds that he was even more foul about men. But this misses the point that his slurs against her were unacceptable and that they articulate a broader culture in which women – irrespective of their performance – were talked over or plain ignored.

If there is one revelation that stands out from all the others, it is that Johnson considered the lives of the elderly as worthless. If there is one sentence to serve as his epitaph it should be the allegation that he said: “Covid is nature’s way of dealing with the elderly”. In recent elections, older cohorts have been more likely to vote Conservative. Perhaps, if they recall Johnson’s words on entering the polling booth, this is less likely to endure into 2024.

From before the first lockdown, it was clear that the government believed the public were incapable of responding appropriately to the pandemic because they were too stupid or too weak – or both. You couldn’t reason with them because they couldn’t cope with too much information; you couldn’t support them because too much support would be misappropriated.

It was a viewpoint articulated in 2021 when Jeremy Hunt (then chairing a parliamentary inquiry) asked Matt Hancock why more support was not given to people to self-isolate when testing Covid positive. Because of the government’s fears that the system would be “gamed”, replied the then health secretary.

The problem here is not only that all these views are deeply distasteful in themselves, but also that they both led to policies (such as blame and punishment) that undermined public confidence and co-operation and also stymied policies (such as dialogue, engagement and support) that would have generated such confidence and co-operation. Contempt, like trust, is reciprocal. If you distrust the public, they will distrust you. By showing such contempt for people, this government has earned our contempt (as consecutive polls and by-election results seem to be showing).

If these views help explain the underlying rationale for a failed Covid response, they also explain a dilemma which scientists, especially those of us involved in the advisory process, have been dealing with for a long time. Why – despite all the rhetoric, did the government repeatedly fail to follow the science?

We considered a complex web of potential factors. Was it that they distrusted and had contempt for us too – especially those of us who spoke out at their more egregious errors? Was it that they failed to understand scientific principles and concepts and that we failed to communicate them clearly?

Was it that we failed to appreciate the detailed constraints on what governments are able to do? Was it that, especially in the case of behavioural science, others interjected their advice and believed that they knew better than a mere bunch of academics? After all, they surely were more versed in effective communication and influence having come out on top in several elections on the trot.

All these factors and more may perhaps be of relevance. But however well they understand, and however highly they rate their scientists, a government will not listen to advice about how to save people’s lives if it does not value those lives in the first place. Sometimes, as we have learnt from the last few days at the Covid inquiry, it really is that simple.

Devon and Cornwall’s Crime Commissioner has called for clarity after it emerged that the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland which is leading an inquiry into Chief Constable Will Kerr was itself mired in controversy after a lead investigator quit and police were called to the home of the Ombusdman herself.

Carl Eve www.plymouthherald.co.uk

In July it was revealed that a criminal investigation had been launched on June 16 regarding sexual assault allegations against the former Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Assistant Chief Constable. Mr Kerr strenuously denies the allegations and at the time said: “I recognise and respect the fact that accountability and due process are vital to any investigation, regardless of rank or position. I will continue to co-operate with any investigation. I hope that all matters will be expedited so that they will be concluded without delay.”

The inquiry was launched by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland (PONI) using her ‘own motion’ powers. At the time a PONI spokesperson said “The Ombudsman will also consider the circumstances under which the allegations were investigated by PSNI. The Office has been engaging with the IOPC on cross-jurisdictional issues in recent weeks, as well as with the office of the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner. Details concerning the precise nature of the allegations and any early investigative actions remain confidential at this time.”

The spokesperson said it was “not possible to confirm a likely timeframe for its conclusion.”

As a result, on July 26 this year Alison Hernandez, Devon and Cornwall’s Police and Crime Commissioner suspended Chief Constable Kerr over misconduct allegations. She, in turn, referred the matter to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) which confirmed it was starting its own investigation.

Last month sister website BelfastLive reported that officers in Northern Ireland had been called to the home of the Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson on September 23, following what was described as a “two-day incident” at the property. Officers who responded reported a woman who presented at the door of the property as appearing to have sustained an injury.

Unable to gain entry through the gates, the officers sought to reassure the woman of their presence but reported that she became “obstructive” and “refused to co-operate” with the uniformed officers.

Another person present at the property was spoken to by officers and they later presented themselves at a nearby police station accompanied by a solicitor. Police later confirmed a man was arrested and later released pending a report to prosecutors. The matter is now being investigated by West Midlands Police.

Earlier this week Belfast papers revealed that Susie Harper, PONI’s director of current investigations, had stood down.

On September 1, 2022 Ms Hernandez announced Mr Kerr as her preferred candidate “following a rigorous selection process” for the post of Devon and Cornwall Police Chief Constable. He was, at that time, the Deputy Chief Constable of Police Scotland. He was formally appointed on September 21 last year following a meeting of the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Panel and officially sworn in on December 29. He is the first chief constable appointed by Ms Hernandez.

In light of the ongoing issues with the PONI, questions arose as to how it might affect the ongoing investigation into Mr Kerr OBE and how it may impose upon the length of time he has been suspended – on full pay – from his duties. The Government noted that in 2020 the annual salary for a Devon and Cornwall Police Chief Constable was £170,316.

A spokesperson for PONI told PlymouthLive: “We do not anticipate that there will be any delay in our investigation.”

Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, told PlymouthLive: “I am awaiting further updates from the Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland following recent changes in their organisation and am seeking reassurance that their enquiry remains on track.

“As the Chief Constable remains suspended on full pay any delay or inefficiency in the investigation negatively impacts upon the individuals concerned, Devon & Cornwall Police and the taxpaying public.”