“… Routine road maintenance budgets have fallen from £1.1 billion in 2009/10 to around £701 million in 2017/18, the LGA said.
This budget is used to fund expenses such as minor road repairs, cleaning drains and fixing street lighting.
The LGA estimated that the reduction could have covered the cost of repairing 7.8 million potholes. …”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/potholes-uk-roads_uk_5d2038b3e4b0f312568414d2?guccounter=1
Daily Mirror front page today:
“More than 200 schools in England are cutting short the school week, or are actively consulting on it, because they cannot afford to educate their pupils for a full five days, according to campaigners.
The figure was revealed on the eve of a demonstration in Westminster by parents and pupils protesting about a crisis in education funding, which means a growing number of children are being sent home at lunchtime every Friday so schools can save money.
Organised by Labour MP Jess Phillips, whose son’s Birmingham primary is among those affected, the march on Friday afternoon will be attended by protesters from Birmingham, Brighton, Hove, Hitchin, Wiltshire, Stockport, Hastings and Leicester.
To drive home the point, the Birmingham Yardley MP will deposit her 10-year-old son Danny and his best friend Morris on the front step of 10 Downing Street, where they will do their schoolwork, as a reminder of the government’s responsibility to care for and educate the nation’s children on a Friday afternoon.
“The whole thing is quite exciting for him,” said Phillips. “He wants to stick up for his school. It’s a brilliant school.”
According to Phillips, 26 schools in Birmingham including her son’s, Kings Heath primary, are either already on a four and a half-day week or are about to introduce it. Not only are pupils losing out on vital hours in school, parents are left scrambling to rearrange work or find childcare and school staff are losing jobs or pay.
“This is not just a Birmingham issue, which is what the government wants to paint it as,” she said. “It’s a problem in Stockport, Oxford, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire – there was one in Theresa May’s [Maidenhead] constituency – Bournemouth, London, Leicester, Sandwell.
“[The education system] is crumbling and nobody cares. The Department for Education just repeatedly wants to blame headteachers, as if the headteacher at my son’s school does not know how to manage money.”
Phillips said it was the responsibility of the government to make sure that every child is in school five days a week. “There are certain fundamentals in public sector services. Our children get free education five days a week. If you break your leg you can have a cast put on it. There are these fundamental principles that we expect from the state. Currently the state cannot deliver it.”
The campaign group Save our Schools (SOS) says children on four and a half-day weeks will lose 20 days of education over the course of a school year. They also point out the “hypocrisy” of government policies which leave schools with little choice but to close early, when parents face heavy fines for taking their child out of school for unauthorised absences.
“Every day, children are taught in crumbling buildings; subjects such as art and music are disappearing from the curriculum; pupils with special education needs are losing vital support and dedicated teaching staff are losing their jobs,” said SOS campaigner Kate Taylor.
“Now schools are being forced to reduce the length of the school week. Parents, teachers and pupils are living with the effects of a government that is not interested in investing in their education.
“If we were to remove our children for one Friday afternoon, let alone every Friday afternoon, we would be committing a criminal offence. It’s quite simple: we want our children to be in school receiving the education they deserve.”
Asked for comment on the protest, the DfE said flexibility over the length of the school week is not new and that schools have long had the choice to structure the school week as they choose. The department also pointed out that Birmingham’s funding was above average and should cover a full week of schooling for each child.
A spokesperson said: “The funding for an average primary class of 28 in Birmingham is £125,000 – above the national average of £115,000 for an equivalent-sized class. These amounts are to cover a full five-day week in term time.”
Adrian Chiles in Guardian:
“I was sitting on a tram in Birmingham when a guy tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was me. “I just had to ask,” he said, “or I’d never have forgiven myself. I would always have wondered.” I felt most unworthy of this level of interest, and told him so.
As we walked down Corporation Street together I asked him what he did for a living. It turned out he was on his way home from work at a local authority, where it was his job to decide whether or not people had the means to pay for their residential care.
As I understand it, if you’ve got nothing, then the council pays. If you’ve got savings, then you pay. Which is obviously fair enough on one hand, but not so fair on the other if you, unlike your neighbour, have saved diligently all your life.
Why should they get the benefit? Where’s the incentive to save at a time when everyone is being told to save more? I shared these incredibly wise thoughts with my new friend. And do you know, his expression suggested that all the above might have been suggested to him before.
“I know,” he said. “Privately, I know. I get all that. But what can I do? It’s my job.”
“It must be so stressful,” I replied.
“It is very stressful,” he agreed.
I rub shoulders and share studios all the time with politicians whose job it is to make difficult decisions as to who gets what. Must be tough, but not half as tough as being one of the many public sector workers who have to make the big calls on the ground, while breathing the same air as those they sit in judgment on.
We shook hands and I asked him what he was up to that evening. “Just telly, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a school night.”
“Following the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act in 2017, councils in England must provide support to eligible homeless households, as well as those at risk of becoming homeless within 56 days.
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data shows there were 109 households which needed support after applying for help from East Devon District Council between October and December, including 30 families with children.
Of these, 85 were at risk of homelessness, meaning the council had to work with them to prevent them losing their home.
The remaining 24 were already homeless and the council was tasked with helping them to secure accommodation for a period of at least six months.
The households owed support by EDDC included:
– 79 contained a person with at least one high need – 25 people had an illness or physical disability, 39 had a mental health condition, two a learning disability and two were elderly.
– 23 were headed by a single mother and three by a single father.
– 12 were at risk of homelessness because of so-called no-fault evictions, after their landlord issued them with a soon-to-be banned Section 21 notice.
– 12 lost their last home because of domestic abuse.
– One was sleeping rough at the time they applied for help from the council.
– 31 were headed by a person aged 35 to 44 – the most common age group.
Housing charity Shelter has warned that councils are struggling to cope with the volume of people needing support amid a national ‘housing emergency’.
One in five homeless or at risk households in East Devon lost their last secure home because their assured shorthold tenancy – the most common type of private rental contract – ended.
There were also six households made homeless because their social tenancy came to an end while one came from supported housing, which could include refugees or housing for elderly or disabled people.
Of the social tenants, five lost their homes because they were behind on their rent.
An East Devon District Council spokesman said: “East Devon have seen a rise in homelessness, including numbers of rough sleepers and households requiring temporary accommodation, in line with the national picture.
“This increase has been intensified by the lack of availability of suitable accommodation options available to people due to factors including reductions in funding of supported accommodation projects, austerity measures and rises in the rent levels in the private sector leading to affordability issues. These factors all contribute towards added pressure on social housing which is already in short supply whilst facing high levels of demand.
“In order to meet this rise in demand, and to address the additional responsibilities brought in through the Homelessness Reduction Act, changes have been made to the service with the responsibility of assisting people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. …”
… Colyton
Tuesday, July 16 – 3pm to 7pm – Colyton Town Hall, Market Place
“The majority of local government finance officers have lost confidence in their future financial positions over the last year, a CIPFA survey has revealed.
Seventy per cent of respondents said they were either slightly less or much less confident in their financial position this year compared to 2018-19, according to the CIPFA’s confidence survey out today.
It also found that 68% said they were either slightly less or much less confident in their ability to deliver services in 2020-21. Sixty-two per cent expressed equal confidence in their financial position for 2019-20 as they had last year, the survey revealed.
CIPFA found that the area of greatest pressure for top tier authorities was children’s social care, with the number of authorities rating it as the biggest pressure rising by six percentage points.
For districts the greatest pressures were housing, cultural services and environmental services.
Rob Whiteman, CIPFA chief executive, said: “Local government is facing greater demand pressures than ever before, with particularly pressures in adults’ and children’s social care and housing. Local authorities also lack certainty about their future financial positions, so it’s unsurprising to see confidence on the decline.
“We have repeatedly pointed out that local government is in need of a sustainable funding solution, but meeting this demand requires more than pennies and pounds. The sector as a whole must come together to address the challenges of effective service delivery.”
CIPFA’s survey received a total of 119 responses from authorities in the UK – 56 top tier authorities, 47 English districts, 12 Scottish authorities, and 4 Welsh authorities.
The LGA yesterday released a survey, two-thirds of councils believed they would not be able to fund statutory services by 2024-25.
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2019/07/cfos-lose-confidence-ability-deliver-services
Owl says: Wasn’t austerity meant to balance the books, after which we would then be rewarded for making do while it happened? Apparently not.
“Let councils charge higher taxes to pay for austerity, says LGA chair
Local authorities should be given the freedom to impose higher council taxes to help cope with the unprecedented funding crisis facing social care services after a near decade of austerity, the Tory chair of the Local Government Association has said.
James Jamieson urged ministers to inject billions of pounds into adult social care and give councils more control of local health services to protect elderly and disabled people and give them the support they needed. “It is a measure of a good society how well it treats it most vulnerable,” said the councillor.
Reflecting increasing concern over the impact of the reductions, he called for major extra investment in children’s social care, a reversal of cuts to Sure Start-style early-years family support services and a review of special educational needs services funding.
His comments reflect a growing cross-party consensus at local level that national government has little grasp how continuing austerity cuts are hurting local communities and putting people at risk. Last month, Jamieson’s Tory predecessor, Lord Porter, warned that vulnerable people would die because of social care cuts.
There is little confidence that the government will be in a position to deliver its promised three-year spending review this autumn, effectively imposing a further year of austerity on town halls and forcing them to plan for service cuts and staff redundancies they had hoped would be unnecessary.
The LGA warned earlier on Tuesday that the deteriorating outlook for council finances would see a fifth of authorities forced to impose drastic controls on spending this year to avoid insolvency, while a third of councils would struggle to deliver statutory services within three years.
Jamieson, in his inaugural speech at the LGA annual conference in Bournemouth, said the council tax referendum cap, introduced by the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2012 and currently set at 2.99%, ought to be abolished. “Residents should be given the choice; if they want to pay more for extra services, why can’t they?”
He said that councils in England had lost 60p out of every £1 of central government funding since 2010, while the number of new child protection investigations had doubled, there had been a 56% increase in homelessness and the number of older people aged over 85 had increased by a third.
The communities secretary, James Brokenshire, said in his speech to the LGA that he recognised councils’ uncertainty over future funding, adding: “It is right that we look at the challenges and opportunities you face, and the funding you are currently relying on, including for social care, when we consider what a sustainable settlement looks like for local government for the coming years.”
Meanwhile, a survey of council chiefs found nearly half expect that Brexit will damage their local economies by reducing exports and overseas investment. This would critically reduce council income from business rates at a time when they were already struggling to maintain the quality and breadth of core services.
PWC’s annual survey of council leaders, chief executives and finance directors revealed that more than half believed that some authorities would get into serious financial difficulty or fail to deliver core services at some point over the next year.
A PWC survey of 2,000 UK users of council services found that 67% were concerned about cuts on their community, up from 61% a year ago; 77% said they or their family had been impacted by cuts; and 51% opposed the need for cuts, up from 48% in 2018.
Councils must hold a referendum if they wish to raise council tax beyond the 2.99% limit. No local authority has taken up the option. In January, Northamptonshire county council was given special dispensation by ministers to raise council tax by an extra 2%, raising £6m, to aid its recovery from insolvency. Similar requests from other councils have been turned down.
Local authority directors of adult social care warned last week that the escalating financial crisis in social care had put tens of thousands of older and disabled people at risk of being denied basic support such as help with washing and dressing.”
“Devon’s schools could soon be forced to shut on Friday afternoons due to budget pressures, a leading councillor is predicting, while a headteacher has warned: “It’s not going to be long before a school goes bankrupt.”
Cllr Rob Hannaford, the chairman of Devon County Councils Children’s Scrutiny Committee, said he is convinced a school in Devon will soon join schools nationwide closing on Friday afternoons to give teachers the preparation and planning time required, because they cannot afford to pay for an additional teacher to cover those sessions.
A group of more than 80 cross-party MPs who have written to Chancellor Philip Hammond urging him to increase school and special needs funding before permanent damage is done to the education of children across England. …”
https://www.devonlive.com/news/school-could-soon-go-bankrupt-3045143
Owl says: time to stimulate sales with price drops, perhaps? Bringing that profit-per-house at Persimmon down from £77,000 to, say, £27,000 would certainly bring a lot of buyers in! Of course, then there would be no masdive director bonuses, so guess that’s a non-starter (home).
“Britain’s construction sector suffered as “sharp drop in momentum” last month, says data firm Markit.
In a very worrying healthcheck on the construction sector, Markit has found that business activity and incoming new work both fell at the fastest pace for just over 10 years.
Housebuilding, commercial construction and big civil engineering work all contracted during the month — a bad sign for the whole construction sector.
Builders across the country blamed “risk aversion among clients in response to heightened political and economic uncertainty.”
That suggests people are simply unwilling to take risks while they don’t know how the Brexit crisis will be resolved.
This has dragged the IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction Total Activity Index down to just 43.1 in June, down sharply from 48.6 in May. Any reading below 50 shows a contraction, and this shows the steepest reduction in overall construction output since April 2009.” …
UK builders also reported that new orders dropped at the fastest rate in over 10 years, while demand for construction products and materials fell at the sharpest pace since the start of 2010.”
“Councils in England and Wales have warned they are “completely in the dark” about how much money they will get from central government next year.
The Local Government Association says councils need “urgent guarantees” they will get enough to provide key services like child protection and social care.
More than 90 of its members fear they will run out of money to meet their legal obligations within five years.
Ministers said councils had been given extra funding for vulnerable residents.
The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government said total funding for local authorities had gone up by nearly 3% this year to £46.4bn, with an extra £650m to help councils provide care for the elderly….”
And the bad news is: the chair of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Authority is none other than our old pal and former Leader of EDDC, Sarah Randall-Johnson – you know, the person who consistently voted down any scrutiny of the Devon NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, and took her Tory committee members along with her.
Oh dear.
…”Workers’ rights have failed to keep pace with the dismantling of the nine-to-five working week as Britain’s gig economy has more than doubled in size over three years to account for 4.7 million workers, the TUC has warned, in a study conducted with the University of Hertfordshire. “Huge numbers are being forced to take on casual and insecure platform work – often on top of other jobs,” said Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. “But as we’ve seen with Uber too often these workers are denied their rights and are treated like disposable labour.”
Overall employment in the UK has reached a record 32.75 million following a boom in job creation since the 2008 financial crisis. But economists believe employment is also increasingly precarious, putting pressure on living standards. Poverty while in work has increased, alongside the use of food banks, and average wages after inflation remain below the level recorded before the 2008 crash. The government promised to boost workers’ rights after a landmark review of the gig economy but Brexit has left that process stalled, and unions and Labour say the measures do not go far enough. …
” …Deaths in East Devon specifically from drug misuse have risen from 18 in 2012-14 to 26 in 2015-17 (+44%) and alcohol mortality rates are also up, with 67 deaths in 2012 compared to 79 in 2017 (+18%). In Devon, there were 152 drug deaths (+32%) and 391 alcohol-related deaths (+18%) when comparing the same periods. …”
https://exmouth.nub.news/n/drink-and-drug-deaths-rise-in-east-devon-after-funding-cut
Owl says: It’s always someone else’s fault … there is no buck so it can’t stop anywhere!
“Theresa May speaks out against construction of ‘tiny’ houses, calling for new design standards”
Theresa May is calling for new design standards for house builders to ensure future owners and tenants are not forced to live in “tiny” homes with inadequate storage space.
In her latest move to secure a political legacy, the prime minister will hail figures showing that by the autumn, a million new homes will have been added in under five years.
But her comments come as a parliamentary report warns that the government’s target of delivering 300,000 new homes a year is “way off track” because of problems at the heart of the planning system.
The cross-party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said that “much more needs to be done” to scale up house building.
The Ministry of Housing has been “reluctant to take decisive action” to deal with councils which fail to produce the up-to-date local plans which are needed to drive delivery, said the committee in a report.
And local authorities have found it difficult to secure sufficient contributions from private developers to help with the cost of the infrastructure needed to support housing developments.
Committee chair Meg Hillier, said: “Progress against the government’s annual new house building target is way off track and currently shows scant chance of being achieved.
“The government has set itself the highly ambitious target of building 300,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s – levels not seen since World War Two – even though there is no clear rationale for this figure and the ministry themselves say only 265,000 new homes a year are needed.
“Government needs to get a grip and set out a clear plan if it is not to jeopardise these ambitions.”
In a speech to the Chartered Institute of Housing conference in Manchester on Wednesday, Ms May will say that the drive to build more homes must not lead to the quality of new housing being compromised.
Tenants and buyers are currently facing a “postcode lottery”, with many councils still not applying space standards introduced by the government in 2015 as a condition of planning permission, she will say.
In a clear message to her successor as prime minister, she will call for the creation a new system of universal mandatory regulation.
“I cannot defend a system in which owners and tenants are forced to accept tiny homes with inadequate storage, where developers feel the need to fill show homes with deceptively small furniture, and where the lack of universal standards encourages a race to the bottom,” she is expected to say.
Ms May will point to figures showing that since she entered No 10 in 2016, the number of extra homes being created was up by 12 per cent in Manchester, 43 per cent in Nottingham and 80 per cent in Birmingham.
Last year, she will say, more additional homes were delivered than in all but one of the previous 31 years while the number of affordable housing starts this year has risen to almost 54,000.
But she will warn against complacency: “The housing shortage in this country began not because of a blip lasting one year or one parliament, but because not enough homes were built over many decades.
“The very worst thing we could do would be to make the same mistake again.”
Ms May will also confirm plans to end so-called “no-fault” evictions, with a consultation to be published shortly, and set out a timetable for action on social housing including improved rights for tenants.
The PM is pushing for higher house building standards (AFP/Getty)
Polly Neate, the chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter, said Ms May’s commitment to improving quality in the housing market was “to be applauded” but added: “The huge numbers of people in this country who are at the sharp end of the current housing emergency will never be able to afford those new houses.
“What this country needs – and what it wants – is a commitment from the top, from any prime minister, to a renewal of social housing. We need 3.1 million homes in the next 20 years to provide affordable and stable homes for generations to come.”
Local Government Association housing spokesman Martin Tett denied the planning system was a “barrier to housebuilding”, pointing to statistics showing councils approve nine in 10 applications but hundreds of thousands of homes given planning permission are yet to be built.
Cllr Tett said councils needed freedom to build more social homes themselves.
“The last time the country built more than 300,000 homes a year was 1977-78, when councils built 44 per cent of them,” he said.
“Latest figures show councils were only able to build 2,000 homes last year – the highest level since 1992 – but need to be able to do so much more. To help end the housing crisis, we need to kick-start a genuine renaissance in council house building.”
Responding to the PAC report, housing minister Kit Malthouse said:“This government is determined to restore the dream of home ownership for a new generation by delivering 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
“We’re committed to building more, better and faster, including £44bn of funding and guarantees to support more homes, reforming the planning system to free up more land, and removing the cap on how much councils can borrow to build.
“We’re making real progress, last year delivering more new homes than in all but one of the last 31 years.”
These are not benefits – they are entitlements.
“More than a million pensioner households across the UK are living in poverty because of the government’s failure to act on unpaid pension credit, according to the older people’s charity Independent Age.
Almost 2 million people aged 65 and over are living in poverty in the UK. Pension credit is the income-related benefit specifically designed to lift them out of poverty. But it is estimated that four in 10 pensioner households who are entitled to the help do not receive it.
Since the 2017 general election, the government has “benefited” from £7bn in unclaimed pension credit, the charity said. This figure will increase to more than £17bn by 2022.
“The recent decision to limit the TV licence to only those who receive pension credit adds insult to injury to over a million pensioners who between them, due to government inaction, are missing out on a staggering £10m every day that should be in their pockets,” said George McNamara, the charity’s director of policy and influencing. …
Pensioners entitled to the benefit are missing out on an average of £49 a week, just under the average amount that the poorest fifth of pensioner couples spend on food and non-alcoholic drinks in a week. It can, said McNamara, make the difference between being isolated at home or being able to take part in social activities. …”
Owl says: you could not make this up.
“Hospitals in England are relying on backup beds to carry out routine care, research has found.
Hospitals in England are relying on backup beds to carry out routine care, research has found.
Reliance on emergency beds suggests NHS trusts are at a “critical stage” and struggling to cope with demand, the British Medical Association has said.
The BMA submitted two waves of Freedom of Information requests to all 134 acute trusts in England in March and May 2019, which revealed the extent to which ‘escalation beds’ were being used routinely.
The first round of data received responses from 105 trusts showing that there were 3,428 escalation beds in operation.
In May, according to responses from 54 trusts, there were 1,637 instances of the these beds being used, though the BMA noted that due to a lower response rate, the real figure is likely to be higher.
The beds are only supposed to be used in emergencies and when there is a spike in demand.
Rob Harwood, BMA consultants committee chair, said: “The use of escalation beds is a sign that trusts are at a critical stage and are unable to cope with demand with their current bed stock.
“Some hospitals are forced to designate their theatre recovery beds as ‘escalation’, resulting in elective surgical operation being cancelled as there is no space for those patients who need immediate care after their surgery.”
Harwood noted that the pressure on capacity can see patients placed on beds in corridors and overcrowding treatment areas.
The BMA said that while escalation beds were traditionally used mainly in the winter, this was no longer the case as the number used in the first week of April was comparable to those in early January. There was an average of 20 escalation beds used per trust in early April and the start of January.
A total of 3,000 extra beds are needed to stop routine use of escalation beds outside of winter, while up to 10,000 are needed to bring occupancy to safe levels, the BMA estimated.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow Health Secretary, said: “The use of escalation beds is yet another sign that hospitals are struggling to cope under continued pressure. We know this is compromising patient care.”
“The outsourcing firm Serco was awarded new contracts to house vulnerable asylum seekers despite having been fined nearly £7m for previous failings, the Guardian can reveal.
Responsibility for housing people seeking asylum in the UK was taken away from local authorities in 2012 and given to the companies Serco, G4S and Clearsprings under deals with the Home Office known as Compass contracts.
Despite concerns by leading charities that outsourcing the service had resulted in “squalid, unsafe, slum housing conditions”, in January the Home Office awarded Serco, Clearsprings and the company Mears new contracts to provide housing for asylum seekers for 10 years from September.
Figures released following freedom of information requests and a parliamentary question show that £6.8m worth of “service credits” were imposed on Serco between April 2013 and December 2018. The figures do not include the month of March 2016.
Service credits are sums deducted from a company’s monthly invoice when it fails to meet key performance indicators included in its contract, such as property standards or how quickly issues are resolved.
Serco was fined a total of £2.8m for its contracts to provide asylum seeker housing in Scotland and Northern Ireland over that period, and just over £4m for its contract in north-west England.
Serco’s penalties were at their highest in 2013/14 (£3.9m) and 2016/17 (£1.16m). Between April to December 2018, after the new contracts were put out to tender, it was fined £850,000. In January the firm was awarded two contracts to provide asylum seeker housing: – one in the north-west and one in the Midlands and the east of England, from September.
The figures also show G4S was fined just over £2m for breaches of contract – £1.5m for its contract in the Midlands and east of England and £500,000 for its contract in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber, both of which end in August. Most of these fines (£1.7m) were incurred in 2013/14.
Clearsprings, which manages asylum accommodation in Wales and south-west England and London and the south-eaast, was not fined, despite also being criticised over standards of accommodation.
The Home Office initially refused to release data on the fines it had imposed, claiming the information was commercially sensitive, but it was forced to do so following a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office. …”
EDA County Councillor Martin Shaw gives details of the threat and the petition here:
Colyton fire station under threat of closure – petition already has over 300 signatures
East Devon Watch 