Jeremy Hunt’s Budget failed to address the “real challenges” facing Britain, the boss of Britain’s most influential economic think tank has warned.

Archie Mitchell www.independent.co.uk 

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), laid bare the chaos facing the NHS, local authorities, social care and the justice system, and said the chancellor had not been “transparent” about the scale of the problems.

And, in a damning assessment of the Conservative government and Labour, he said both are engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” about just how bleak the outlook for the country is.

In his widely-watched post-Budget analysis, Mr Johnson said: “This was not a budget which addressed the real challenges we are facing because it was not transparent about what those challenges are.

“Government and opposition are joining in a conspiracy of silence in not acknowledging the scale of the choices and trade-offs that will face us after the election. They, and we, could be in for a rude awakening when those choices become unavoidable.”

As the impacts of the chancellor’s Budget became clear:

• The IFS said Jeremy Hunt had failed to address the “real challenges” facing the country
• Its director accused Labour and the Conservatives of engaging in a “conspiracy of silence” about those challenges
• The Resolution Foundation said living standards would fall this parliament for the first time on record 
• Rishi Sunak doubled down on Jeremy Hunt’s suggestion that the Tories would seek to scrap national insurance, a move branded “reckless” by Labour 
• Mr Hunt claimed he was bringing down the tax burden “in a way that is responsible and protects our public services”
• Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the government had “given with one hand and taken much more with the other”

Mr Johnson said Mr Hunt’s Budget “did not change anything very significantly… which is a shame”.

The economist said the national debt is at its highest in 70 years and “showing no signs of falling”, while interest payments soar. And he highlighted a “worrying increases in the number of individuals moving onto health and disability related benefits”, which brings its own “huge challenges” to the public purse.

And, after Mr Hunt offered voters a pre-election bung in the form of a 2p national insurance cut, Mr Johnson said the Budget came with “big implicit cuts in public investment spending overall and cuts to many areas of day-to-day spending on public services despite very obvious signs of strain in many areas”.

Rachel Reeves accused the chancellor of giving with one hand and taking ‘much more’ back with the other

“One only has to look at the scale of NHS waiting lists, the number of local authorities at or near bankruptcy, the backlogs in the justice system, the long-term cuts to university funding, the struggles of the social care system, to wonder where these cuts will really, credibly come from,” he added. Mr Johnson warned that cuts to day-to-day spending on a range of public services outside of health, defence and education, will have to fall by around £20 billion.

The damning verdict came as the Resolution Foundation warned that Rishi Sunak and Mr Hunt will oversee the first ever fall in living standards between elections despite Wednesday’s tax-cutting Budget, the Resolution Foundation has warned.

In its own withering assesment of the state of the economy, the think tank said this has been a parliament of “flatlining growth” and falling living standards.

And, even accounting for the chancellor’s national insurance giveaway, the Resolution Foundation said that by the next election, households’ disposable income will have fallen by 0.9 per cent – the first parliament in modern history to see a fall in living standards.

Chief executive Torsten Bell said: “Budgets are always a big day for Westminster, but the big picture for Britain has not changed at all. This remains a country where taxes are heading up not down, and one where incomes are stagnating.”

And he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you look over the course of the last 15 years, what we see is that our wages today are back where they were in 2008.

“In fact, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) says we won’t get back to 2008 wage levels until 2026.

“That’s 18 last years of wage growth.”

The think tank also pointed to the “implausible” post-election spending cuts pencilled in by Mr Hunt to give him room for the tax handouts without breaching his so-called “fiscal rules”.

Mr Bell added: “Big tax cuts may or may not affect the outcome of that election, but the task for whoever wins is huge.

“They will need to both wrestle with implausible spending cuts, and also restart sustained economic growth – the only route to end Britain’s stagnation.”

It comes after Mr Hunt used Wednesday’s Budget, likely the last before an autumn general election, to cut 2p from national insurance, saving a person on an average £35,000 salary around £450 a year. Combined with a cut last autumn, the chancellor said average earners would now be £900 better off.

But despite the handout, which Mr Hunt and the PM had hoped would boost the Tories’ dire poll ratings, experts warned the savings for voters had been eclipsed by the amount taken back through so-called stealth taxes.

The highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said for every £1 handed back to voters by the chancellor, the decision to freeze tax thresholds would claim £1.30 as taxpayers are dragged into higher brackets.

Defending his Budget on Thursday, Mr Hunt said he was bringing down the tax burden “in a way that is responsible and protects our public services”.

“That’s what I have done in the autumn statement and the spring Budget, if you want to see that continue then it is only the Conservative Party that wants to bring down the tax burden,” he told Sky News.

Mr Hunt also doubled down on the suggestion he wants to phase out national insurance as a tax altogether, describing it as an “unfair” levy. He admitted it will not happen “any time soon”, but suggested one option would be to merge income tax and national insurance.

Pressed on whether Wednesday’s Budget set the stage for a May 2 election, Mr Hunt insisted it was a decision for Mr Sunak, whose current plan is to go to the country this autumn.

It came as shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves savaged the Budget, highlighting Labour analysis of OBR figures which show average families will be left £870 per year worse off by Mr Hunt’s measures.

“The government have given with one hand and taken much more with the other,” she told Today.

EDDC’s scrutiny committee to look into how the authority allowed businesses and infrastructure at Sideshore to be built next to the part of the sea wall that has failed.

Was “due diligence” carried out on our behalf by the “Build,build,build” Tories? -Owl

Will Goddard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

Delays were also caused by a change in design

Emergency repairs to Exmouth’s crumbling sea wall are set to begin this month after being delayed because of a change to the design and checking for unexploded bombs.

But costs have skyrocketed, and part of the project is to be pushed back until autumn. 

Cracks appeared in the structure in front of the Sideshore watersports and retail development last August.  

A subsequent storm weakened the wall further and put it at risk of collapse, but temporary repairs of concrete blocks and sand have since held it together. 

This section, which is believed to be around 100 years old, does not have foundations. This, together with low beach levels, has allowed waves to wash out sand from underneath. 

East Devon District Council (EDDC) had wanted to start installing a 255-metre barrier of steel sheet piles at the wall in January for £1.1 million. Cladding the steel piles later was projected to come to just over £2 million. 

But now the work will be split into two smaller phases, and costs have soared because of poor ground conditions. 

The first phase will begin in the next two weeks and replace 90 metres of failed wall near Sideshore. It should be complete by the end of May and will cost £1.5 million. Work will not take place over the four-day Easter bank holiday weekend. 

The second phase will tackle 115 metres of ‘at-risk but still-intact’ wall towards Coastwatch House, minus the slipway. Work on this section has been pushed back to September at the earliest and will come to an estimated £1.8 million. 

Cladding the steel piles should cost just shy of £1 million, bringing the total amount up to £4.3 million.  

EDDC hopes it will be able to get a grant of £1.1 million from the Environment Agency to help. 

Cllr Geoff Jung (Lib Dem, Woodbury and Lympstone) said: “There is no choice, we have to do it.  

“We want it to be just as good as before, if not better aesthetically, and provide protection from increased risk from climate change.  

“We will endeavour to find funding from elsewhere, but we need to be prepared to dip into our reserves on this one, and probably put back some other projects that are less urgent.” 

Delays to the project are down to having to change the design because of poor-quality ground, figuring out how to work around businesses and a risk of unexploded bombs in the area requiring more surveys. 

The second phase has been deferred amid concerns piling could damage businesses along the wall towards Coastwatch House. 

There are suggestions one or two of the buildings could be moved next to the western-most building to make the repairs simpler and cheaper. But this would be “extremely risky” for the council to undertake without following proper planning procedure, which would need more time. 

The steel sheet piles will initially be installed without cladding. They will last for around 100 years once clad.  

The 90 metres of wall in the first phase will be replaced with a vertical wall, while the second phase could keep its current sloped revetments.

Councillors also agreed for EDDC’s scrutiny committee to look into how the authority allowed businesses and infrastructure at Sideshore to be built next to the part of the sea wall that has failed. 

Both the Conservatives and Labour are engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” about public spending after the election, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.

Christopher McKeon www.independent.co.uk

Paul Johnson, director of the respected think tank, said Wednesday’s Budget had not been transparent about the challenges facing the UK, pencilling in significant cuts to public spending for after the election without setting out what that would involve.

The prospective cuts are required to ensure the Government meets its fiscal rule to have debt falling in five years’ time, and involve cutting spending on unprotected departments – including courts, prisons and local councils – by around £20 billion, and cutting public investment by £18 billion a year in real terms.

Government and opposition are joining in a conspiracy of silence in not acknowledging the scale of the choices and trade-offs that will face us after the election.

They also assume that the “temporary” freeze on fuel duty will end, something that has not happened in the last 15 years.

Mr Johnson said: “Maybe that is possible, but keeping to these plans would require some staggeringly hard choices which the Government has not been willing to lay out.

“Indeed, we heard yesterday that the next spending review, in which these choices will have to be announced, will rather conveniently not happen until after the election.

“One only has to look at the scale of NHS waiting lists, the number of local authorities at or near bankruptcy, the backlogs in the justice system, the long-term cuts to university funding, the struggles of the social care system, to wonder where these cuts will really, credibly come from.”

While he was doubtful that the Conservatives would deliver their current spending plans, Mr Johnson also expressed scepticism that Labour would oversee significant cuts to public spending if it won the election.

He said: “Government and opposition are joining in a conspiracy of silence in not acknowledging the scale of the choices and trade-offs that will face us after the election.

“They, and we, could be in for a rude awakening when those choices become unavoidable.”

He went on to dismiss the Chancellor’s stated ambitions to abolish employees’ national insurance contributions and increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP without further detail on how they would be funded as “unlikely”.

He said: “Remarkably, Mr Hunt stuck with the claim that he wants defence spending to rise to 2.5% of national income ‘as soon as economic conditions allow’.

“Well, economic conditions allowed a £10 billion cut in NICs this year. So they could have allowed a £10 billion increase in defence spending instead.

“That would have just about met the target. Actions speak louder than words.”

On national insurance, he added: “This pledge to cut taxes by more than £40 billion goes in the same bucket as pledges to increase defence spending – not worth the paper it’s written on unless accompanied by some sense of how it will be afforded.”

Speaking to broadcasters on Thursday, Rishi Sunak declined to explain how he would fund an abolition of national insurance, saying people “trust me on these things” and that he would only cut taxes “responsibly”.

Introduction

“The costs of cleaning up coastal waters, a national resource, have not fallen fairly across the country. Thirty percent of the cost has fallen on Devon and Cornwall, which have just 3 percent of the nation’s population.” Written in a policy paper in 1996 that still chimes today.(Richard Foord).

What was Simon Jupp’s aim in calling this third parliamentary debate so late in the electoral cycle when there is insufficient time for any meaningful government action?

Perhaps all that Tories can do at this stage is to come out fighting.

Simon Jupp sets the scene

“Thanks to this Conservative Government, we finally have the tools to hold South West Water to account. It is the biggest crackdown on sewage spills in history: the Government have introduced unlimited fines, accelerated investment plans, legal targets to reduce discharges from every single storm overflow and eliminate all ecological harm, as well as compulsory storm overflow monitors, and they have forced live spill data to be made public. I voted for all that…”

After a bit of finger wagging at South West Water (SWW) he turned his fire on EDDC:

“Councillors on East Devon District Council very much jumped the gun to sign off a further new town of 8,000 homes in our district—just weeks before the new national planning policy framework was announced, which provides the tools to challenge such housing targets, especially in these circumstances. That was spectacularly short-sighted and risks further challenges for the district’s water infrastructure.”

Steady on Simon, EDDC Leader Cllr Paul Arnott has already gone on record as questioning whether development can continue until SWW  has increased its treatment capacity.

But turning off the tap is not as easy as that. The 2013 Tory administration set East Devon an eighteen year target to build a minimum of 950 houses/year (17,100 in total by 2031).

Simon did not mention the fact that, uniquely amongst Devon councils, EDDC has just passed a vote of “no confidence” in SWW nor that one of his constituents, Jo Bateman, is suing SWW for loss of amenity. 

He then hinted at goodies to come by saying: The Government are looking to consult on whether to make water companies statutory consultees on major planning applications. I wholeheartedly support such a move, and I urge the Minister to press ahead with that as quickly as possible.

He also urged the Minister to get water companies to install monitors on all emergency overflows. [No commitment from the minister to do this was given].

That then set the scene – trumpet government action, hint at further action and blame everyone else.

Main Debate

There was a short discussion on water supply raised by Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con). She disclosed that in an email Environment Agency said that South West Water “were not honest, open and transparent with regulators about their drought projections”.

Had there been any direct representation by a Cornish MP this subject might have had greater prominence. 

Luke Pollard (Plymouth) (Lab) highlighted that since 2010, Environment Agency funding has been cut by over 50%

Richard Foord got to speak about half an hour in.

He started by saying that Since 1990, South West Water has paid out in dividends an amount equivalent to £2,931 per property. That is more than any of the other 13 English water companies.

He continued by remarking that: South West Water is a poorly performing water company, but we have to look at the environment in which it is working. The water companies are working to the incentives that their shareholders set for them, rather than for the public benefit and good.

“There were 146 recorded dry spills over a 12-month period last year. To recap, those are illegal spills made by water companies when there is no heavy rainfall. Just yesterday evening, I was talking to Jo Bateman from the East Devon constituency, who attended the End Sewage Pollution coalition meeting that I brought together. She explained to me that she is suing South West Water for those illegal dry spills. I am not at all persuaded that water companies will simply do the right thing without Government intervention. We know the Environment Agency has been denuded of resources in recent years. The agency had £235 million cut from its budget when the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) was the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.”

He pointed out that the government has only acted because of the level of public outrage and pressure from opposition parties such as the Lib Dems.

His main focus was on laying out the changes Lib Dems propose. Abolish Ofwat as it stands and bolster the Environment Agency so that we have a regulator with teeth and transform water companies into public benefit companies. Fantastic campaigners such as those he hosted the previous day need a voice at the board level of these companies, otherwise we will face the catastrophe of our tourist hotspots being struck with the affliction that is water pollution. According to Blue Flag, four of the 10 beaches most affected by pollution last year were in Devon, including Sidmouth, which endured over 600 hours of sewage spills.

“We need to see the end of operator self-monitoring, which is where water companies get to gather their data themselves before passing it to the regulator. It means that they can potentially vary the data they are collecting. Water companies are essentially marking their own homework. This is having a devastating effect on some tourist areas such as the ones in Honiton.”

Unfortunately a succession of conservative interruptions disrupted the flow of his arguments. What the Tories jumped on was the proposal to abolish Ofwat, when Lib Dem policy is to replace it with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps.

They returned to this three times, but it’s not the Lib Dems who are in the dock.

Selaine Saxby drops a bombshell – Campaign group misrepresent the data!

At this point Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con), a surfer herself, dropped a bit of a bombshell claiming:

“A campaign group [clarified later as Surfer Against Sewage] has chosen to misrepresent the data it has, issuing sewage alerts when the combined storm overflows run and scaring people from entering our beautiful waters.”

She needs to do her research on the Environment Agency’s questionable testing methods and the fact that SWW data cannot yet be trusted. The “rules of thumb” adopted by Surfers Against Sewage are a much safer bet. (See “Is it safe to swim in Budleigh?”)

Labour’s View.

Mr Toby Perkins (Lab) shadow minister for rural affairs said, amongst other things:

“Yesterday, along with the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, I spoke at the launch of the election manifesto for the Surfers Against Sewage campaign. It was a shame that the Government were not able to send the Minister, although he was intending to go. It is an important coalition, because the issue is of huge importance to our constituents, particularly to the economy of the south-west. As the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton reflected, we heard from Jo Bateman about the powerful campaign that she is fighting for the ability to swim in clean waterways, recognised as an amenity that should be available to us all.

In preparing for this debate, I was pleased to hear about the work of Jayne Kirkham and Perran Moon, Labour’s parliamentary candidates for Truro and Falmouth and for Camborne and Redruth, respectively. They have supported protests and started petitions that add to the community fight to preserve Cornwall’s waterways. Jayne stressed that the discharges into Cornwall’s rivers was impacting on tourism and costing millions alongside the environmental damage.

Many people are concerned that Ofwat’s new growth duty will further reduce its ability to be a force for environmental good. When the Minister responds, I hope that he can set out how he sees that duty working alongside Ofwat’s responsibilities to improve environmental outcomes. Does the Minister agree that the perception that our waterways are not fit to swim in is damaging to growth as it depletes tourist revenue? If so, will he confirm whether he has instructed Ofwat that its new growth duty must mean that no sewage discharge is liable to reduce tourist growth?”

Ministerial response

From: The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore).

Moore recognised that SWW remains one of the worst performing companies particularly on pollution incidents and storm overflow discharges. “That is completely unacceptable. South West Water should be under no illusion: it must take urgent steps to reduce its pollution incidents significantly, as well as addressing other performance concerns, such as increasing resilience of the water supply.”

He mentioned the old news of the 2050 target for overflow reduction. And that we supposedly have 100% monitoring of storm overflows. Though in an interjection, Mr Perkins raised the big problem of “self-monitoring”.

Moore then mentioned SWW latest business plans of £2.8 bn investment to turn things around [but we have heard plenty of promises in the past – haven’t we?]

Last words from Simon Jupp

“As ever, Lib Dem policy is as clear as mud.“

So was this a debate about South West Water and pollution or a grandstand for electioneering? – Owl

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

Westminster Hall debates are strictly timed. 

This one lasted an hour and involved the following speakers:

One Lib Dem, Richard Foord,

Two Labour MP’s, Luke Pollard (Plymouth) & Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) shadow minister for rural affairs; and 

Five Conservatives Simon Jupp (East Devon), who led the debate, Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot), Selaine Saxby (North Devon), Kevin Foster (Torbay) & Anthony Mangnall (Totnes). 

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore) replied. 

Note there was no MP from Cornwall. 

Follow link to the Hansard transcript of the debate 

Jo met Thérèse Coffey who didn’t know that Liz Truss, who was in charge at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) between 2014 and 2016, oversaw “efficiency” plans set out in the 2015 spending review to reduce Environment Agency funding by £235m.  [Coffey was Deputy Prime Minister from September to October 2022 under, guess who? – Liz Truss!] – Owl

From ESCAPE facebook page

Short(ish) update on Monday evening’s House of Commons event, Surfers Against Sewage launching the End Sewage Pollution manifesto. You can read it here: https://www.sas.org.uk/…/the-end-sewage-pollution…/.

I gave a short talk, emphasising the impact sewage pollution has on me personally, and also the much wider  impact on the environment and also the tourism industry.

The event was well attended, although fewer MPs came than were expected due to an important debate going on at the same time in the main chamber. Surprisingly Therese Coffey  turned up, and tried to tell me that the EA did not have their funding cut by Liz Truss… I was able to correct her . I was told at one point that Simon Jupp MP  had arrived; I didn’t see him, and when I went to talk to him he’d gone. So perhaps he wasn’t there at all, or if he was he avoided me!

The event was hosted by Richard Foord MP, Lib Dem for Honiton & Tiverton. He said the Lib Dems fully support the manifesto and are committed to implementing it in full. (I’m not  reporting this as a Lib Dem fan, it’s just what he said. If I could vote anyone in, it would be Surfers Against Sewage.)

Overall it was an excellent event that gave a very strong message to Government that enough is enough, we need commitment to change, followed through with actions. I was honoured to be a part of it.

Billed as an advertising feature from South West Water:

‘We can only rebuild trust by having one conversation at a time, and that’s on us’

Paul Atkins www.devonlive.com 

Here in the UK, we’re famed for talking about the weather – but recently we’ve been talking about it more than usual, writes Susan Davy, Chief Executive Officer of South West Water.

You won’t have failed to notice we’ve just had the wettest February ever. Across the South West, we’ve had more than twice the average rainfall.

Climate change is unfolding before our eyes: it’s a sobering statistic that five of the 10 warmest Februarys have been within the last five years.

The new climate reality presents challenges to us as a business, which we are meeting head-on – managing investments while looking to keep our customer bills as low as we can.

Our responsibility goes far beyond pipes, treatment works and reservoirs: it’s looking after 860 miles of coastline and committing to make our waters the benchmark for quality.

It’s not a simple job: besides the climate, we’re navigating population shifts, and the footprint of agriculture and tourism.

We’re halfway through a two-year £850 million accelerated investment programme to adapt our assets to take account of those changes and challenges.

Water resilience

Let’s take the first of those challenges – water resilience.

In 2022, the South West experienced one of the driest years on record. Reservoirs hit their lowest-ever levels as we fought to protect both river health and supply clean drinking water to customers and the millions of tourists who flocked here.

We moved quickly by adapting former quarries and mines to store water across Devon and Cornwall and investing in schemes to refill reservoirs more quickly.

We are also investing major sums to make more of the water we have. As well as investing in desalination, we plan to create 2,000 new jobs as part of a wider £2.8 billion investment plan across the Greater South West – a doubling of investment from the first half of this decade.

This includes upgrading half of our water treatment works, cutting leakage from our networks to less than 10% and creating a water grid to connect all our strategic reservoirs.

We’re also investing in large reservoirs, starting with Cheddar 2 in Bristol.

We’re looking forward to these plans after a 2023 which was among the wettest years in the past two centuries.

The 10 named storms and 12 yellow weather warnings we’ve had since September have been good for water resources, but triggered more use of storm overflows than any of us would like to see, even though they will have protected thousands of our homes and businesses from internal sewer flooding.

Water quality

That brings us to the second challenge of water quality.

Although there is no quick fix, our monitoring sets us apart from the rest of the world.

We’re also taking a nature-first approach to take flows out of the systems naturally by using reed beds, smart ponds and smart water butts, helping the planet and reducing the use of electricity.

Over time, more and more water will run off from roads, highways and fields, as more houses are built to cope with population growth.

That’s why we’re rethinking how our operations can help to stop these runoffs from entering our systems.

We also must remember the huge strides we’ve taken in recent decades.

In 1990, around 90% of the sewage in Devon and Cornwall was discharged untreated to the environment, most to coastal waters.

Thanks to Clean Sweep, the largest marine improvement programme in Europe, and £13 billion of investment, we created a legacy of excellence in our region’s designated bathing waters.

Just one example of Clean Sweep’s benefits was Exmouth – one of the most popular beaches in our region, where we have seen significant (around 96%) falls in harmful bacteria in the Agency’s water samples since the 1990s.

The result is that we now have some of the best bathing water quality in the country.

While ‘excellent’ between May and September, our monitoring tells us we need to ensure ‘excellent’ water quality all year round.

Release from overflows can result in diluted raw sewage going into our rivers and seas, and it is not acceptable. It is wrong, and it must stop.

We have a plan to deliver transformative change to dramatically reduce the use of storm overflows and ahead of Government targets.

Customers and communities are rightly concerned and disappointed. We are too – but we will fix this as quickly as we can, with the help of our investors.

Funding from shareholders has directly supported new investments to break the drought cycle and accelerate improvements to fix storm overflows while helping us keep bills as low as possible.

Without their support, it wouldn’t have been possible, and we will need that support in the future.

In contrast to other UK water companies, many of our investors are customers through WaterShare+, a unique scheme that gives customers both a stake and a say in how their water company is run, and in holding us to account.

At the same time, we are working hard to keep costs as low as they can be. Bills for households in Devon and Cornwall are lower today than they were 10 years ago.

From Stop the Drop to Save Every Drop we are helping customers to save water and save money.

Our Smart Saver tariff is designed to help customers think and change the way they use water.

In the space of two years, we have given away around 300,000 water-saving devices including water butts, ensuring smarter and healthier homes across the region.

Rebuilding trust

I’m very clear we can only rebuild trust by having one conversation at a time, and that’s on us.

That’s why we are doing more than ever to get into our local communities and talk face-to-face.

Our planned Community Roadshow programme will allow everyone to see local plans and ask any questions they have.

We have already kicked this off and the feedback from everyone has been resoundingly positive, while rightly challenging.

This work doesn’t end here; it’s an ongoing journey of progress, commitment, and collaboration.

My team and I work in water because it’s too important not to, and we’re doing this for a future we can all be proud of.

A correspondent has provided this quick take:

Mr Jupp read from a script and used it to criticise EDDC about housing. I did not hear him congratulate EDDC for having a vote of no confidence. [Owl can confirm that he did not].

Mr Jupp was very proud when people praised him for being a fellow Janner [dialect term for those coming from Plymouth]. Luke Pollard – Labour and Kevin Foster – Conservative MP for Torbay. who left Plymouth at 18 to go to Warwickshire University and lived Coventry until his return to Torbay to become the MP. Mr Jupp beamed every time someone congratulated him in terms of putting the debate. 

When Mr Jupp spoke I didn’t hear him mention Jo Bateman, the Exmouth swimmer. [Confirmed, he did not]. However, Richard did refer to her. Jo Bateman went to the House of Commons on Monday. She didn’t even see her MP, Mr Jupp. Wouldn’t it be etiquette for him to welcome a constituent? 

Mr Jupp asked Richard about the Libdems policy concerning the Libdems position concerning the Environment Agency and Ofwat.  Richard clarified that the Libdems wanting to replace Ofwat. If Mr Jupp was that concerned about the Libdems policy why does not look like on their website? It quite clearly states: “

• Strengthening the Office for Environmental Protection and providing more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect our environment.
• Ending sewage discharges by transforming water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps.“

It seems to me that neither Mr Jupp or Robbie Moore [The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] had a grasp of what the Libdems policies are and were keen to focus on the Lib dems wanting to abolish Ofwat with no understanding that the Libdems wanting to replace it with a tough new regulator. 

Mr Jupp at the end was keen to state that the Libdem policies were as clear as mud. [Indeed “clear as mud” were his last words in the debate]. Unfortunately for Mr Jupp, the electorate has no idea what the Conservative Party stand for with all their different groups – One Nation, New Conservatives, National Conservatism etc and then he wonders why the Conservative Party are underperforming in the polls.  

As far as the debate was concerned there was no real outcome. When Richard Foord asked Mr Moore why he didn’t turn up there was no reply. 

[Owl will pick over the entrails in due course]

South West Water were using tankers to transport flows from Budleigh to Maer Lane sewage treatment works. I understand from South West Water, with whom I remain in touch about.

Simon Jupp at last night’s debate – more on the debate later

The context behind today’s expected budget announcement of tax cuts. – Owl

NHS funding faces the biggest cuts in real terms since the 1970s, an influential analysis shows, amid growing pressure on Jeremy Hunt to prioritise public service funding over tax cuts in the budget.

Denis Campbell www.theguardian.com 

It comes as the Guardian has learned that the chancellor is planning to clamp down on the NHS’s annual £4.6bn bill for agency workers who cover for doctor and nurse shortages at the frontline.

Health spending in England is due to suffer a 1.2% cut – worth £2bn – in the new financial year starting next month, despite the NHS facing extra costs from continuing pay strikes and the expansion of its workforce, according to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IfS).

The health budget, almost all of which the NHS gets, is to go from £168.2bn in 2023-24 to £166.2bn in 2024-25, after adjustment for inflation, in 2022-23 prices.

Without a government rethink the reduction in funding will force the NHS to cut staffing numbers, staff pay, the services it provides to patients or all three, the thinktank warned.

Its intervention comes as Hunt is considering cutting billions more from his public spending plans to pay for further reductions in either income tax or national insurance in this week’s budget.

Economists have calculated that such a move would mean taking as much as a fifth out of budgets for certain “unprotected” departments across the five-year parliament covering areas such as justice, home affairs and local government.

There were also reports on Monday night that the chancellor was looking to give motorists a £5bn boost by extending the “temporary” 5p-a-litre cut in fuel duty by another year.

The level of public sector spending pencilled in for the next parliament could mean cuts equivalent to those undertaken by David Cameron’s government during the years of austerity from 2010 to 2015. That has prompted warnings that the next government would not be able to implement them, and would be forced either to raise taxes or borrow more to fund emergency spending.

The Liberal Democrats said the plan to cut the NHS budget was “scandalous”. Doctors’ leaders warned it would harm patients. And hospital bosses said they would struggle if it went ahead because the estimated £2bn cost of 15 months of strikes have left their finances in a perilous state.

Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem’s Treasury spokesperson, said: “What this Conservative government is doing to our NHS is nothing short of scandalous. They have left health services shockingly underfunded and it is patients who are bearing the brunt of their neglect.”

She urged Hunt to cancel the planned cut in the budget he will present to MPs on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, hospital doctors voiced alarm that, with the NHS already in “an eternal crisis” in which it cannot meet the growing demand for care, pressing ahead with the planned cut could be “terminal” and would harm patients.

Dr Tim Cooksley, the immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “On this background, rumours of a funding cut could be the final straw for many colleagues and would undoubtedly cause severe harm to large numbers of patients.

“There is consensus that the situation in the NHS has never been so challenging. Funding is only part of the solution but a crucial one. A reduction at this stage could be a terminal event.”

David Phillips, an associate director at the IFS who carried out the analysis, said: “Existing [government spending] plans entail real-terms cuts of around 1.2% in [NHS] day-to-day spending [in 2024/25] – the largest reduction since the 1970s following the 1976 IMF crisis, except for the last two years as temporary funding related to the Covid-19 pandemic expired.

“A real-terms reduction in health spending would require some combination of reductions in staffing, pay and service provision.”

Phillips also disclosed that the government had to give the Department of Health and Social Care an emergency injection of £4.4bn of extra Treasury funding during the course of the current financial year to ensure that it – and the NHS – did not bust their budgets. The DSHC had not publicised that.

The NHS is thought to have received about £4bn of the £4.4bn, which was to cover staff pay rises, the costs of industrial action, schemes to help the service cope with winter and also its share of the health surcharge that migrants, or their employers, pay to cover the cost of their NHS care.

The DHSC’s budget for 2023-24 was originally due to be £164.2bn. However, it rose to £168.2bn as a result of ministers giving it what health economists call an “in-year bung” of about £4bn, to avoid a shortfall.

The department was and remains due to be handed a budget of £166.2bn for 2024-25. However, the £4.4bn top-up received this year meant that, as a result, next year’s budget was on course to be £2bn less than this one, prompting the IfS’s intervention, Phillips explained.

Julian Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health service trusts, said: “These figures will ring alarm bells for trust leaders who are already struggling to provide patient care in a hugely challenging financial environment.

“Fifteen months of strike action have landed the NHS with an eye-watering bill due to income lost from delayed operations, scans and procedures and providing cover for striking staff.

“With worries that industrial action looks set to continue into the next financial year, trust leaders are rightly worried that these costs could continue to mount. Given the extra pressure industrial action is putting on NHS budgets, it’s vital the Treasury funds trusts’ strike costs in full.”

Hunt also plans to announce a clampdown on the money the NHS gives to employment agencies – £4.6bn across the UK and £3.5bn in England alone – as a result of a Treasury review of productivity across the public sector. He is set to cap the amount the service as a whole can hand them.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, labelled the chancellor “hypocrite Hunt” because the DHSC last year raised the annual cap for such spending by £450m. Streeting also pointed out that in 2015, when Hunt was the health secretary, he announced a similar crackdown on agencies which charged “extortionate hourly rates which cost billions of pounds a year”.

Streeting said: “Taxpayers are paying a heavy price for 14 years of Conservative failure.

“The Conservatives refused to train the doctors and nurses our NHS needs, leaving the health service to rely on rip-off recruitment agencies. Then they forced doctors and nurses out on the worst strike in the history of the NHS, leaving patients waiting longer and taxpayers picking up the bill.

“Expecting hypocrite Hunt to fix the mess he’s made is like expecting the arsonist to put out the fire they’ve started – it’s not going to happen.”

The DHSC was approached for its response.

“There is no sense in reintroducing beavers into small chalk streams, or any other form of stream in Dorset. Beavers dam rivers.”

(In fact he doesn’t want them anywhere!).

Can you ever really trust a Tory on environmental issues? – 

Richard Drax MP Conservative, South Dorset during the debate on farming in the House of Commons at 4:21 pm on 4 March 2024.

From Hansard:

“My next topic is slightly off farming, but it relates to it, and that is the reintroduction of beavers. There has been a report of a beaver being released illegally in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. That is causing concern. I believe that reintroduction has been experimented with in Scotland to a large degree. If we are to re-wild, I suppose there is some sense in putting beavers in large rivers, but there is no sense in reintroducing beavers into small chalk streams, or any other form of stream in Dorset. Beavers dam rivers. They would be protected, no doubt, by every organisation that would want to protect them. Farmland would then flood. As has been proven in Scotland, beavers do not hang around and say, “This is my home.” They breed and move elsewhere and do the same in other rivers. As I understand it, they had to be culled in Scotland, because they broke out of the area given to them. Can the Government please look not only at the illegal releasing of beavers into rivers, if that is happening—it has not been proven yet—but the legal release? There is an emphasis on re-wilding. While we all want to see wild animals, there is a proper place and location for each species.“

John Halsall is the man who led the South West Water’s team responding to questions raised by councillors at the EDDC scrutiny meeting on 1st February.

He is SWW’s Chief Operating Officer, in effect second in command to the CEO with the day to day running of the business “at his fingertips” so to speak. He is also on the Board. He should, therefore, have been in a position to answer pretty well any question councillors threw at him, especially the twelve they had given him in advance. By the same token, he knows all about any “inconvenient facts” SWW would rather we didn’t know about.

Owl described SWW’s approach to the committee at the time as “evasive” and is not surprised that subsequently the full council passed a vote of “no confidence in SWW”.

John Halsall has now written to apologise to the people of Exmouth for the disruption caused by sewer mains bursting. But questions around SWW’s strategic failure to invest remain.

As with the Post Office “Horizon” scandal, when confidence in an organisation has been lost, an apology is a start but not a sufficient response to regain that confidence.

SWW, and indeed all water companies, have a long way to go.

Exmouth is not the only place suffering in East Devon.

What is “the long-term solution for Exmouth”, see “Does SWW have a cunning plan?” We need full transparency. – Owl

Adam Manning www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

South West Water says it is ‘sincerely sorry’ for the current issues surrounding the burst sewer pipe in Phear Park.

In December last year, a series of bursts were found on the pipe between the Plumb Park housing estate and Maer Lane Sewage Treatment Works. 

The burst occurred due to the condition of the pipe, which was unexpected because it was not known to have deteriorated and had only burst once in the previous 20 years.

Due to the condition the pipe was found to be in, South West Water decided to replace the entire section. This is roughly 500-metres long and is due to be completed by the end of this month.

To address the initial burst, a temporary overland pipe to bypass the damaged section. After this, three further bursts on other parts of this section of pipe were spotted on February 13.

While repairing or putting in sections of overland pipe to bypass the burst, tankers were bought in to take flows from Phear Park Pumping Station to Maer Lane Sewage Treatment Works. That work is now complete and the overland pipe runs from Plumb Park to Maer Lane. The tankers have now been stood down, but a small number in the area as a precaution.

The 500-metre section of pipe which runs from Plumb Park housing estate to Maer Lane Sewage Treatment Works is now being repaired. Since 2008, replacement and relining work has been carried out to the other section of this main, which runs from the housing estate to Phear Park Pumping Station. This means that the entire main from Phear Park to Maer Lane Sewage Treatment Works will have been upgraded when the repair is completed.

They say that they are now ‘working on a long-term solution for Exmouth’.

John Halsall, chief operating officer of South West Water said: “I’d like to take the opportunity to sincerely apologise to anyone who has been affected and to explain what issues we have faced and what steps we are taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again. There has been some misunderstanding about the work at times.

“We really appreciate that the tankering caused disruption for customers in the area and we are sincerely sorry for that. This was the least worst option available to us but we understand it was far from ideal.

“We have been in regular contact with the Environment Agency throughout the duration of the works and we have been keeping them updated on our progress. We have also been providing updates to the council, the local MP, local media and customers. We know how much it means to everyone to get the information they want, when they want it. Different people are interested in different aspects of this repair and so it is very difficult to update everyone, all the time, but we are working as hard as we can to keep everyone informed and we know we can do better.

“Once again, I would like to reiterate how sorry I am personally to local residents for the ongoing issues in Exmouth and I really appreciate their continued patience. I would also like to thank all of our operational teams who have worked hard in an extremely challenging situation, and who continue to work hard on the long-term solution for Exmouth.”

Richard Foord, MP for Tiverton & Honiton

By the time you read this, it’s possible you might have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt present the Government’s budget for the year ahead. Writing as I am before he gets to his feet, there is talk of what tax cuts he will make.

Tax cuts anticipate a General Election like a blackbird’s song predicts daybreak. Neither lasts very long afterwards! What is lacking though is a sense of just how bad things are right now for those who continue to depend on public services.

Local health services are being pushed to the brink. Community Hospitals like the one in Seaton are threatened with being divided and even disposed of. NHS dentistry is decaying before our very eyes. To my mind, there are several things the Government could do right now to help the economy and society in Devon and beyond.

The Chancellor could permanently cut the rate of VAT for tourism and hospitality businesses. This would boost vital businesses in tourist hotspots like ours – allowing them to stay afloat and generate taxes to support other vital services.

A low VAT rate levied on a pub that continues to trade is better for the Treasury than a high VAT rate levied on a landlord who is driven out of business. The permanent VAT cut I propose contrasts with the temporary cut that has been proposed by some Tory MPs. They seem not to have spotted that the VAT rate on hospitality businesses has leapt up and down like a yo-yo at the hands of this Conservative Government.

Secondly, the Chancellor ought to cancel the planned real-terms cut to the NHS. Failing to increase the NHS budget in line with inflation would remove around £1.3bn from services that are already struggling. We need to invest in people’s health: recruit more GPs, boost the number of dental appointments, and cut the long waits for urgent cancer care. People who are well can work, contribute to society and pay taxes.

Finally, Government must stop handing out tax breaks to big banks. It must stop allowing energy firms to rake in bumper profits off the back of rising energy costs too. This would generate billions extra to invest in our communities.

People are tired of the chaos and mismanagement this Conservative Government has presided over. People tell me they are ready for a change, and here in Honiton & Sidmouth, the way to get that is to vote Liberal Democrat, so we can send this obstreperous Government off the pitch and enjoy the dawn of a new day.

Jo Bateman attended as part of the Surfers Against Sewage campaign.

4 March Richard Foord:

Tonight, I hosted @WaterWaysProtct and @sascampaigns in Parliament. No Minister was present, though he was invited.

We need the Govt to take this issue seriously – with more powers and resources, as well as duties, so the regulator can enforce the law.

What Richard Foord will have done is collect first hand information for Today’s “Westminster Hall” debate that Simon Jupp is kicking off at 4.30pm.

Do the Tories really care about pollution? – Owl

Regulators have accused water companies of “genuinely shocking” behaviour, gaming a self-monitoring system and demonstrating a “culture of complacency”.

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

The comments from the heads of the Environment Agency and Ofwat mark an escalation of rhetoric from the water sector’s regulators.

Philip Duffy, chief executive of the Environment Agency, singled out sewage pollution incidents by Southern Water and Severn Trent, which were recently fined £330,000 and £2 million, respectively.

He said they were “genuinely shocking, shocking cases of pollution of our rivers, that shouldn’t be happening in a well-regulated industry”.

In Southern Water’s case, more than 2,000 fish were killed after a pump failed and sewage was released into a stream that feeds into the River Hamble in Hampshire. Severn Trent, meanwhile, was responsible for a “reckless failure” in allowing 260 million litres of sewage to be spilled illegally into the River Trent, a judge concluded.

Duffy said that “time and time again” promises made by water firms to the Environment Agency and Ofwat hadn’t been kept. “Infrastructure that should have been maintained to a certain level hasn’t been maintained to that level,” he said.

Under Duffy’s leadership, the Environment Agency is preparing to increase the number of inspections of water companies from less than 1,000 in the current financial year to 4,000 next year and more than 10,000 the year after. He said the measures were needed because the system of companies monitoring themselves, introduced in 2009, “had been gamed a bit”.

“The times of day the samples were taken, the way the samples were taken, gave a misleading positive impression,” he said. Duffy also said he was “really worried” about chemical pollution in rivers, specifically the “forever chemicals” PFAS and PFOS which have been linked to serious health harms including increased risk of cancer.

David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, said that water companies needed to restore public trust by implementing improvements and showing greater transparency.

“We need to see a change of culture,” he told a conference held by the Water Report on February 29. “I think the water sector has demonstrated a culture of complacency in the face of significant challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity and population growth, and this has led to stagnating performance.”

However, Black said he was pleased the water industry was beginning to “respond in a meaningful way to the challenges it faces”. He cited the £96 billion water firms have proposed spending between 2025 and 2030. Ofwat has to decide this summer whether to approve the spending, despite it requiring a 31 per cent increase in household water bills over the period.

The Times’s Clean it Up campaign has been calling for stronger governance of the water sector and more resources for regulators to do their job.

In recent weeks the government has vowed to ban bonuses for bosses of water companies that commit criminal acts of pollution. Chief executives have received £26 million since 2019 and, while some voluntarily waived their bonuses last year amid public anger, five still took them.

However, it has emerged that the government has rowed back on a plan by the environment secretary, Steve Barclay, to block dividends at water firms with a poor environmental record. “The government has no plans to block water company dividends over illegal pollution events,” Gareth Davies, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, wrote in a message to industry last week. Labour is understood to have no appetite for such a dividend ban.

David Henderson, chief executive of Water UK, the industry body, said a dividend ban would have been disastrous. “If you want to break the system, and get terrible environmental performance, that’s the way to do it,” he said when asked if a ban would harm investment in the sector.

Henderson said there “still a lot to do” in improving the state of rivers but he was hopeful the sector would tackle the problem. “Performance has not been where it should have been,” he admitted. “We have failed, in some parts quite acutely, to keep up with public perceptions of what is needed.”

Despite what many see as the inevitability of an overall Labour victory nationally when voters go to the polls, history suggests that non-Conservative votes are likely to be spread between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party in what in the future will be the South Devon constituency.

Polls indicate that the Conservative candidate could win with as little as 34 per cent of the vote.

Totnes pulls together to oust Tory MP

Mario Ledwith www.thetimes.co.uk

For decades, the market town of Totnes in Devon has been almost entirely under the control of the Conservatives, making it one of the safest seats in the country. Without a sudden change in Britain’s voting system, polls show that things may well stay that way in the near future, despite the dismal poll ratings for Rishi Sunak’s party.

So, with no sign of reform on the horizon, campaigners in the constituency representing what they describe as the “progressive vote” have decided to take matters into their own hands. Giving themselves the sole task of unseating the Tories, the group has launched a series of events aimed at crowning a single candidate who can successfully compete at the forthcoming general election.

Those behind the so-called South Devon Primary believe that selecting a “People’s Champion” is the only way of securing victory.

Attendees showed their appetite for change on a question and answer board

Despite what many see as the inevitability of an overall Labour victory nationally when voters go to the polls, history suggests that non-Conservative votes are likely to be spread between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party in what in the future will be the South Devon constituency.

Polls indicate that the Conservative candidate could win with as little as 34 per cent of the vote. The campaigners say that they have decided to act because Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system is “no longer fit for purpose”, having been developed when there were only two main parties.

In response, Anthony Mangnall, Totnes’s Conservative MP, has accused those hoping to anoint a unity candidate of seeking to “restrict democracy”.

Although rare on the mainland, electoral pacts have been a feature of elections in Northern Ireland. Under such agreements, unionist parties have joined together to select one candidate to prevent a republican party from winning. The Totnes concept differs in that it is an unofficial endorsement, separate to the parties’ own campaigning, with losing candidates remaining on the ballot.

The successful candidate from the South Devon Primary will be chosen through voting at seven town hall events across the constituency over the next fortnight. The first of those took place on Saturday in Totnes, a town of 9,000 residents whose independent spirit came to national prominence in 2012 when they united to block Costa Coffee from opening a branch.

As nearly 300 people packed into its Civic Hall and a further 160 gathered outside a pub where the primary was being live-streamed, hopes rippled at the prospect of upsetting the electoral status quo.

Those who had gathered were hoping to hear pitches from the Labour, Lib Dem and Green candidates, with a vote for the candidate deemed most likely to win an election being submitted at the end.

However, as the event neared, it was clear that the attempt to reshape the town’s voting framework had stumbled. Labour, which has not yet chosen a candidate, did not send anybody to speak up for the party. Those in attendance had to focus instead on the pledges of Caroline Voaden, the Lib Dems’ prospective candidate, and Robert Bagnall, the Greens’ prospective candidate.

The organiser of the South Devon Primary and the sitting Conservative MP give their views to Times Radio

The organisers — Anthea Simmons, Simon Oldridge and Ben Long — told the audience that they themselves were not members of any political party. Addressing the elephant in the Civic Hall room, Oldridge said of the lack of Labour representation: “It’s disappointing and frustrating. We would love to see their candidate here.” He added: “The vast majority of people want to get behind someone for a change.”

Simmons told the room that she was an “ex-tribal Tory” who had voted for the party in 2015 before growing disillusioned. “We need better democracy,” she said. “It’s time to see off these Tories.”

The candidates began the two-hour session by introducing themselves and stating why they were the best person to defeat Mangnall. They drew laughs, applause and some awkward glances during long-winded responses as George Monbiot, the event chairman, Guardian columnist and environmental activist, tried to steer proceedings. He hailed the event as “groundbreaking”.

Perhaps inevitably, the candidates agreed on the need for proportional representation. Other areas of consensus included tackling second-home ownership, Airbnbs, assisted dying and taking utilities, such as water companies, out of the private sector.

Voaden acknowledged that ultimately neither the Lib Dems nor the Greens would be making government policy after the election, but she insisted that MPs could stand up for local issues on the opposition benches.

The constituency will be slightly redrawn during this year’s vote and will be known as South Devon, rather than Totnes. At the 2019 general election, Mangnall won the seat with 53.2 per cent of the vote, compared with 28.8 per cent for the Lib Dem candidate and 17 per cent for Labour.

Outlining her reason for attending the event, Voaden said: “I am here because I don’t want to be represented in Westminster by a Tory MP for a minute longer and by an inept, corrupt and cruel government lost in the political wilderness.”

The South Devon Primary will announce its unity candidate when voting is completed after its seventh event. Voaden, who said she was in politics because she was passionate about proportional representation and opposing Brexit, appeared confident that she would get the nod when the votes are counted in Brixham this month. “I do not want to be standing there on election night on that platform by Anthony Mangnall’s smug face because he has won this election by a thousand votes. Visualise how that will feel.”

Tories promised post-Brexit freedoms would be used to reduce regional inequality in England but have failed to deliver.

“The Tories’ begging-bowl approach to levelling up forces leaders to spend time, effort and taxpayers’ money bidding for uncertain and tightly ringfenced pots of money. This sticking-plaster approach won’t give local leaders the tools they need to drive growth in their local area and live up to their best potential.” (Justin Madders, the shadow levelling up minister).

Is Exmouth’s Gateway project really the most pressing way of spending money in the town? – Owl

Kiran Stacey www.theguardian.com 

Less than a fifth of the projects approved by Michael Gove to improve towns across England have been completed, the government has admitted, in the latest sign of the problems facing his levelling up agenda.

Responses from Gove’s department to freedom of information requests show that fewer than 20% of the projects sanctioned under the £3.6bn towns fund were on track to be finished by the end of February. Fewer than half will have been completed by the next election, even if it is held in November, the figures show.

The data is the latest example of how difficult the Conservatives have found it to meet the promises the party made at the last election to use post-Brexit freedoms to reduce regional inequality in England.

The Guardian revealed last year that councils were having to scale back or freeze levelling up projects because of soaring costs and that Gove’s department was handing back nearly £2bn of housing money after struggling to find projects to spend it on.

Jack Shaw, a local government expert who uncovered the figures, said: “Given this was a flagship policy priority at the last general election, the expectations on the government to deliver new infrastructure in places that have historically been ignored were high.

“Inflation and interest rates have prevented some projects from making progress, but the government has also failed to respond to those changes and has instead asked places to reduce their ambition. Come the election, current evidence suggests the government will have failed its pledge to ‘level up’ communities.”

The towns fund was announced immediately after the last election, with Gove promising it would give “underinvested towns the much-needed funding and support to get going on their long-term plans”.

The fund was a key plank in his levelling up plan to improve infrastructure outside London and major cities. Projects include a new investment zone around Blackpool airport, an industrial centre in Grimsby and the regeneration of Bedford’s train station.

Since then, however, high inflation has eaten into large parts of Gove’s budget and made it increasingly difficult to complete building projects. The Guardian reported last year that at least £500m had been lost from levelling up projects because of rising costs, with leisure buildings, high streets, museums and public spaces all being hit.

Many councils have stalled or reduced their plans as a result of higher costs, and some say they have found it a lengthy and bureaucratic process to get Whitehall officials to approve their alterations to the original plans.

A report by Thurrock council last November showed the authority struggling under the pressures of higher inflation.

The council was due to spend £22.8m on improving Tilbury town centre, including a new community hub, a youth centre, new cycle paths and a new jetty. In November local officials warned there had been “significant cost price inflation” since the plans were submitted, forcing them to review the entire scheme to make sure the council did not overspend.

The report added: “There has been a significant delay in the confirmation of the business cases due to the need for further reassurance and assessment work on governance by [the levelling up department] and the commissioners.”

The figures unearthed by Shaw show that out of 973 towns fund projects, only 154 are due to have been completed by the end of February. By the end of November, that figure rises to 385, just 40% of the total.

More than 170 projects are due to finish in March 2026, the official deadline given by Gove for spending all the towns fund money. A few are scheduled for completion after that date, but officials indicated this could be because they were relying on other sources of funding to finish the projects.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “All of the money which was allocated from the towns fund is on track to be spent by March 2026 as planned, with more than 100 projects already completed. The rate at which projects are being completed is entirely consistent with the delivery timeframes we have set out.”

Labour said the problems were a further indication of the issues with ministers in Westminster trying to dictate how local authorities across the country spend their money.

Justin Madders, the shadow levelling up minister, said: “The Tories’ begging-bowl approach to levelling up forces leaders to spend time, effort and taxpayers’ money bidding for uncertain and tightly ringfenced pots of money. This sticking-plaster approach won’t give local leaders the tools they need to drive growth in their local area and live up to their best potential.”

Good question for an “excellent quality 3 star” beach.

Detailed analysis of latest Environment Agency testing data shows the water in Budleigh may not have been fit for swimming for around 30 days in the 150-day May to September sampling season. That’s about 20% of the time. Does that measure up to an “Excellent” rating?

What is the message for all year round bathers?

Well if it’s not safe during the summer during heavy rain and for 48 hours after, as this analysis concludes, probably pretty crap most of the time! [Including as we go to press]- Owl

Petercrwilliams fightingpoolution.com

One of the most frequent questions we hear is “Is it safe to swim off the beach at Budleigh?” In this post, we’ll take a look at the water quality data, and offer some guidance on how best to check before you swim – Summer and Winter. Note: we are not providing advice on whether it is safe for anyone to swim on any given day!

Firstly, it’s the role of the Environment Agency (not South West Water), to regularly test bathing water during the Summer months, and to categorise all designated bathing beaches from the results. In particular, each sample is tested for the levels of E-Coli and Enterococci present in the water. High levels of these bacteria in bathing water can – and do – cause sickness and diarrhoea to swimmers and other beach users, so there are defined thresholds, above which, bathing is ‘Not Advised’.

At the end of each bathing season, the EA look back over all the samples taken in the last 4 years and, depending on the % of samples tested which are worse than the POOR level, the beach is assigned a star rating of Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor. Budleigh currently has an ‘Excellent’ rating, though as can be seen in the chart below, we are very close to slipping down into the ‘Good’ category.

Budleigh Water quality trend. If the blue ‘Actual’ average moves above green line, we slip down to ‘Good’ status. Chart (c) Environment Agency 2023

It’s probably important to consider that the water rating is more a measure of how many bad water days we get, rather than the cleanliness of the water on the majority of ‘normal’ days. This may reassure some swimmers who worry that the water may always be quite polluted.

We can do that by analysing the results of the EA water samples taken, and seeing the bacteria concentration levels of each of the 63 samples taken over the last four years, from very cleanest (left hand side of chart below), through pretty toxic (right hand side).

Majority of days (80%+) have ‘Very Low’ to ‘Low’ levels of pollution.

Below Green line shows water is EXCELLENT, but above Orange line – water quality is POOR

This clearly shows that the water really is pretty clean on around 80% of days in the May-Sept period, BUT it also shows just how highly polluted the water can get (up to 3 times worse than the ‘Poor’ level) after incidents of pollution or high rainfall.

So how do the EA sample Budleigh’s bathing water?

• Critically the EA only sample the water in the Summer ‘swimming season’, from May to September. This is a major issue for us – as many Budleigh folk swim all year round. This is a national issue, but with more and more people swimming all year round, it’s important that we campaign to see how this can be changed
• The Environment Agency aim to sample the bathing water 20 times in the season, so about once per week. Testing water quality is not quick, so results of each test are not available for several days after sampling. This means that we cannot check the current actual water quality on the EA web site. The main purpose of this sampling appears therefore to determine the next year’s water quality rating, as well as to identify any major issues
• To try and resolve that, the EA run a computer analysis every morning during the bathing season, to forecast the likely pollution level at the beach that day. This results in a straight ‘OK’ or ‘Bathing not Advised’ status. This status is displayed at Steamer steps, on the electronic board near the Longboat Cafe, and online via the LoveBudleigh web site. During the season, this should give the most accurate forecast on swimming conditions.
• During the 2023 season, there were 16 days when the EA declared ‘Bathing not Advised’

The chart below shows how the 2023 daily forecasts compare with the subsequent water quality measured from the samples. For each day of the season, RED in the first column identifies any days when the EA declared a Pollution Risk forecast. BLUE in the second column shows the 20 days when a water sample was taken, and Red or Amber in the third column shows if any of those samples were subsequently found to be POOR.

What this shows is that whenever the EA sampled the water within 48 hours after an EA declared ‘Pollution Risk’ day, the subsequent sample showed E-coli or Enterococci levels close to or greater than POOR levels.

This suggests that the water may not have been fit for swimming on around 30 days in the 150-day sampling season. That’s about 20% of time. That’s appears worse than the ‘Excellent’ rating would indicate.

One possible reason why our figures look worse than the official rating, is IF the EA suspend normal sampling if a Pollution Forecast is active. Although this possibility would appear to make a mockery of the whole sampling process (as they would only then sample the water when they were pretty sure it was ‘clean’!), there does seem to be scope for them to do this within the regulations. Looking at the pattern of testing days in the chart above, there are a couple of occasions when the sampling pattern suggests that this could have happened. To find out IF the EA have ever suspended or changed the sampling dates, we’ve raised an Information Request on EA to ask that question.

What the sampling results do show is that the Pollution Forecasting system appears to be a good indicator of when not to swim – but perhaps prudent to wait 48 hours before going back in after a Warning, rather than just 24 hours.

So during the bathing season, the EA Pollution Forecast, via the LoveBudleigh web site, is probably the best indicator of whether it’s safe to swim. But what about the other 7 months of our swimming year?

The most useful tool outside of the season is probably the Surfers Against Sewage app, SSRS. This takes input from all of the local sewage overflow sensors, and it produces an alert for the beach IF any of these sewage overflows registers a prolonged discharge (the actual time threshold is specific to each sewage overflow point). It’s also of note that there appear to be significantly more sewage discharges by South West Water outside of the sampled bathing season.

What SSRS does not take into account is any agricultural pollution coming in from the River Otter, which is a significant contributor to the water quality. That’s why we want the EA to extend their pollution forecasting and water sampling to all year round. In the meantime, do download and use the ‘SSRS’ app, for all ‘out of season’ swimming. However, it’s probably also prudent to avoid times when the river has been particularly high after heavy rain – and certainly avoid the area by the river mouth and brook outfalls.

Next time, we’ll take a look at where on the beach the Environment Agency take their samples, and why this might either under- or over-estimate the cleanliness of the water – depending on where you decide to swim.

Latest poll damning 

Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978 with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll.

Archie Mitchell www.independent.co.uk 

The bombshell survey, showing the Conservatives as 27 points behind Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, would spell electoral oblivion for Mr Sunak’s party if replicated at a general election.

The Ipsos poll, published on Monday, shows Mr Sunak could hold on to as few as 25 seats – 351 fewer than Boris Johnson won in 2019 – in what would be a historic defeat.

It also predicts Sir Keir could secure as many as 537 seats – 340 more than Jeremy Corbyn managed at the last election and equating to a landslide which would eclipse Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 win.

Calculus election predictor using Ipsos data based new constituency boundaries

The survey showed support for the Tories at just 20 per cent, the lowest since 1978 when Ipsos started tracking the poll. Ipsos is a multinational market research firm and the poll is the latest in its monthly independent Political Monitor.

It comes just weeks after a Tory bust-up over a series of secretive polls trying to discredit Mr Sunak, including one poll that warned of a Tory wipeout unless he was removed as leader.

In the latest survey, Labour’s support has dropped to 47 per cent from the 49 per cent it had in January.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats were backed by 9 per cent of the electorate, while support for both the Green Party and Reform UK was at 8 per cent – double what it was in January.

Ipsos’s previous lowest score for the Conservatives was 22 per cent, recorded by John Major in December 1994 and May 1995, only a few years before Sir Tony’s election win.

The slump in Conservative support follows a series of bad headlines for Mr Sunak at the start of 2024, with confirmation that the UK had entered a recession at the end of last year, two large by-election defeats in Wellingborough and Kingswood and an Islamophobia row over comments by now-suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson.

There is also public frustration at near-record NHS waiting lists and record high net migration, with Mr Sunak failing on four of his five key pledges to voters including to “stop the boats” and grow the economy.

Ipsos head of political research Gideon Skinner said: “The historical comparisons continue to look ominous for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives. The Ipsos Political Monitor series started in the late 70s and has never recorded a Conservative vote share this low.”

He added that individual support for the PM is also heading downwards, with Mr Sunak’s approval rating hitting -54, a record low.

“Combined with Labour taking leads on issues of economic credibility to go with their traditional strengths in public services, this means the Conservatives face big challenges across a number of fronts if they are to turn the situation around,” Mr Skinner said.

In a further worrying sign for the Conservatives, Labour is now seen as having a lead on which party would best manage the economy, compared with October when the parties were neck and neck.

The public also believe Labour’s Rachel Reeves would make the best chancellor, with just a fifth satisfied with the job Jeremy Hunt is doing.

It will pile further pressure on the government to come up with an offering in Wednesday’s Budget, with right-wing Tories clamouring for tax cuts while others want Mr Hunt to ensure better funding for public services.

The poll was based on a survey of 1,000 British adults between February 21 and 28.

• Sycamore: shorten back on south side by approximately 2m. Reason – to leave a more balanced form. Ash: reduce height and side branches by approximately 2-3m to a suitable side branch. Reason – to relieve weight and lessen the likelihood of branch breakage. Elm: remove to as near ground level as possible. Reason – dying. 9 Garrett Close Seaton EX12 2FERef. No: 24/0401/TRE | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Erection of a single storey rear extension which would extend beyond the rear wall of the original house by 4m, for which the maximum height would be 3.5m and for which the height of the eaves would be 3m 46 Arcot Park Sidmouth EX10 9HURef. No: 24/0400/GPD | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of single storey side extension. Addition of two storey side extension. Knapp House Pound Lane Uplyme DT7 3TTRef. No: 24/0398/FUL | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Agricultural unit extension Hogsbrook Farm Woodbury Salterton Exeter EX5 1PYRef. No: 24/0397/FUL | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Single storey rear extension 45 Sid Park Road Sidmouth Devon EX10 9BRRef. No: 24/0402/FUL | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of condition for 23/2102/ADV: Condition 6 (individual signage letters) The Old Sorting Office 52 – 54 High Street Budleigh Salterton EX9 6NBRef. No: 24/0396/DOC | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Rear and side single storey extensions Barafundle Bunts Lane Seaton Devon EX12 2HYRef. No: 24/0390/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Application for Permission in Principle for 4-9 houses Land South Of Park Lodge Talaton Road FenitonRef. No: 24/0378/PIP | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of x2no. outbuildings to be replaced with 2 bed detached chalet bungalow [re-submission of 23/2485/FUL] 34 Raleigh Road Ottery St Mary EX11 1TGRef. No: 24/0392/FUL | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• T1, Willow: overall reduction, reducing height by approximately 4m, reducing width of canopy by approximately 2m, maximum cut diameters 100mm, cutting to viable growth points wherever possible. Crossway House The Street Musbury Devon EX13 8AURef. No: 24/0376/TCA | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Construction of porch extension [resubmission of 18/0097/FUL] 5 Parkhayes Woodbury Salterton Devon EX5 1QSRef. No: 24/0375/FUL | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Proposed extensions, alterations and part garage conversion 29 Cranford Avenue Exmouth EX8 2QARef. No: 24/0372/FUL | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of condition for 23/1508/FUL: Condition 4 (Plant Noise Assessment) 86 High Street Honiton EX14 1JNRef. No: 24/0365/DOC | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of condition for 22/2718/FUL: Condition 3 (cladding) 38 Cranford Avenue Exmouth Devon EX8 2QARef. No: 24/0370/DOC | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Unknown
• Construction of 1 no. timber frame commercial unit Millers Farm Shop Gammons Hill Kilmington Devon EX13 7RARef. No: 24/0363/FUL | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Removal of condition no.4 (Agricultural Occupancy Condition) from planning permission 83/P1768 – Change Of Use To Agricultural Contractor’s Depot. Following approved 23/1793/CPE, The condition needs to be removed to allow the dwelling to be occupied as an unrestricted C3 dwelling Thornfield Tytherleigh Devon EX13 7BGRef. No: 24/0355/VAR | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Proposed replacement of conservatory with single storey extension Passlands Membury Axminster EX13 7TERef. No: 24/0350/FUL | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Discharge of condition for 23/2278/FUL: Condition 3 (Materials) 67 Bicton Street Exmouth Devon EX8 2RURef. No: 24/0359/DOC | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• A small scale (10 pitch maximum), tent only, campsite for up to 60 days per annum, including moveable toilet facilities, operated under Part 4 Class BC of the GPDO. Holly Farm Alston Axminster EX13 7LGRef. No: 24/0360/R77 | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of existing bungalow and garage with construction of a replacement house and integral double garage. Lindridge Elsdon Lane West Hill Devon EX11 1UBRef. No: 24/0352/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Proposed replacement porch with timber cladding 3 Hill Court Hillhead Colyton Devon EX24 6NJRef. No: 24/0346/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Replacement garden shed, height increase and repairs to existing chimneys, re-roofing of porch and replacement window. Church Terrace Cottage Dunkeswell Honiton EX14 4QZRef. No: 24/0348/FUL | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Replacement garden shed, height increase and repairs to existing chimneys, re-roofing of porch and replacement window Church Terrace Cottage Dunkeswell Honiton EX14 4QZRef. No: 24/0349/LBC | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Silver birch: remove to ground level.; Ash to be reduced to wall height. Peppercorn Cottage Brampford Speke EX5 5HGRef. No: 24/0336/TCA | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Certificate of Lawful development for rear extension 1.5m from existing wall, remove store shed and extend to the side by a maximum of 4.48m.Barafundle Bunts Lane Seaton Devon EX12 2HYRef. No: 24/0330/CPL | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Refused
• Retrospective planning application for the installation of one 7KW Air Source Heat Pump (Resubmission of 22/0974/FUL) 11 Mill Lane Branscombe EX12 3DSRef. No: 24/0321/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of storage building and erection of a one bedroom bungalow. Southlands Gardens King Street HonitonRef. No: 24/0325/FUL | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Variation of condition no. 2 (approved plans) of planning permission 20/0779/FUL – New industrial unit for B1, B2 and B8 use. Proposal for reduction in the size of the building Coverstructures House Exeter Road Ottery St Mary Devon EX11 1RERef. No: 24/0282/VAR | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Construction of rear single storey extension, and new front porch 5 Dunsford Close Exmouth Devon EX8 2HWRef. No: 24/0266/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Annexe extension 4 Swains Road Budleigh Salterton EX9 6HZRef. No: 24/0262/FUL | Validated: Tue 20 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Single storey en-suite side extension14 Highcliffe Close Lympstone EX8 5HFRef. No: 24/0243/CPL | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Site Log Cabin Brackenrigg Cathole Lane Yawl Devon DT7 3XDRef. No: 24/0216/FUL | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of existing garage and erection of garden office building Norwood Blackhorse Broadclyst EX5 2FTRef. No: 24/0208/FUL | Validated: Wed 21 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Proposal for change of use of land to site 3no. timber cabins for holiday accommodation; landscaping and construction of pond. Twistgates Farm Upottery Devon EX14 9PERef. No: 24/0195/FUL | Validated: Fri 23 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Demolition of existing dwelling; construction of replacement dwelling with integral annexe; construction of carport; construction of storage building; and associated works. Timbervale Sowton Exeter EX5 2AGRef. No: 24/0097/FUL | Validated: Thu 22 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Permission in principle for the erection of 9 no. dwellings Land At Ford Farm WoodburyRef. No: 24/0043/PIP | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
• Proposal to create a new wildlife pond. Gilletts Farm Yarcombe Devon EX14 9AZRef. No: 23/2759/FUL | Validated: Mon 19 Feb 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision

Scandalous spending tracker

That’s right, the UK Government has scandalously spent £125,554,393,254 since 2019.

As Chancellor and now Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has had responsibility for government spending for almost all of this period.

Posted by Best for Britain www.bestforbritain.org 

It’s easy to become numb to the scale and frequency of the Government’s fiscal ineptitude and dodginess, and all at a time when ordinary people struggle to pay bills and public services are crumbling.

The total does not include the catastrophic hit to public finances from the Government’s Brexit deal which has crippled businesses, slowed economic growth, and is estimated to be costing around £100bn per year. Similarly, the total does not include the titanic economic cost of the disastrous mini-budget which increased bills for mortgage payers across the country and which ended Liz Truss’ premiership after 6 weeks.

It does, however, include figures like the devastating £290m sunk on the Government’s cruel, unworkable and unlawful Rwanda Deal. It also includes a whopping £2.3bn spent on cancelled parts of HS2, and £50m spent on a new helicopter for top Tories. 

We’ll keep it updated as new revelations come to light so check back to get the latest eye-watering figure. What’s clear is that every day this government remains in power is more money wasted. Find out what we’re doing about it at GetVoting.org.

The data

The total figure is an estimate using publicly available data. You can find the full list of scandalous spending along with sources here. 

We’ve categorised each entry as either a Crony Contract (such as giving government contracts to Conservative chums), a Duff Deal (like blowing billions on stuff that doesn’t work) or an Outrageous Outgoing (including spending silly money on interior design).

Keep informed

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