A large cohort of county MPs – including 44 Conservatives and seven former cabinet members within this group – have written to the Prime Minister urging his government to provide an emergency injection of funding for councils to prevent major reductions to local services.

Ian Burbidge www.countycouncilsnetwork.org.uk 

The government is currently consulting on its final Local Government Finance Settlement, to be published next month. This will confirm how much funding councils in England will receive in 2024/25.

It follows November’s Autumn Statement, which provided no new funding for local authorities despite the County Councils Network (CCN) highlighting its members were under extreme financial pressure and set to overspend this year by £650m, with these councils facing a total £4bn funding deficit over three years. To compound this, the announcement of the National Living Wage has left those 37 councils over £230m worse off next year.

With local authorities now setting out significant service reductions in their budgets next year, the 46 MPs who have signed the letter say they are ‘exceptionally concerned’ that residents will be faced with a ‘double whammy’ of reductions in services and higher council tax rates in order for councils to deliver a balanced budget.

Read the letter here.

The group of MPs, include former Local Government Secretary of States Robert Jenrick and Greg Clark, as well as prominent former cabinet members such as Priti Patel, Therese Coffey, Damien Green, and Brandon Lewis. They also include former local government ministers Neil O’Brien, Heather Wheeler, Kit Malthouse, and Jake Berry.

They have called for the government to provide emergency funding for councils to prevent substantial cuts to local services, or worse, some authorities facing financial insolvency and unable to deliver a balanced budget in 2024/25.

In the letter, co-ordinated by CCN and the County All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) they say ‘There is still an opportunity to rectify the situation and ensure MPs are able to support the vote on the Local Government Settlement within the House of Commons in early February.

‘We would therefore urge you to do all you can to use the Final Local Government Finance Settlement to provide additional funding for local government to ensure that the councils in our areas can continue to provide the services that our residents depend upon on a regular basis.’

…’As a fellow MP for a county area, we are sure that you will find the prospect of residents in county and rural areas being impacted in such a way at this time concerning.’

Read CCN’s consultation response to the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement here.

Out of the £650m projected overspend, 45% is down to pressures in children’s services, 25% is down to costs in adult social care, and 20% is attributable to rising demand in school transport services for SEN pupils. The signatories urge government to prioritise any additional funding to these three areas.

Following the letter being submitted, the CCN and the County APPG say they are having ‘constructive’ discussions with Downing Street but are urging the government to rectify the situation and announce additional funding as soon as possible.

Cllr Ben Bradley MP, Chair of the County All-Party Parliamentary Group, said:

“County and unitary councils across the country are currently setting out their budgets for next year, with many proposing substantial reductions to highly valued local services as well as tightening of eligibility for care services. With council tax set to rise again this year, residents face a double whammy. No council leader will take any pride in taking this action, but they simply have no choice after the Autumn Statement left them in a significantly worse position.

“The extent of the impact can be reduced if councils are given an emergency injection of funding, and 46 MPs have signed our letter calling on the government to intervene and protect local services. The fact that we have two former Local Government Secretaries, seven former cabinet members, and support from all three main parties shows the strength of feeling on this issue, particularly amongst my Conservative colleagues.

“I’m the privileged position of being both a council leader and MP and so I can see both sides. The Autumn Statement put more money in people’s pockets and I understand that the public finances are tight, but councils provide important local services that millions rely on each day. We have had constructive dialogue with Downing Street, but we are urging the government to rectify the situation as soon as possible so colleagues in the Parliamentary party are able to support the vote for the final Local Government Finance Settlement next month.”

Cllr Barry Lewis, Vice-Chair of the County Councils Network, added:

“We county leaders pride ourselves on being financially prudent and not afraid to make the difficult decisions but this year we find ourselves under financial pressure like never before. We desperately need government support to stave off the extent to which we will have to make unpalatable reductions to services.

“It is encouraging that an unprecedented number of county MPs, including those from all parts of the country, share our same concerns over the funding shortfall we face. We have had constructive discussions with ministers, but we now hope the government listens to our joint campaign and provides emergency resource later month.”

• The County Councils Network (CCN) is the national voice for England’s county councils. It represents 21 county councils and 17 county unitary authorities. Collectively, they represent 25 million people, or 47% of the country’s population. For more information click here.

Rishi Sunak facing renewed pressure over plans to ‘max out’ North Sea oil

Rishi Sunak is facing further attacks on his plans to expand oil and gas exploration in the North Sea this week. The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill – to be debated in the Commons on Monday – has already triggered widespread protests, including the resignation of Chris Skidmore, a former Conservative energy minister.

Robin McKie www.theguardian.com

The bill aims to boost fossil fuel extraction by establishing a new system under which licences for North Sea oil and gas projects will be awarded annually.

Green groups and analysts are lining up to criticise it. UpLift, which campaigns for green energy, pointed out that the bill, which the government says will “max out” the UK’s reserves, will actually result in only a 2% rise in North Sea gas output. “The remaining 98% of gas demand will come from existing North Sea fields,” its analysis finds.

It adds that just one 1.3 gigawatt windfarm would generate more than enough electricity to offset the gas that would be lost if no new licences were awarded under the bill.

“Sunak, like his predecessor Liz Truss, is obsessing over oil and gas, but dithering on renewables and insulation which will boost UK energy security and lower bills,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of UpLift. “And it’s making people in this country colder and poorer.”

This point was backed by Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “Investments in new North Sea developments will not make a significant difference to energy bills; they will have relatively high operating costs; and they will make it more difficult for the world to halt climate change.”

By contrast, investing in clean British energy and electrifying the economy, with heat pumps and electric vehicles, would reduce dependence on insecure and expensive fossil fuels, Ward added.

A new report by a group of leading economists including Nicholas Stern, criticises the government for allowing too much investment to continue to flow into unsustainable economies such as the development of new oil and gas fields and the construction of homes and offices that are not energy efficient or climate-resilient.

“Investing in the opportunities afforded by the global transition to an efficient, resilient and inclusive economy needs to be a bigger part of restoring productivity and output growth for the UK to gain a competitive lead in the innovative markets of the 21st century,” they state.

These criticisms follow a letter from the all-party parliamentary group for climate change which says: “Just last month, as the UK’s second warmest year on record concluded, the UK joined other countries in signing the UAE consensus at Cop28 and thus pledged to transition way from fossil fuels.

“However, this bill is diametrically opposed to that agreement. Instead of honouring the promises we’ve made to our allies and partners at Cop28 this bill further weakens any claim the UK makes to be a world leader in tackling climate change.”

For his part, Skidmore said before his resignation that he could not vote for legislation that “clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas” and would show that the UK is “rowing ever further back from its climate commitments.”

Of the 20 areas with the largest increase in older private renters during 2011 and 2021, ten are coastal areas that are among the poorest local authorities in the country.

Torbay and East Devon are in the list. – Owl

David Byers www.thetimes.co.uk

High rental prices are forcing older tenents to uproot and move to deprived communities with already overstretched public services, an analysis of census data has revealed.

Indepen/dent Age, a charity supporting pensioners in hardship, compared data from 250 English local authorities in the censuses of 2011 and 2021, and discovered widespread migration over the decade from richer to poorer areas for those aged 65 and over.

Of the 20 areas with the largest increase in older private renters during this period, ten are coastal areas that are among the poorest local authorities in the country. The area with the biggest rise is Blackpool — officially the poorest town in England — where 138 out of 1,000 older households were renting in the latest census compared to 105 in 2011.

This is followed by Torbay in Devon (114 per 1,000 compared to 93 in 2011), Hounslow in west London (69 instead of 50), and the Lancashire coastal areas of Fylde (84 up from 66) and Wyre (79 up from 62). Overall, Blackpool has the highest percentage of renting pensioners in England, with 14 per cent of all older people living in the private rented sector.

The areas with the most rapid decrease in older renters are the most expensive, dominated by London boroughs. This exodus is because of years of rising rental prices in these areas, which made them ever-more unaffordable, combined with an exodus of landlords who are facing higher taxes.

The biggest decrease of older renters was in the City of London, with 43 out of 1,000 households aged 65 and over renting in 2021 compared to 89 in 2011. This is followed by Camden, down from 92 to 69 between the two censuses, Westminster (157 to 135), Lambeth (73 to 57) and Hammersmith and Fulham (73 to 57).

Harlow in Essex was the local authority with the smallest percentage of older residents in the private rental sector in England, at 2 per cent.

Tenants have faced years of rent increases, particularly in London, as landlords sell up and property becomes unaffordable for many existing renters to buy. In the last year, as landlords’ mortgage rates went up, there have been double-digit rent rises for tenants in most regions.

Some tenants have reported being forced to compete with more than a dozen others for a room, submit personal statements for properties, queue and pay well over the odds to secure the room. However, Joanna Elson, chief executive of Independent Age, said there has been little attention given to how this phenomenon affects older people and the communities they move into.

In a report to accompany its research, Independent Age said older private renters are almost three times more likely to be in poverty than those who own their home mortgage-free.

“Older private renters living on a low income desperately need more protections. If they are forced to move out of the towns they know because of high rent, it is likely they will be cut off from friends and family and move into areas where access to services, including the NHS can be harder, which can lead them to experience worse health outcomes.

“This is not just a disaster for them, but a disaster for our society as a whole. None of us want to live our later years isolated, in poor quality housing or have our freedom to choose where we live taken away. Yet this is becoming a reality for a growing number of older people in financial hardship in the private rented sector, and it looks set to increase.”

Statisticians at Hamptons believe 11.5 per cent of all retirement-age couples will be in the private rental sector by 2033 if current trends continue compared with 5.7 per cent in 2022, a rise from 402,963 to 1,003,382, following an analysis of the English Housing Survey. As well as placing a strain on resources in some areas and driving up rental prices, Hamptons said the trend could also mean smaller amounts of inheritance being passed down the generations in future, creating more problems for already-squeezed younger people.

Stella Creasy, Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow

As we sip our pints of wine, clutching our blue passports, we could be forgiven for taking a deep breath when told of the benefits of Brexit. Yet this could become increasingly hard to do, as the promise to maintain or even enhance our environment now that we have left the EU is being broken.

While no campaign bus was ever emblazoned with promises of foul rivers and polluted soil, post-Brexit it is becoming clear that the “conserve” in Conservative doesn’t extend to our natural world. European directives previously accounted for 80% of our laws in this area – creating shared standards we helped write to prevent contamination, reduce emissions and preserve habitats. By working collectively, we could also ensure no country was economically harmed because no border can stop pollution.

When we left the EU, ministers repeatedly pledged not to water down environmental policy post-Brexit. Michael Gove assured us that there was “no future for the United Kingdom in trying to lead some sort of race to the bottom”. But these siren words were used to justify giving the government sweeping powers under the Retained EU Law Act, and to do away with any meaningful parliamentary scrutiny of its future regulations.

As we saw with the fight to protect nutrient neutrality laws, the Tories wanted to allow nitrates and phosphates to be pumped into rivers on the basis this would facilitate housebuilding, something no other country abiding by these rules had found to be necessary. Although this was successfully resisted, new research shows how, post-Brexit, we are increasingly falling behind rather than leading the way when it comes to protecting our own habitat.

Air pollution laws are weaker, chemicals prohibited in the EU are being used here and our carbon emissions strategy is leading to leakage of jobs and gas. Against scientific advice, the UK has chosen to allow thiamethoxam to be used here, even though Michael Gove pledged to use his Brexit freedoms to ban all such bee-killing neonicotinoids.

The EU has also banned the release into our sewers or surface water of chemicals that disrupt the hormonal systems in our bodies; the UK regulator decided the risk of harm wasn’t big enough to merit such action. Applications to use chromium trioxide – a carcinogenic chemical known to increase the risk of lung and throat cancer – are now more likely to succeed here, as our health and safety guidelines don’t meet the EU’s common framework. The impact is not just on our natural world or our health but also on jobs and growth. Companies operating in both the UK and the EU face paperwork from two different regimes – as the smaller market, it’s not hard to see why business is going elsewhere.

The government’s act wrote into law that we could not strengthen laws if doing so could “increase the regulatory burden”. When I and colleagues from across the political spectrum – from Conservative peers to the trade unions and charities – warned this would, inevitably, lead to the watering down of our environmental standards, ministers told us we were scaremongering. Now the EU progresses towards stronger protections on sewage, fast fashion, protections of habitats and “forever chemicals”, while our government goes the other way.

The situation in which we now find ourselves was not inevitable. Voting to leave the EU was a decision we made as a country. It has happened and reversing it would involve decades of debates and division that all those now struggling with the damage it has caused don’t have. However, it is an active choice by this government to use Brexit as permission to treat anything involving international collaboration as unjustifiable – whether on employment rights, consumer protection or the environment.

If we want our kids to breathe clean air and our farming and food production to be safe, we need a government that recognises that there is merit in collaboration: the benefits of dynamic alignment of our environmental regulations, cross-border climate crisis action and the north seas energy cooperation to help cut the cost of renewable energy and make reducing emissions a shared priority across the continent. Pints of wine and blue passports will be of no benefit at all if our water is too dirty and our health too poor to enjoy them.

“Fresh out of the jungle and ready to share his insights, we are honoured to announce that the incredible Nigel Farage will join us as a keynote speaker.” Matt Fiddes

Westminster has a way of sniffing out the weirdos, loud mouths and fantasists, writes Alan Rusbridger [In the Independent], which is why I want to see the Cheeky Chappy’s bum on the green leather seats of the Commons — forced to do the hard work of a proper constituency MP, instead of posturing and gaslighting from the sidelines.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

Nigel Farage and a whole host of celebrities are coming to Tiverton this Spring. Matt Fiddes, who was Michael Jackson’s bodyguard, and is now a business guru who founded Matt Fiddes Martial Arts, has arranged several events being held in the Hartnoll Hotel.

Mr Farage will be in Tiverton on Friday, March 8. Other stars who have booked to make appearances in the town include spoon bending supremo Uri Gellar, singer Michelle Heaton, businesswoman Caprice and entrepreneur Jessen James.

Matt said: “Fresh out of the jungle and ready to share his insights, we are honoured to announce that the incredible Nigel Farage will join us as a keynote speaker.

“As a prominent British personality, broadcaster, and former politician, Nigel has an illustrious career that includes leadership roles in the UKIP party and later the Brexit (Reform UK) party.

“Nigel Farage’s wealth of experience spans almost 50 years, making him a seasoned expert in the game of politics.

“With a deep understanding of the political landscape, he has not only led major political movements but also hosted the widely acclaimed radio show, “The Nigel Farage Show.” Currently, he continues engaging and informing as a GB News presenter.

“This is an unparalleled opportunity to gain insights into the intersection of health and wealth from a distinguished figure who has navigated the complexities of politics for decades.”

Tickets are free and being snapped up fast and are available via the MF.Club website for members 

Towns in England with crumbling water infrastructure are being “besieged” by hundreds of trucks full of sewage, i has been told.

Lucie Heath inews.co.uk 

Water firms in both the north and south of the country are resorting to deploying tankers to transport sewage when there are burst sewers or treatment plant failures.

While it is common practise for waste to be transported in this way when there are problems, some experts argue that recent incidents – such as the 240 sewage trucks a day that were being driven through Exmouth, Devon, over the New Year weekend – are contributing to a “bigger debate” about the state of Britain’s water infrastructure.

They say it raises question over whether Britain’s creaky sewers can cope with challenges including climate change, population growth and underinvestment.

One campaigner accused water companies of having to use tankers due to failures to invest in their network, describing the trucks as “a pipeline of sewage that they’re running through our streets and towns”.

Over the past year, several water companies have faced infrastructure failures that have forced them to dispatch a large number of tankers to deal with or prevent major sewage spills.

In June, roughly 100 tankers were sent to the Fylde Coast, near Blackpool, to remove millions of litres of contaminated water from the sea after a burst pipe at a nearby wastewater treatment works caused a huge pollution incident.

Over the summer, more than 200 tankers full of sewage sludge were driven to the town of Camberley in Surrey and left there for six months after Thames Water’s treatment plants reached critical capacity.

And earlier this month i revealed that 240 truckloads of sewage per day were being sent to an overflowing pumping station in Exmouth, Devon as South West Water dealt with a burst sewer nearby. Some of the waste ended up being pumped directly into the sea as the site struggled to deal with the volume of sewage.

Other incidents involving a large number of tankers have been reported in places including Skegness and Totton. Meanwhile, some residents told i tankers have become a daily occurrence where they live due to continuing network capacity issues.

They said the tankers have caused endless issues for residents, including bad smells, increased traffic and noise.

Mark Dye, from Grimston in Norfolk, said sewage tankers have become a common part of life in the village since he moved there in 2021.

Mr Dye, a campaigner for the Gaywood River Revival campaign, said locals had gotten used to sewage “bubbling” out of manhole covers during wet periods, when the waste system is struggling to deal with heavy rainfall. Anglian Water has been dispatching tankers to the town during periods of heavy rainfall to take away excess water.

While Mr Dye said this solution is preferable to “sewage on the roads”, he said the tankers have created new problems for the village.

“If they are sat right outside your house they are loud, noisy, unsightly… they’re terrible for the roads,” he said.

“It’s literally like having a lorry parked outside your house all night long and every so often the bloke will really rev the engine because they’re pumping.”

He said: “When we live here in the summer it’s like living in the South of France. It’s absolutely beautiful. You’ve got this beautiful chalk stream and all the wildlife around here… But in the winter all these villages have been under siege, we’ve been besieged, because Anglian Water have been doing the same thing for years and so tankers have become the norm.”

Anglian Water said the tankers are a “temporary solution for a much more complicated problem”, which is caused by excess water getting into their leaky system during prolonged periods of wet weather.

The water company said it is working with the local council and the Environment Agency “to come up with a further plan of work and decide jointly how best to prevent these problems happening in the future”.

But Mr Dye said the tankers cannot be described as “temporary” when they have been around for years and questions whether Anglian Water is planning to make the level of investment needed to end their use.

“Anglian Water knows what the issues are, they’ve known for years, and they’ve still not done anything to sort it,” he said.

People living in Exmouth have also become accustomed to the regular presence of sewage trucks on their streets.

This is because the town is home to a treatment centre for “sludge”, which is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process that can be turned into fertiliser for agriculture.

While it is common practice for water companies to transport sludge from smaller wastewater treatment plants to places like Exmouth, the town has been forced to contend with an exponential rise in the number of trucks since 2020 due to problems at two of South West Water’s other sludge treatment centres in Devon.

Data provided by the water company to a local campaign group, End Sewage Convoys and Poollution Exmouth (Escape), shows the number tankers driving to the town’s treatment work has increased from 94 in the first quarter of 2018 to 460 in the first quarter of 2022.

Escape said this latter figure amounts to around 14 vehicle movements every working day as tankers travel in and out, meaning some local residents have a tanker passing their home every 34 minutes.

This was before a burst sewer resulted in up to 240 tankers per day temporarily being driven to Exmouth over the New Year period.

Geoff Crawford from Escape told i the tankers create various issues for the town, including increased traffic, safety concerns and a bad smell. He criticised South West Water for not investing more in its infrastructure to prevent this from happening.

“The way that I describe it is that instead of laying pipes, which are a long-term solution, they’re taking a short term view on this and they’re basically running a pipeline above ground. The tankers are effectively a pipeline of sewage that they’re running through our streets and towns,” he said.

South West Water said: “To clarify, the tankers used in Exmouth are to transport sludge which is not sewage but is instead the separated solids from it. We are not transporting raw sewage from other areas to be treated at Exmouth.

“Tankering is part of the day to day running of wastewater treatment as it ensures that sludge can be transported to one of our sites that can properly treat it. We transport this to Exmouth because it is one of our largest sites and can carry out the treatment needed.”

Experts told i that a certain level of tanker usage by water companies is to be expected and should not be considered a problem, particularly when it comes to the transportation of sludge.

But Dr Ben Surridge, senior lecturer in environmental science at the University of Lancaster, said their use in other circumstances, such as during periods of heavy rainfall, “speaks to this bigger debate about the state of our wastewater and indeed our water infrastructure”.

Water companies have been under fire as Britons have become more aware of the volume of sewage being spilled into our rivers, lakes and seas due to media scrutiny. One year ago, i launched a campaign called Save Britain’s Rivers to draw attention to the plight of our waterways and hold water companies to account.

Many critics blame firms for failing to invest in their infrastructure, much of which was built during the Victorian era.

Research published recently by academics at Imperial College London found that just 1 per cent of the sewers in England and Wales were replaced or rehabilitated between 2000 and 2008.

At this rate, it would take 800 years for this to happen for all the sewers in England and Wales, which is a concern as much of the infrastructure was built with a lifespan of 60-80 years.

However, some experts caution against reading too much into the recent high-profile sewage tanker incidents.

Water companies are not required to report when they use sewage tankers, meaning it is unclear whether their use is increasing.

Professor Stephen Smith, an engineering expert at Imperial, said major incidents such as the ones in Exmouth or Camberley remain “very, very rare”.

“There’s lots of challenges going ahead – increasing urbanisation, climate change, population growth – and the industry is adapting to those situations,” he said.

Previous ChapterNext Chapter

Rising sea levels could cost the British economy more than £100 billion by the end of the century, as floods cause “catastrophic” damages to some of Europe’s coastal regions.

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk 

Sea levels have already increased by 20cm globally since the start of the twentieth century, increasing the risk of flooding from surges during storms and high tides.

Dutch and Italian researchers have estimated the cost of future swelling seas, predicting that GDP in Britain and the European Union will be €872 billion smaller in 2100 than in a counterfactual world without rising sea levels. Overall, GDP would be down 1.3 per cent.

The researchers expect Britain be face a loss of €121 billion, or 1.1 per cent of GDP.

However, the impact on some coastal areas will be far higher, as much as 21 per cent in the north of Italy and north of Poland. “A 20 per cent loss of GDP is catastrophic. It is not something you recover from, really,” said Ignasi Cortés Arbués at Delft University of Technology, who led the study published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

Britain is close to the European average in terms of damages. Cortés Arbués said Lincolnshire and surrounding areas would likely suffer the biggest impact in the UK. Lincolnshire’s coastal transport infrastructure is expected to be badly affected, causing knock-on economic effects for the rest of the agriculture-rich county.

The estimated economic impact for the UK and EU’s 27 member states is something of a worst case scenario.

Cortés Arbués and colleagues assumed global carbon emissions continue on a high trajectory. That path is considered less likely than previously because of the growing number of countries pursuing net zero plans and switching to renewable energy.

The researchers also assumed no new coastal defences or other adaptation measures were taken after 2015. But planners are already exploring how defences such as the Thames Barrier will need to be upgraded later this century.

The researchers defended taking a gloomy view. “This is a stress test of what the economy can do, based on what we do have today,” said Theodoros Chatzivasileiadis, also at Delft University of Technology. The study authors also pointed out that they had not factored in “tipping points” in glaciers and ice sheets around the world, which could lead to faster collapse and greater sea level rise than expected.

The estimated damages were calculated by looking at different sectors, from transport to agriculture. While the economic impact of rising seas has been explored in the past, it has not been looked at such a granular regional level before.

“This study is useful for showing how the increasing threat from climate-induced sea level rise plays out in an economically uneven way. While the hit to national GDP may or may not be high in particular countries, their data reveals that within those overall national figures, particular coastal regions and sectors may be particularly badly hit,” said Professor Chris Hilson at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the research.

Exmouth Town Council and Devon Communities Together are holding a free cost-of-living crisis workshop at Littleham Leisure Centre.

Adam Manning www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

Taking place on Tuesday, January 30 -from 6:00pm to 7:30pm and Wednesday January 31- 12:00pm-2:00pm.

Come along for a FREE workshop for advice on how to reduce your energy use and manage your bills during the cost of living crisis.

The workshop will advise residents on accessing financial support Understanding fuel poverty, the energy market and energy costs How to use energy effectively in the home, keeping warm Supplier services for vulnerable customers and smart meters.

FREE Energy Advice Workshops from Devon Communities Together.

Book a 10-minute advice session and get a FREE bag of goodies to help keep you warm this winter call 01392 248919 or email: anderson.jones@devoncommunities.org.uk

This scheme is in partnership with Devon Communities Together and Exmouth Town Council, to find out more call 01395 276167 or email zoey.cooper@exmouth.gov.uk.

seatonmatters.org /

Seaton and Teignmouth Hospital campaigners will be joined at Devon Health Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday by supporters of Okehampton Hospital, where the ICB are also trying to hand back a ward to Property Services. Please join us if you can!

A three-community protest, Save Devon’s Community Hospitals, will meet outside County Hall at 1.30. The Committee is at 2.15 and Jack Rowland and I will again be speaking, along with Teignmouth and Okehampton colleagues. We are talking to supportive members of the Committee about what it can best do.

Richard Foord MP had intended to be present, but now needs to speak in a debate on international affairs in Parliament, and is sending a letter of support to the Scrutiny Committee. He presented the Seaton Hospital petition in Parliament two days ago.

Planned discussions with the ICB and Property Services have been postponed, but we are now hoping to meet them on 1 February at the Hospital. In the meanwhile, our Steering Committee is also meeting next week to discuss progress on our own plans for using the empty space.

Campaigners are now asking: Which community hospital, paid for by a local community, will be under threat next?

• The ICB have revealed to Seaton campaigners that they originally looked into using the Brownfield Land Fund to obtain public funding for demolishing part of the hospital and building houses. 

The Committee will be considering reports on Teignmouth and Seaton – the report on Seaton includes NHS Devon’s proposal for Okehampton. 

• Speakers from the 3 communities will address the Committee.
• Richard Foord MP has written to the Committee

Fujitsu knew of defects in the Horizon IT system for nearly two decades, while witness statements used in the prosecution of subpostmasters were edited to omit references to the problems, the software manufacturer’s European chief has admitted.

“Shameful” and “appalling”.

Zoe Grunewald www.independent.co.uk

Fujitsu Europe director Paul Patterson told the official inquiry into the Post Office scandal that bugs and errors in the faulty accounting system were known about “right from the very start” by “all parties”.

And he said he had seen evidence of the editing of witness statements – an action he described as “shameful” and “appalling”.

Hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted for theft and false accounting because of errors generated by the Horizon software, in what Rishi Sunak has described as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”.

Their plight was highlighted in an ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which triggered a public outcry earlier this month and led the prime minister to announce plans to exonerate those who had been affected by the scandal.

Fujitsu is now facing demands to contribute a “substantial” sum towards the mammoth £1bn compensation bill, after the company admitted earlier this week that it had a “moral” duty to do so.

Giving evidence to the official inquiry into the fiasco, Mr Patterson said that the earliest report of a bug he was aware of was in November 1999, and the latest in May 2018.

When asked if Fujitsu knew about the existence of errors and defects at a “corporate level”, he said that “right from the very start of the deployment of this system, there were bugs and errors and defects which were well known to all parties”.

He told the inquiry: “I’m surprised that that detail was not included in the witness statements given by Fujitsu staff to the Post Office – and I’ve seen some evidence of editing of witness statements by others.”

Pressed by the inquiry lawyer on how he would describe the editing out of bugs or “data integrity problems” in witness statements, he said: “Shameful, appalling – my understanding of how our laws work in this country [is] that all of the evidence should have been put in front of the subpostmaster, that the Post Office was relying on to prosecute them.”

Mr Patterson also told the inquiry that data provided to subpostmasters during criminal proceedings was “not sufficient” for them to understand whether Horizon was “operating correctly at the relevant branch”.

It was “certainly not a gold standard or any standard – it’s a very simple Excel file which tells you not very much”, he added.

Appearing in front of MPs on the business and trade committee on Tuesday, Mr Patterson acknowledged that Fujitsu had a “moral obligation” to contribute to the compensation awarded to subpostmasters. But he said that the “right place to determine that” was after the official inquiry had published its findings.

His appearance came as the Post Office was ordered by the government to investigate a second IT system after the i newspaper revealed that a number of subpostmasters had claimed to have been convicted of theft on the basis of errors generated by Capture software.

The government has now been asked to look into the case of Steve Marston, a 67-year-old former subpostmaster in Heap Bridge, Greater Manchester, who claims that errors in the software – a precursor of Horizon – led to his being convicted of theft and false accounting offences in 1998.

On Thursday, the Department for Business and Trade asked the Post Office to establish “if there are issues with any other systems currently or previously used by [the] Post Office”, following reports that three former subpostmasters had said that the system was prone to errors and caused shortfalls when they went to balance their books.

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We take very seriously the concerns that are being raised about cases from before the Horizon system was first rolled out in 1999, and we will of course assist in looking into such cases brought to our attention.”

Mr Marston said he had not stolen “a penny” but had pleaded guilty in order to avoid being sent to prison.

“They said pleading guilty was the only way to avoid going to jail,” he said. “I just thought it must be something I’m doing wrong; computers were in their infancy, you didn’t think they could be wrong.”

“They said, ‘Capture doesn’t make mistakes,’” he added.

“See you in court then”

More quotes from the Post Office Horizon inquiry

Fujitsu manager labelled subpostmaster as ‘nasty chap’ before High Court case

A Fujitsu manager labelled a subpostmaster as a “nasty chap” who will be “all out to rubbish” the company’s name ahead of legal proceedings which led to his bankruptcy, the Horizon IT inquiry heard.

Josh Payne www.independent.co.uk

Peter Sewell, who was part of the Post Office Account Security Team at Fujitsu when East Yorkshire subpostmaster Lee Castleton faced his legal battle in 2007, describe the road the court was situated on as a place “they used to hang people out to dry”.

Mr Castleton, from Bridlington, was found to have a £25,000 shortfall at his branch after losing his fight with the Post Office.

Mr Sewell admitted “we all protect our own companies” when pressed on whether he saw it as important to protect Fujitsu’s overall reputation.

In an email exchange in December 2006 with IT security analyst Andrew Dunks, Mr Sewell appeared to give words of encouragement to his colleague ahead of the court battle, which read: “See you in court then.

“Fetters lane is where they used to hang people out to dry. I don’t suppose that type of thing happens any more though.

“That Castleton is a nasty chap and will be all out to rubbish the FJ (Fujitsu) name.

“It’s up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity no matter what the prosecution throw at you.

“We will all be behind you hoping you come through unscathed. Bless you.”

Mr Dunks replied: “Thank you for those very kind and encouraging words. I had to pause halfway through reading it to wipe away a small tear…”

Questioning Mr Sewell about the exchange, counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake said: “Is that typical of the approach to the work that you were doing?”

Mr Sewell responded: “No, no – I don’t know why that was written.”

The witness added: “I don’t know why it was written – I don’t remember writing it, but obviously I did. I certainly don’t understand it.”

The counsel to the inquiry also asked Mr Sewell: “But my question is, did you see it as important to your work to protect the name of Fujitsu?”

He said: “I guess I did, but not purposely.”

Mr Blake added: “So it would be unfair to describe you as somebody who saw protecting Fujitsu as important – an important part of their job?”

Mr Sewell said: “We all protect our own companies, yes.”

On behalf of a number of subpostmasters, Flora Page continued to probe the witness about the email to Mr Dunks, saying: “Was this your pep talk to your team member that you were managing before he had to go and give evidence?”

Mr Sewell replied: “No it wasn’t a pep talk, no.”

Ms Page continued: “What you say to reassure him is ‘don’t worry, he’s a nasty man’ – how did you form that opinion Mr Sewell?”

Mr Sewell said: “I don’t know, I don’t know why I wrote it. I apologise.”

Ms Page then asked: “What was being said within Fujitsu that allowed you to form the opinion that he was a nasty man?”

The Fujitsu witness said: “Nothing, I don’t think.”

Ms Page continued to press him, saying: “Nothing?”

Mr Sewell said: “I’m not aware of anything, no.”

Ms Page went on: “You made that up off the top of your head?”

The witness replied: “In a way, I think, yes.”

The subpostmasters’ lawyer continued: “And why would you do that Mr Sewell?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Ms Page went on: “Is that the opinion you formed of all subpostmasters who took issue with what the Post Office said in the courts?”

Mr Sewell responded: “Absolutely not.”

Ms Page continued: “You were egging Mr Dunks on weren’t you, urging him to go into battle with Mr Castleton, weren’t you?”

Mr Sewell said: “I don’t know what it was written for now, I don’t know.”

Moving on to a different part of the email, Ms Page said: “You will know by now that Mr Castleton was indeed ‘hung out to dry’.”

Mr Sewell replied: “I know a lot more about it now than I did, yes.”

Ms Page then asked: “Knowing what you know about him being hung out to dry, and the way in which you urged Mr Dunks to go into battle with him, is that the right attitude for someone to take into court when they’re about to give evidence in a case with serious implications for someone?”

“No,” he said.

Ms Page added: “And yet that was the attitude that your management style, and your email, fostered and encouraged isn’t it?”

Mr Sewell said: “It suggests that way, yes. I don’t know why I wrote it.”

He was then questioned on whether he had written a similar email before Mr Dunks gave evidence against subpostmistress Seema Misra, to which he replied: “Absolutely not.”

“Why do you say absolutely not?” Ms Page asked.

Mr Sewell said: “I can’t even believe that that (the email about Mr Castleton) was written.”

Ms Page added: “The attitudes towards subpostmasters that you encouraged in your team must have been one they carried into court whenever they gave evidence against subpostmasters, is that right?”

The witness replied: “I don’t believe so.”

The statutory inquiry, which began in 2021 and is chaired by retired judge Sir Wyn Williams, has previously looked at the human impact of the scandal, the Horizon system rollout and the operation of the system, and is now looking into the action taken against subpostmasters.

The inquiry was established to ensure there was a “public summary of the failings which occurred with the Horizon IT system at the Post Office” and subsequently led to the wrongful convictions of subpostmasters.

Inquiry also hears how data was manipulated before being used in criminal trials

It just keeps getting worse – Owl

Penny Horwood www.computing.co.uk

A software developer at Fujitsu who raised the issue of bugs within the Horizon software that the Post Office rolled out from the late 1990’s has told the inquiry into the Post Office scandal that the company did not fix the bugs because it was too expensive and too time consuming. It isn’t the first time the inquiry has been made aware of damaging decisons being made due to worries about cost.

Gerald Barnes, a software developer at Fujitsu since 1998, worked on numerous technical tasks relating to the Post Office migration away from paper-based accounting methods to the automated Horizon IT system.

The inquiry heard that in 2008, a glitch in a system called CABSProcess, which was supposed to automatically summarise a post office’s transactions at close of business, resulted in users having balancing issues.

Crucially, the system did not make post office operators aware of the problem.

“The failure was silent to the postmaster,” Barnes said. “Although it was available [to Fujitsu] in the event log and to diagnosticians, the operator at the Post Office branch would not know anything had gone wrong.”

According to an internal Fujitsu email, Fujitsu did not look to fix the issue due to its “rarity”, but it eventually did when it became “a higher priority with the [Post Office],” when it appears to have emerged that the issue affected 195 branches.

Speaking yesterday at the inquiry Barnes said: 

“We were just about to replace [legacy] Horizon with HNGx [Horizon Online.] The better thing to do is to make sure the [Horizon Online] software works. It would have just been too expensive to do a thorough job at that stage. It would have been uneconomic. To comprehensively rewrite the error handling would be a massive job. It would be extremely expensive.”

In an internal message chain at the time, Barnes said: “I hope the [Horizon Online] version is much better.”

In 2009, Barnes began working with the audit team responsible for gathering the data which was subsequently used in the trials of sub-postmasters. It was around this time that Fujitsu scrapped a third-party software program that had been in place to, among other tasks, help produce audit record queries (ARQs). This was in order “to save the licence fee”, according to Barnes. 

Fujitsu rewrote the code so that Horizon would handle this function but more bugs meant the ARQs did not provide complete information. Barnes said that in 2010, he worked on one such bug that caused multiple transactions to appear in a spreadsheet without it being clear that it was the same transaction being duplicated.

Email chains between Fujitsu management and its fraud and litigation team which have been presented to the inquiry have revealed that Fujitsu knew about a string of ongoing problems with ARQs that it did not disclose. The duplication of transactions was one such problem with as many as one-third of transactions being duplicated. 

Further emails indicate that Fujitsu management knew that if this became public it would call into question the integrity of the data and therefore prosecution cases.

“If we do not fix this problem, our spreadsheets presented in court are liable to be brought into doubt if duplicate transactions are spotted,” Barnes warned in an internal exchange in 2010. “There are a number of high-profile court cases in the pipeline and it is imperative that we provide sound, accurate records.”

Filtered data

Also giving evidence to the inquiry yesterday was John Simpkins, a team leader within Fujitsu’s software support centre (SSC).

Simpkins was questioned on the now well-known and controversial area of whether Fujitsu and/or the Post Office could access branch data without the knowledge of the sub-postmasters. The forensic accountants Second Sight, and indeed the BBC were told, repeatedly, by the Post Office that remote access was not possible.

Simpkins was shown a document in which an answer was formulated for a question posed by Second Sight, which was: “Can Post Office or Fujitsu edit transaction data without the knowledge of the postmaster?”

A formulated answer was then presented: “Neither the Post Office nor Fujitsu can edit transaction data without the knowledge of the sub-postmaster.”

Simpkins failed to give a clear answer to the question posed by counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, on the accuracy of this formulated answer. Mr Beer KC persisted:

 “So just answer my questions, in summary,  ‘neither Post Office nor Fujitsu can edit transaction data without the knowledge of a sub-postmaster’, is wrong isn’t it?”

“I believe so,” Simpkins said.

Simpkins also said that the team he worked in “downed tools” after learning the Post Office was using ARQ data which had been “manipulated from its original source” and presented to the Post Office in a “filtered” format before being used in criminal proceedings against the sub-postmasters.

“The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is investigating after finding that the “plan for water” was not detailed or specific enough and was neglecting pollution sources beyond sewage spills. Farming is a bigger polluter of rivers than private water companies.”

This is the same “Plan for Water” that our “libertarian inclined” Simon Jupp voted for, having voted down a Lord’s amendment for mandatory targets, and is the basis of his claim that he “would never vote to pollute our water”. – Owl

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

The government’s flagship plan for cleaning up Britain’s waterways is not doing enough to stop farmers polluting rivers, England’s watchdog has found.

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is investigating after finding that the “plan for water” was not detailed or specific enough and was neglecting pollution sources beyond sewage spills. Farming is a bigger polluter of rivers than private water companies.

The watchdog said that policies for dealing with chicken manure and other pollutants washing off farm fields were limited, and that plans to tackle pollution from roads were “notably absent”.

Overall, the OEP said the government was “largely off-track” and faced “very substantial challenges” in hitting its environment targets, which range from halting wildlife declines to restoring waterways to their natural state.

Robbie McDonald, chief scientist at the OEP, said: “Prospects are largely off-track. Water pollution is still problematic. Pollution incidents are not reducing and the ecological status of England’s freshwaters, which is one of the most important barometers of success, has remained largely static. Not all of the major pressures are being attended to. Agricultural pollution is a big issue.”

Cathy Maguire, author of an OEP report to be published on Thursday, said the watchdog had begun a “very substantial piece of work” on the effectiveness of laws and regulators to curb farming and transport pollution in rivers.

The watchdog said that not enough was being done for the government to hit its target of increasing the number of waterways that were close to their natural state from 16 per cent now to 77 per cent by 2027. The Times’ award-winning Clean it Up campaign has been calling for greater resources for regulators and more incentives for farmers to improve the state of the country’s rivers and seas.

Overall, the OEP’s annual progress report found the government was largely off track with regard to meeting 10 out of 40 environmental targets. A lack of evidence meant 15 were impossible to assess. The rest were on track to some degree.

The report painted a mixed picture of the state of England’s natural environment. Of 51 trends, about half were improving but the rest were deteriorating, static or impossible to evaluate because of a lack of data.

Dame Glenys Stacey, OEP chairwoman, said her team’s ability to assess progress towards restoring wildlife and habitats had been hampered by a “really concerning” lack of monitoring and transparency. Thérèse Coffey, the former environment secretary, pledged last year that everyone should live within a 15-minute walk of woodland or other green space but, because of a lack of evidence, this was found impossible to measure.

The watchdog made 47 recommendations urging the government to speed up and scale up action to meet the nation’s environmental targets. Stacey said: “We do now have, to a large extent, control of our own destiny [post-EU], but we’re not moving quickly enough.”

Labour called the report a “damning indictment” of the government’s record on protecting the natural world. “They have left the UK as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with record levels of toxic sewage swilling through our rivers, lakes and seas,” said Steve Reed, shadow environment secretary.

On top of pollution, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed there were more than a million fly-tipping incidents in England last year, a small decrease but largely unchanged on the previous year. Farming groups said the number underplayed the true figure because much illegal rubbish dumping was happening on private land.

The ex-special forces teams fighting fly-tipping

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Rebecca Pow, the environment minister, said: “We were always clear that our targets are ambitious, and would require significant work to achieve, but we are fully committed to creating a greener country for future generations and going further and faster to deliver for nature.”

“Spreadsheet” Sunak, who promised integrity and accountability on the steps of No 10, caught for a second time being “economical with the truth” when it comes to interpreting statistics.

‘Not surprising’ people felt ‘misled’ by government’s asylum claims – UK stats watchdog

Tim Baker news.sky.com

The UK’s statistics watchdog has criticised the government for claiming to have cleared the legacy asylum backlog – saying it is “not surprising” people felt “misled”.

Rishi Sunak and his administration faced criticism at the start of the year for saying they had cleared all the applications to remain in the UK by asylum seekers made before 28 June 2022.

In total, 4,537 claims from the backlog still needed a decision at the time of the announcement – but Mr Sunak’s spokesman said since these had been reviewed, the government considered them “cleared”.

Following a review, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has now written to opposition MPs that complained about the prime minister’s claims.

Sir Robert Chote, the OSR’s chair, said that “it is not surprising that the government’s claim has been greeted with scepticism and that some people may feel misled”.

Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael said: “Not only is the government celebrating something that is no achievement, they are twisting the facts, as proven by the UK stats authority just today.

“As this letter again shows, the Conservatives have not cleared the asylum backlog. The British public deserves better than this.”

Mr Carmichael was one of the MPs who complained, alongside Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock.

A post on X from Rishi Sunak at the time had a community note added to it – meaning other users provided context for what was said.

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) January 2, 2024

In his letter, OSR chair Sir Robert said that the “average member of the public is likely to interpret a claim to have ‘cleared a backlog’ – especially when presented without context on social media – as meaning that it has been eliminated entirely”.

He added: “That said, there may be a perfectly good case for excluding cases of this type [the ones which remain but were counted as ‘cleared’] from any commitment to eliminate the backlog over the timeframe the government chose, but this argument was not made at the time the target was announced or when it was clarified in the letter to the home affairs committee.

“This episode may affect public trust when the government sets targets and announces whether they have been met in the other policy domains. It highlights the need for ministers and advisers to think carefully about how a reasonable person would interpret a quantitative claim of the sort and to consult the statistical professionals in their department.”

While Sir Robert thanked the government for publishing the data alongside its claim, it noted this was not provided ahead of time to journalists, “which prevented them from being able to scrutinise the data when first reporting it”.

“This does not support our expectations around intelligent transparency, and we have raised this with the Home Office,” he said.

Downing Street said it would “consider” the letter from Sir Robert.

Asked whether Downing Street had a problem with representing statistics accurately, Mr Sunak’s spokesperson said: “

“I don’t think that is right. We publish a wide range of statistical information and continue to do so.

“We also linked through to the full story on Gov.uk with the details of our update on the legacy backlog, and the PM was referring to a commitment he himself made and spoke about.

“But of course we will note the letter and consider it to ensure we can be as clear and transparent as possible.”

Mr Sunak pledged in December 2022 that he would “abolish” the legacy backlog of asylum claims made before 28 June of that year, with the Home Office being given the target of the end of 2023.

The department said the pledge had been “delivered” earlier this month, having processed more than 112,000 asylum claims overall in 2023.

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There were more than 92,000 asylum claims made before 28 June 2022 requiring a decision, but Labour has said the government’s claim that all of those cases have been cleared is “false”.

The Home Office conceded that all cases in the legacy backlog have been reviewed, but added that “4,500 complex cases have been highlighted that require additional checks or investigation for a final decision to be made”.

The NHS body responsible for funding local hospice services has told local MPs it’s working towards ‘equitable’ funding for all four adult hospices in Devon.

[Amazing how a looming general election concentrates political minds, especially when the Tory stranglehold on Devon looks to be under serious threat. – Owl]

Philippa Davies www.midweekherald.co.uk 

Last year Hospiscare, which serves East Devon and Exeter, warned that it might have to cut services if it doesn’t receive more money from the NHS. The charity is facing a £2.5million deficit in the next financial year. Hospiscare pointed out that it receives only 18 per cent of its £10million annual running costs from the NHS, while the average NHS contribution to other UK hospices is 37 per cent.

Meanwhile, Sidmouth Hospice at Home receives no funding from NHS Devon.

The East Devon MP Simon Jupp, Tiverton & Honiton MP Richard Foord, and Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw all wrote to the NHS Devon Integrated Care Board to raise their concerns.

Simon Jupp has held meetings with the CEOs of Sidmouth Hospice at Home and Hospiscare to discuss the impact on their services from the lack of fair funding from NHS Devon, and secured and led a debate in Parliament about the issue on Wednesday (January 17).

[See Hansard transcript here with contributions from Richard Foord and Kevin Foster, Torbay, with Helen Whately, The Minister for Social Care, responding]

In a letter dated the same day, sent to all three MPs, the chair and chief executive of NHS Devon’s Integrated Care Board, said their body is also facing a huge cash deficit, but is aware of the financial challenges Hospiscare faces.

The letter said: “Our executive team recently met to discuss the funding challenges faced by our hospices and are working on plans to move towards equitable NHS funding for all four adult hospices in the county starting in 2024-25.

“These conversations are ongoing, given the financial challenges outlined above, and we have committed to undertaking a financial review that addresses several of the options that were part of the end of life commissioning review.”

The letter said the different levels of funding to hospices are the result of historic grant arrangements pre-dating the creation of the ICB – but the funding body is now working with NHS England South West ‘to support the implementation of sustainable, effective end of life support for people and families across Devon’.

Simon Jupp said: “I first raised NHS Devon’s unfair funding for hospices over two years ago. It is truly regrettable that it took the debate I secured in Parliament for NHS Devon to finally commit to reviewing hospice funding in the county just hours before it began.

“I was pleased to secure the support of the Minister for Social Care for my call for fairer funding for hospice services in Sidmouth, Exmouth, Seaton, Axminster and Exeter. I will continue to press for progress from NHS Devon to better support all of our local hospice care providers and their brilliant teams who help take the strain off the RD&E and community hospitals across East Devon.”

Regulator accused of ‘massaging figures’ by telling staff to pause inspections at poorly performing waste sites until January.

www.theguardian.com 

The Environment Agency told staff in September to stop inspecting the most poorly performing waste sites until January in order to meet corporate compliance targets, it can be revealed.

The regulator has been accused of “massaging the figures”, with an insider telling the Ends Report and the Guardian that a lack of resources means the body is “failing to do its statutory duty in a timely manner”.

Under the Environment Agency’s corporate targets, the regulator aims to ensure that 97% of all regulated sites, such as landfills, are complying with their permits.

In an email sent on 20 September last year, and seen by the Ends Report and the Guardian, a senior installations manager for waste sites in Nottingham emailed staff to warn that the region was at risk of missing this corporate target.

“The KPI [key performance indicator, a way companies measure performance] says that we have to have 97% of our sites in compliance band A B C, which effectively means we are ‘allowed’ no more than 3% in D E F. 3% of our sites equals 23.2 sites. Therefore we are aiming for 23 – NO MORE,” they wrote.

The agency identifies any non-compliances in the course of a calendar year and uses this information to work out a compliance rating based on a points system. Based on the cumulative score over a calendar year, each site is placed into one of six compliance bands from A to F.

Sites in bands A and B have demonstrated an expected level of permit compliance, sites in bands C and D must improve in order to achieve compliance and sites in bands E and F must significantly improve in order to achieve compliance. The score determines the level of annual subsistence fees regulated firms must pay to the Environment Agency.

In the email, the manager asked officers to “PAUSE UNTIL JAN work which is not absolutely necessary to do now”.

Responding to the email, a technical lead officer raised concerns with this plan and warned that there are already environmental problems with waste sites in the east Midlands region that could be exacerbated if they paused inspection work.

On 28 September, the junior member of staff was told by a separate team leader: “If you still feel uncomfortable with our direction when we’ve seen the reviews and reflected on our best course of action, we’d like to offer you the opportunity to work on other projects instead that have a higher priority to us to remove any conflicts that may exist for you.”

Speaking on the condition of strict anonymity, one Environment Agency insider said that this statement “upset a lot of colleagues in that office and those who work in that part of the business because the managers were basically saying: ‘We don’t care about your professional judgment, we are just chasing this number.’”

This team leader emphasised again that it was important to “maintain our D E F KPI as far as we can as it’s an externally reported KPI that is coming under heavy scrutiny at the moment”.

The direction was given to “pause any work that may foreseeably result in a site moving into D E F”.

The team leader asked the officer to “produce a forward plan” to explain what they would do to ensure the risk with the specific waste site of concern was mitigated, but said “we’d prefer this to start from January”.

“In the meantime, we can decide the best way to service the band U without setting hares off that we can’t control or haven’t the resources to deal with,” they wrote.

Band U are sites that have not been classified because they have not been inspected.

An Environment Agency insider said the fact the instruction related to the most poorly performing sites was “evil”.

“It’s saying: stop looking at the sites that we know are the worst,” they said. “This is indicative of the fact that we are failing to do our statutory duty in a timely manner. It’s a method of massaging the figures to make it appear that the situation is better than it is.

“As soon as you know that a site is causing problems then you need to deal with it. But the easy way to make that problem go away is to not see the site as a problem. The external problem hasn’t gone away, but what they’re doing here is trying not to create an internal problem by pretending they haven’t noticed the issue,” they said.

The insider said the problem was down to resourcing, and that ultimately the Environment Agency’s budget had been cut to such an extent that it was unable to regulate properly.

“By not exceeding that traffic light target in our KPIs it’s a very simplistic indicator that we as a business are not doing all the proper stuff that underpins that,” they said. “It shouldn’t just be an absolute bloody traffic light target. But the reality is that everything is broken to the extent that we are playing silly buggers with the numbers just to reach the targets we have set ourselves.”

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “These claims are incorrect – our work to regulate these sites did not stop. We are responsible for over 600 waste and installation sites in the east Midlands, and it is not unusual to prioritise work on those which pose the greatest risk to the environment, for example, those with hazardous waste.

“Last year, all these sites received their necessary inspections by our officers – and we already have compliance plans in place for the forthcoming year, to ensure they meet our high standards.”

However, the insider said that to claim all sites received their necessary inspections was “disingenuous” because the staff decided what “necessary” was.

“The subtext of that statement is that we define what necessary looks like, and what these individuals said [was] that for those poorly performing sites, we are not going to look. It’s like putting a telescope up to your blind eye and saying: ‘What signal, I see no signal,’” they said.

Commenting on the emails, Helen Venn, the chief regulatory officer at the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), the government’s post-Brexit green regulator, said: “It is crucial for all government departments and public bodies to keep accurate records. Monitoring compliance with environmental law is a critical component of effective environmental regulation. We are undertaking work to consider the implementation and effectiveness of legislative frameworks and associated arrangements in relation to compliance monitoring.”

Posted on X, a clip of the former Environment Minister admonishing Yvette Cooper that “she can’t even get the name of the country right” when she referred to the “Kigali Government” in the Rwanda debate.

No wonder our environment is so full of crap. – Owl

View the clip on X here

Cllr Chris Lockyear, Chairman, Sidmouth Town Council

Sidmouth Town Council held it January meeting on 8th January. We were delighted to welcome 4 visitors including PC Driver of Devon and Cornwall Police. Most meetings of Sidmouth Town Council are open to the public, unless confidential issues are being discussed, and we would be delighted to see more members of the public. And there is space on the agenda if you want to ask a question.

A lot of our work is done in Committees and Working Groups and we had reports from each at the meeting. The main groups are Tourism and Economy, Environment, Planning and Youth Provision. Each covers different aspects of the work of Sidmouth Town Council and in this week’s article I want to discuss some of the things related to the Environment.

The Town Council is active on various topics in relation to the Environment including climate change, natural environment, built environment and pollution.

On Climate Change we are seeking to both reduce the Council’s own carbon footprint as well as encourage residents and businesses to reduce theirs. One such initiative is the offer to residents and businesses of the Sid Valley of a free infrared (thermal imaging) camera survey of their houses or premises in order to identify possible areas of heat loss. Heat can be lost through walls, windows, doors or roofs as a result of poor insulation, poor design or poor maintenance. Not only does this involve wasted energy but also of course wasted money. We have a team of volunteers who will come to your property to take the photos and the images are then sent to you with some comments. They say a picture speaks a thousand words and these images can certainly help you understand where heat is being lost. See Council website for details.

One mitigation for climate change is the planting of trees that will absorb some of the carbon that has been emitted. Working with the Arboretum and others we plan to plant 14,000 trees in the Sid Valley, one for each resident, which will change the natural environment in the Sid Valley. We will also be doing a survey this year with the support of Sidmouth Arboretum to understand how many trees we have in the Sid Valley and what type. The Arboretum did a similar survey 10 years ago and so it will be interesting to see what has changed. In 2014 about 10 per cent of the trees were Ash but since then a lot have been felled as a result of Ash dieback.

With regard to the built environment, Sidmouth Town Council has been working with East Devon District Council on the Beach Management Plan to protect Sidmouth from the sea. Before Christmas we were delighted that the Environment Agency agreed to support the project with £15 million. This has allowed detailed design to start with a view to building additional breakwater(s), a groyne on East Beach, and a re-enforced splash wall along the Promenade, raised somewhat at the eastern end. Once installed, this should reduce the risk of flooding significantly for decades to come.

Along with many residents Sidmouth Town Council has been concerned about the discharge of untreated sewage to our river and into the sea via the Combined Sewage Overflows (CSOs). We have been working with South West Water and others to highlight the problems and to find solutions. South West Water has committed to spend around £10 million over the next couple of years to address the issue. We are one of only two towns in the South West to get this accelerated spend.

The key issue is that clean water is getting into the sewers which cannot cope with the extra load. The excess diluted sewage then has to be discharged untreated into the river or sea. South West Water has been undertaking CCTV surveys of the sewers to identify leaks and have identified areas that need lining. This work will start shortly. They are also seeking to reroute surface water, for example from the Ham car parks, away from the sewer. Both these interventions will reduce the load on the system and therefore the number of times the CSOs are used.

The Environment Committee has some involvement with all these activities undertaken by voluntary groups and other organisations, for the benefit of all the people and things that live in the Sid Valley.

Later this month the Council will agree its budget for 2024/25 and so I will tell you more about that next month.

Reminding the House that the pension triple-lock was originally a LibDem proposal, not a Tory one

Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Work and Pensions)  

There are 2 million older people living in poverty—that is one in six—and another million are sitting just above the poverty line silently struggling to make ends meet. Together, a quarter of older people are in or at risk of being in poverty. In recent years, the phrase “heating or eating” has become shorthand for the cost of living crisis. It rhymes, and it is easy to say, but it is the reality facing too many of our pensioners. Age UK research found that 4.2 million people cut back on food or groceries last year, while a survey by this House’s Petitions Committee of those engaging in petitions on pension levels found that three quarters were worried about affording food.

Health statistics always worsen in the cold winter months, with mortality rising in all parts of the UK last year compared with previously. As we face an even colder winter —in my constituency we often reach minus temperatures overnight—there are real consequences when older people cannot afford to properly heat their homes. The reality is that heating or eating is not a catchphrase, but a decision about survival. It is our duty as policy makers in this place to ask why that is a reality for so many of our older people and to find solutions.

I welcomed the Government’s eventual decision to keep the triple lock this year, but the lack of clarity and uncertainty about that decision appeared to be electorally motivated, and I argue it caused a great deal of anxiety for many older constituents.

Richard Foord Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Defence)

My hon. Friend is talking about the triple lock on pensions. I have heard it said in this House in recent months that the triple lock on pensions was a Conservative proposal, so I went to the Library to find out whether that was true. The 2010 Conservative manifesto talks about

“restoring the link between the basic state pension and average earnings”, while the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto states:

“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”

Does she agree with me that the triple lock was a Lib Dem proposal?

Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Work and Pensions)

I regularly meet Steve Webb, the former Lib Dem Pensions Minister from the coalition, and I know how hard he worked when in government on this policy, so I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention…..

“There are so many possibilities for this wing. A new care hub would offer greater levels of tailored care for elderly residents. I will continue to demand that the future of both Seaton Hospital, and all our Community Hospitals, are protected.”

Philippa Davies www.midweekherald.co.uk

Seaton’s Liberal Democrat MP Richard Foord has presented a petition in Parliament opposing plans to strip out a whole wing from Seaton community hospital.

The wing was funded by the community, and the petition forms part of a wider campaign that has received the support of more than 9,000 people from across the Axe Valley. It calls for the affected wing to be transferred from the NHS to the local community, so it can be used to benefit local people.

Since the announcement that NHS Devon was looking to turn a wing of the facility over to NHS Property Services, which could see it demolished or sold off, Mr Foord has been leading a grassroots campaign opposing the plans.

He was the first to raise the issue in Parliament, quizzing both the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister over the plans, and has convened meetings with NHS Devon, local community groups and charities, and NHS Property Services.

By presenting the petition in Parliament on Tuesday (January 16), Mr Foord has formally placed the concerns of local people on the record with MPs and called on the Government to act.

Speaking after presenting his petition, Richard Foord MP said: “Plans to allow a wrecking ball to be driven through a wing of Seaton hospital would be hugely damaging – not just for Seaton, but for everyone living in the Axe Valley who relies on this facility for treatment.

“With this petition, the local community has spoken. In just a few weeks, over 9,000 people got behind my grassroots campaign and demonstrated their support for our hospital. It’s now time for Ministers to wake up, listen, and take action.

“Seaton Hospital is owned by NHS Property Services, a government-owned company with a single shareholder – the Health Secretary. With a single stroke of his pen, he could turn this building over to the local community and ensure it is protected for local people’s health.

“The fact they have so far been unwilling to do this shows the disregard with which they hold our corner of East Devon. People here won’t stand for it. We need more than warm words; we need action.

“There are so many possibilities for this wing. A new care hub would offer greater levels of tailored care for elderly residents. I will continue to demand that the future of both Seaton Hospital, and all our Community Hospitals, are protected.”