Also: Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) staff were “not concerned” about infecting elderly people in care homes until months after the pandemic struck.

Boris Johnson wanted to be injected with Covid live on TV “to show it did not pose a threat”, his former chief of staff in Downing Street told the Covid inquiry.

Archie Mitchell www.independent.co.uk

Lord Edward Udny-Lister told the official probe into the handling of the pandemic that the ex-PM, who spent days in intensive care and almost died from the virus, that the then PM’s suggestion was “an unfortunate comment”. The comments were first reported in 2021 but confirmed by Lord Lister in Tuesday’s evidence.

His comments come as Britain’s top civil servant, Simon Case, said he had “never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country” when he joined Downing Street during the Covid pandemic.

In another day of explosive evidence, messages shown to the inquiry between the former No 10 permanent secretary and then cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill from July 2020 revealed Mr Case thought that his new colleagues were “mad”.

He went on: “Not poisonous towards me (yet), but they are just madly self-defeating,” adding that “top-drawer” staff were refusing to join No 10 because of “the toxic reputation of Boris Johnson’s operation”.

Previous messages shown to the official probe into the handling of the pandemic have revealed a culture of “nastiness, arrogance and misogyny” in Downing Street at the time.

Simon Case said he had ‘never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country’ than in No10  (Supplied)

At the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Johnson’s former chief of staff Lord Lister told inquiry chair Baroness Hallett that WhatsApp messages shown as evidence so far were “appalling”.

On yet another shocking day of evidence, the Covid-19 Inquiry heard:

• Lord Lister confirmed previous reports the PM wanted to “let the bodies pile high” to avoid imposing a second Covid lockdown
• The former aide also confirmed Mr Johnson offered to be infected himself with Covid on TV to “demonstrate that it did not pose a threat” 
• Further diary entries from chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance show Mr Johnson was often overruled by then chancellor Rishi Sunak
• The government’s Covid-19 taskforce was “blindsided” by Mr Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme
• Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) staff were “not concerned” about infecting elderly people in care homes until months after the pandemic struck

Lord Lister also confirmed controversial comments by Mr Johnson that he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose another lockdown. Mr Johnson denied making the comment when the claim first emerged in 2021.

In his witness statement to inquiry, Lord Lister said he recalled Mr Johnson making the comment in September 2020. He said it was unfortunate but was made at a time when ministers were worried about “the already severe impact on the economy and education” from lockdowns.

Earlier on Tuesday, the head of the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 taskforce revealed how he was “blindsided” by Mr Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme during the summer of 2020.

Asked by lead counsel Hugo Keith KC what the taskforce’s view was of the scheme, Simon Ridley said it was decided by the prime minister and chancellor and he had no input.

Asked whether he was concerned at not being asked about Eat Out to Help Out, Mr Ridley took a long pause, before saying: “Things happen that surprise.”

But asked whether he was “blindsided by the Treasury and there was nothing you could do”, he responded: “Correct.”

The inquiry also heard how DHSC staff were “not concerned” about discharging elderly people into care homes with Covid until months after the pandemic struck, the official pandemic probe has heard.

The inquiry was also shown an email thread between top No10 and Cabinet Office officials in April 2020, which revealed increasing fears about the spread of the pandemic in hospitals and care settings.

But, when asked by a member of the Covid-19 taskforce, a DHSC director said infections acquired in hospitals and spread into care homes were “not an issue of concern”.

It came as the probe laid bare the chaos surrounding government plans to discharge thousands of patients from hospitals into social care settings to free up capacity in the NHS.

Mr Keith KC pressed Mr Ridley over whether the testing capacity was in place to ensure those discharged were not infected with the virus.

Mr Ridley said there were “limitations” to testing capacity, but said “ultimately there needs to be a decision” and the government was striking a “balance”.

Data from the first wave of the pandemic showed care home residents in England were almost 20 times more likely to die than older people living in their own homes.

The discharge of Covid patients to care homes without testing was later ruled unlawful, with High Court judges finding the policy failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission.

Mr Ridley told the inquiry on Tuesday: “We were, certainly in the Cabinet Office and in No 10 at the end of March and April, concerned to understand the position in care homes.

“I think it is true that those concerns were growing as we went into April.”

Mr Ridley was then asked by Mr Keith whether the Cabinet Office and No 10 had to “push” DHSC on the issue, saying: “Yes, that is broadly correct.”

The inquiry also saw more extracts from former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick’s diaries, revealing his belief that Mr Johnson was often “undone” by his then chancellor.

Sir Patrick noted that Mr Johnson was seen as “owning the reality for a day” before being “buffeted by a discussion with Rishi Sunak”.

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

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

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

Alex Lawson www.theguardian.com 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It has to published new accounts by 31 December.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Eve www.plymouthherald.co.uk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Banged Up]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Savage 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said: “This is not an inquiry.”

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

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

Mid Devon District Council did not wish to comment further.

Martin Shaw

There were queues across the car park, people standing everywhere, some looking in through the windows, others unfortunately having to turn away. It was twice the size of the meeting in the same hall in March 2017 after they stole the hospital’s beds, and probably even bigger than one in Seaton Town Hall in late 2016 when bed cuts were first proposed.

We had fantastic contributions from all our speakers, especially Dr Mark Welland of the League of Friends (above) and Richard Foord MP, and also from around 20 people from the floor. There was complete unity on the need to save the hospital wing for use by the League, Re:store and other local groups promoting health and wellbeing (for example, for a palliative care service), and for this to be done by renting or even buying the wing – as long as this is at minimal cost, since the local community paid in full for building the wing in the first place.

We unanimously established a Seaton Hospital Steering Committee to fully represent the local community in all matters relating to the future of the hospital. As organiser of the meeting and de facto acting secretary for the committee, I will write to the ICB and NHS Property Services, who declined to attend, to inform them of its outcome.

Decisions

1. It was agreed to ask all supporters to write to Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the ICB, to support our case (she is the former MP for Totnes and former Chair of the Health Select Committee).

Email her at d-icb.corporateservices@nhs.net or write to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair, NHS Devon Integrated Care Board, County Hall, EXETER EX2 4QD. Mark your letter ‘for the personal attention of Dr Wollaston’ & also ‘please circulate to all members of the Board’. [Board members can be found here – Makes interesting reading – Owl]

2. There will be a protest outside Health Scrutiny at County Hall on Thursday 9 November, 9.30-10.30. We will be joining with Teignmouth whose hospital is also being discussed at Scrutiny. The meeting starts at 10.30 and we will then all go inside, where Jack Rowland and I will be presenting the Seaton case at the beginning of the meeting (you don’t necessarily have to stay for their discussion which may be quite a bit later). WE NEED TO ORGANISE CARS & PLACARDS (HOME-MADE WILL BE FINE).

3. We are planning a day of action on Saturday 18 November. The current proposal is to leaflet and collect signatures for a petition in the centre of Seaton (outside Tesco and/or Aldi?), Colyton, Beer etc., but WE NEED YOUR IDEAS.

There will be an ORGANISING MEETING for these actions from 4.15-5.45 on Monday 6 November in the Old Picture House, Harbour Rd, Seaton. 

Please come along if you would like to help – LET ME KNOW by email (saveseatonhospital@gmail.com) so that we have an idea of numbers. Also let me know if you’d like to help on either 9th or 18th but can’t make it on Monday.

Also follow the campaign on: Seaton & Colyton Matters blog

South West Water is being asked to justify its “bland” responses on planning applications, given the rise in sewage spills in Devon’s river and coastal waters.

Alison Stephenson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

Torridge District Council wants the company to be removed from the list of consultees and an independent organisation to oversee new developments.

And it plans to ask other councils in Devon to support its request to government.

In his motion to council, Cllr Peter Christie (Green, Bideford North) said he is fed up with SWW’s response of “has no objection” when it is asked to give a view on new plans.

“Over the last decade, this is the answer we get, with very few exceptions.

“Clearly, given the current state of our rivers and coastal waters there is a major problem – and it appears to be overlooked that SWW have a vested interest in more development as it means more customers locked into paying them, as water and sewage services are a monopoly service.”

He told the council that according to SWW’s website, in Bideford last year there were 24 sewage spills, 31 in Buckleigh, 144 in Abbotsham, 117 at Weare Giffard and 25 in Torrington.

“South West Water will take the money for every new house but are not doing what they should be doing in tackling the infrastructure.”

He said in the late 1970s and 80s a ‘sewage embargo’  was placed on Bideford and house building stopped for several years because the town’s infrastructure couldn’t cope.

“Nothing has really changed, they cannot cope with the sewage capacity and water availability is also an issue when we have a drought.”

Cllr Annie Brenton (Lab, Bideford West) said there is a large new development under construction in Bideford beyond Atlantic Village and the council needs to be “really careful and scrupulous” about planning details for drains and sewerage.

“At the moment, South West Water’s behaviour is scandalous. They don’t carry out their legal responsibilities. They are continually breaking the law. They prevaricate and fob you off. We really need to make sure we have an independent, honest assessment of our sewage needs in this area. We need somebody with integrity where profit is not the sole consideration.

“The welfare of our people and our rivers and our sea is just as important as making money.”

Cllr Simon Newcombe (Con, Winkleigh) said independent was “all very good” but if it was not legally enforceable it was not worth the money spent on it.

Cllr David Brenton (Lab, Bideford South) said: “We should be getting Ofwat here. They are supposed to be the ones that are regulating and monitoring this, but they don’t.

“They have the teeth, but they don’t use them. It’s a quango of course, we know how loaded they are, but we need to get them here and ask them ‘what are you doing about the spills in our rivers and seas’.”

Tory big beast Ken Clarke has thrown his weight behind Rachel Reeves, praising her “responsible” approach to public finances.

Archie Mitchell www.independent.co.uk

In the latest significant boost for the Labour shadow chancellor, Lord Clarke, who served as chancellor under John Major and was health secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s government, said he had been impressed by Ms Reeves.

But, stopping short of full backing for Labour, he said: “It’s her party that worries me”. Lord Clarke added: “If it was Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves, then I don’t think either of the parties would worry me very much.”

It comes just weeks after the former governor of the Bank of England endorsed the Labour Party in a major coup for Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor. Mark Carney said it was “beyond time” for Ms Reeves to run the economy in a Labour government.

Mr Carney, the 58-year-old who was handpicked by former Tory chancellor George Osborne to be governor, stunned the Labour conference last month with a video address saying: “Rachel Reeves is a serious economist. She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture. But, crucially, she understands the economics of work, of place and family. It is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.”

Both endorsements come as major donors and business leaders have returned to the Labour fold under Sir Keir and Ms Reeves, having shunned the party under former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Speaking to the i newspaper’s Labour’s Plan For Power podcast about Ms Reeves and Mr Hunt, Lord Clarke said: “I don’t think they disagree on very much. They do, of course, politically, I do myself disagree with some of Rachel’s political views, I’m sure.

“But her actual approach, a responsible approach to macroeconomic policy, matches the responsible approach to macroeconomic policy that Jeremy Hunt has which, in the present shambles of British and international politics and the dangers of it, I find rather reassuring – about the only thing I do find reassuring about this election that’s coming up.”

Lord Clarke also warned she would face “a lot of tough, unpopular decisions” if Labour wins power, because “we’re not going to get out of our present financial crisis for at least two or three years”.

Labour grandee Lord Mandelson also threw his weight behind Ms Reeves, saying: “She’s even tougher than I thought she was. I mean, I knew she would be a bit of an old boot, but I didn’t realise that she’d be quite as uncompromising in the way in which she develops policy, sees off her detractors and deals with her colleagues on some occasions too.”

And elsewhere in the podcast, Lord Clarke said Tory demands for tax cuts and a cabinet reshuffle are “daft” and “neither of them will do any good in the sense of winning votes”.

The former chancellor said it was “absurd” to suggest a reshuffle of his top team could turn Rishi Sunak’s fortunes around.

Martin Shaw will report tomorrow

The UK is likely to have a general election next year, prime minister Rishi Sunak has hinted.

Jane Dalton www.independent.co.uk

It’s the first time the PM has hinted at a possible date as speculation has been mounting on whether he would call one before being forced to as Labour surges ahead in the polls.

The last time the country voted in a general election was on 12 December 2019 and the new Parliament then met on 17 December.

The next general election must be held within five years of that date, so it would need to be before 17 December 2024, although a prime minister is free to call one at any time.

If an election has not been called before then, Parliament would be automatically dissolved and the election would take place 25 working days later, according to the Institute for Government.

This means the latest possible date for the next general election would be 28 January 2025.

Mr Sunak’s hint about the date came as he interviewed tech billionaire Elon Musk at the UK summit on the safety of artificial intelligence at Bletchley Park.

The pair discussed AI’s future impact on jobs, the economy and even friendships. The prime minister then went on to sat it was vital to tackle fake news, given that there were several national elections around the world next year.

He added: “Probably here.”

In February, Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands said: “The next 18 months will see us win or lose the next general election,” – which was seen as a hint that Mr Sunak could go to the country in September next year.

Mr Hands said the “strong expectation would be 2024” and a vote in January 2025 would “not be very festive” because parties would have to campaign over Christmas.

After Labour overturned large Tory majorities in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth in October, winning both by-elections, the Conservatives are thought to be planning to leave the nationwide poll late in the hope of an upturn in fortunes.

Residents living in Seaton in East Devon have endured a day to forget after they awoke to find sea water had breached the town’s defences. Water flooded the streets and video captured earlier today shows how the seaside town was transformed into a mini-river.

Elliot Ball www.devonlive.com

It was a similar picture across Devon and other parts of the UK as Storm Ciaran brought down torrential rain and strong winds. However, it appeared as though Seaton suffered more than most.

The worst of the weather began when Trevelyan Road, a residential street running off the seafront Esplanade began to flood. Homeowners described water coming over the sea wall at about 8.30am.

Damage was also caused to a cafe on the seafront. The owners of the Hideaway have posted details on Facebook They said: “The Hideaway has sustained damage from Storm Ciaran. The storm door and front doors have been pushed in and water has come all through the restaurant.

“We will be closed until we can repair and make our cafe safe again. Please DO NOT come down to look in as it’s still very dangerous. We will keep everyone posted with news as much as possible.”

Speechless – Owl

Former health secretary Matt Hancock told officials that he – rather than the medical profession – “should ultimately decide who should live or die” if the NHS was overwhelmed during the pandemic, the Covid inquiry heard.

Aletha Adu www.theguardian.com 

“Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystalised,” the former head of the NHS, Lord Simon Stevens, said in his evidence to the inquiry on Thursday.

Stevens, who led NHS England until 2021, said he stressed at the time that no individual secretary of state should be able to decide how care was provided, “other than in the most exceptional circumstances”.

Hancock’s position, which materialised during a planning exercise at the Cabinet Office in February 2020, was a different one from his predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, who had wanted such decisions to be reserved for clinical staff.

Stevens told the inquiry that this ethical question was never resolved and cropped up again during the pandemic when “rationing” of NHS services was discussed.

The former NHS chief was largely uncritical of Hancock, unlike other figures who appeared before Heather Hallett’s inquiry this week, including former No 10 senior adviser Dominic Cummings and ex-civil servant Helen MacNamara.

Stevens’ witness statement referred to the “Operation Nimbus” planning exercise, which he said was helpful in terms of outlining the pressures government departments might have faced.

“It did however result in – to my mind at least – an unresolved but fundamental ethical debate about a scenario in which a rising number of Covid-19 patients overwhelmed the ability of hospitals to look after them and other non-Covid-19 patients,” he said.

“The secretary of state for health and social care took the position that in this situation he – rather than, say, the medical profession or the public – should ultimately decide who should live and who should die.”

On the final day of evidence this week, the inquiry saw new details of Johnson’s witness statement, in which he expressed his frustrations with the NHS, blaming the health service for the first lockdown.

The former prime minister blamed “bedblocking” in the NHS for locking down the country as Covid took hold.

He said: “It was very frustrating to think that we were being forced to extreme measures to lock down the country and protect the NHS – because the NHS and social services had failed to grip the decades-old problem of delayed discharges, commonly known as bedblocking.

“Before the pandemic began I was doing regular tours of hospitals and finding that about 30% of patients did not strictly need to be in acute sector beds.”

Stevens rejected Johnson’s claims, noting the sheer number of coronavirus patients needing a hospital bed was far higher than the number of beds that could have been freed up.

“We, and indeed he, were being told that if action was not taken on reducing the spread of coronavirus, there wouldn’t be 30,000 hospital inpatients, there would be maybe 200,000 or 800,000 hospital inpatients,” Stevens told the inquiry.

“Even if all of those 30,000 beds were freed up – for every one coronavirus patient who was then admitted to that bed, there would be another five patients who needed that care but weren’t able to get it,” he added.

While Stevens declined to criticise Hancock when giving evidence, the inquiry heard that Cummings had repeatedly pushed Johnson to sack his health secretary because he had “lied his way through this and killed people and dozens and dozens of people have seen it”.

In one message, Cummings complained about Stevens and Hancock “bullshitting again”.

Stevens was shown messages, but said: “There were occasional moments of tension and flashpoints, which are probably inevitable during the course of a 15-month pandemic, but I was brought up always to look to the best in people.”

Appearing later, the top civil servant in the Department of Health, Sir Christopher Wormald, said that Hancock would probably be surprised by how “widespread” the perception was regarding his frequency of alleged “untruths”.

Wormald was also questioned at the inquiry over why he and the UK’s most powerful official, Mark Sedwill, were discussing how the virus was like chickenpox as late as mid-March 2020.

Wormald, who remains the permanent secretary in the department, believed Johnson “did not understand difference between minimising mortality and minimising overall spread”.

Lord Sedwill messaged Wormald weeks before the first lockdown, saying: “Indeed presumably like chickenpox we want people to get it and develop herd immunity before the next wave. We just want them not to get it all at once and preferably when it’s warn (sic) and dry etc.”

This message exchange came on the same day that Cummings had complained in a WhatsApp message that Sedwill had been “babbling about chickenpox”, adding “god fucking help us”.

Giving evidence to the inquiry this week, Cummings claimed that Sedwill had told Johnson: “PM, you should go on TV and should explain that this is like the old days with chickenpox and people are going to have chickenpox parties. And the sooner a lot of people get this and get it over with the better sort of thing.”

Stevens also told the inquiry that senior ministers “sometimes avoided” Cobra meetings chaired by Hancock in the early days of the pandemic.

In his witness statement, he said the meetings “usefully brought together a cross-section of departments, agencies and the devolved administrations”.

“However, these meetings were arguably not optimally effective. They were very large, and when Cobra meetings were chaired by the health and social care secretary other secretaries of state sometimes avoided attending and delegated to their junior ministers instead,” he added.

This phase of the Covid inquiry assessed government decision making, with more witnesses scheduled to appear next week.

These include Sedwill, former No 10 special adviser Dr Ben Warner and former home secretary Priti Patel.

The Environment Agency has slashed its water-use inspections by almost a half over the past five years, it can be revealed.

[Including Devon & Cornwall]

Rachel Salvidge www.theguardian.com 

Environment Agency (EA) officers visited people and businesses with licences to abstract, or take, water from rivers and aquifers 4,539 times in 2018-19, but this dropped to 2,303 inspections in 2022-23, according to data obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations.

The fall in inspections comes despite England facing a possible water deficit of 4bn litres a day by 2050 unless action is taken, and predictions that the summer flows of some rivers could dwindle by 80% in that time.

“Obviously, this is highly beneficial to water companies and agriculture, and incredibly detrimental to water resources and therefore the environment,” an EA insider told the Guardian and Watershed on condition of anonymity. Last year, the Guardian reported that the EA did not have a strong grasp on the total volumes taken from rivers and groundwater.

The agency has also introduced desk-based inspections, which the insider described as meaningless. “They are a substitute for field inspections, and given an officer needs to check meters or records, or on-site behaviours, they are useless except for ticking a key performance indicator box.” The EA says it only uses desk inspections to assess compliance of low-risk abstraction and impounding licences.

“By reducing inspections you reduce the ability to detect illegal activity and gather evidence against,” the insider said. “Desk-based inspections are solely reliant on the word of the operator, so, for example, if an operator tells an Environment Agency officer he hasn’t abstracted any water, then the officer records that as fact. If it is an illegal operator, they are unlikely to hand themselves in. These methods provide a smokescreen of numbers that suggest correct regulation is being carried out should anyone try to audit it, when in reality the regulation is meaningless.”

Figures obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations show that the biggest drop in inspections was in the Kent, south London and East Sussex area, where inspections fell 67% – from 450 to 148 between 2018-19 and 2022-23. This was followed by Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire, where the number of inspections dropped from 139 to 47. In East Anglia, 824 abstraction inspections fell to 318, and in the Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire area they dropped from 173 to just 67.

However, an EA spokesperson said the insider’s interpretation of the drop in numbers was misleading because “inspection figures alone are not the only way of assessing whether those who take water from the environment are complying with their licences – satellite data, irrigation patrols, river gauges, groundwater level and ecological monitoring systems are increasingly used. This allows us to target activity to where and when the risks are highest and the environment is most vulnerable.”

Despite the total funding for the agency’s water, land and biodiversity area business group having risen by £73m, from £221m in 2015-16 to £294m in 2021-22, staff costs for roles in land and water management, groundwater, contaminated land and environmental monitoring fell by £2.6m (9%) over the past three years.

“The Environment Agency leadership have received vast increases in money to tackle the issue, but this has been deliberately moved away from the frontline,” said the insider. “This means they must not view protecting water supplies as a priority and that the money could be better spent elsewhere.”

The EA spokesperson said the regulator was “recruiting and training more staff to carry out water resources compliance work and … also strengthening the way we regulate to drive better performance from the water industry, with additional specialist officers and new data tools to provide better intelligence”.

Public water supply and rivers are at risk from intensifying droughts driven by the climate crisis. The chair of the EA, Alan Lovell, said about 4bn extra litres of water would be needed every day by 2050 if significant action were not prioritised, and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has predicted that some rivers could lose up to 80% of their flows in summer by 2050.

Meanwhile, water sector leaks remain high, with the Environment Agency putting the volumes of water lost at 2.3bn litres a day last year.

A spokesperson for Water UK said water companies were “acutely aware of the environmental impact of abstraction and are proposing to stop half a billion litres’ worth of abstractions from rivers by 2030. Companies also have ambitious plans to cut leakage, which has come down every year since 2020, by a quarter by the end of the decade. To ensure the security of our water supply in the future, water companies are planning to build up to 10 new reservoirs as well as looking at alternative supplies of water including water recycling and desalination.”

Richard Benwell, the CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “A long-term funding drought for the Environment Agency has left it under-resourced for the water challenges ahead. Recent funding rises don’t offset the years of underinvestment in the agency.

“This drop-off in post-Covid inspections is highly worrying and runs the risk of failures going under the radar. Desk-based and industry self-assessments simply aren’t up to the task, as we’ve seen with the sewage pollution crisis.”

NHS Devon Integrated Care Board refuses to come to meeting as news breaks that they have given £2.8m to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (RD&E) and the North Devon District Hospitals (NDDH) to provide more beds! (See below) – Owl

seatonmatters.org /

A large community public meeting will take place tomorrow to oppose the Devon NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) decision to hand back a 2-storey wing of Seaton Hospital to NHS Property Services, potentially leading to its demolition.

The ICB and NHS Property Services have both refused to send a speaker to explain the decision. Indeed the ICB has decided to have NO community consultation at all, although the wing was built 100% with local donations in 1991 (see attached fact sheet).

Tomorrow’s meeting will hear from Richard Foord MP and Dr Mark Welland of Seaton Hospital League of Friends on discussions with the ICB and Property Services, which so far have not produced a way forward.

Speakers at the meeting represent the three main centres in the area, Seaton, the Coly Valley and Beer and both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties (see attached notice).

There is strong public feeling and this will be the biggest meeting in the area since the bed closures in 2017 – please make sure your programme or paper sends a correspondent/camera crew.

VENUE: COLYFORD MEMORIAL HALL. TIME: 1.30-3.

Meanwhile

Devon hospitals given £2.8m for bed shortage support

BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust said it still expected to have bed shortages

Extra funding has been given to hospitals in Devon in a bid to cut bed shortages this winter.

The NHS Devon Integrated Care Board has given £2.8m to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (RD&E) and the North Devon District Hospitals (NDDH).

The trust that runs both had expected RD&E would be 80 beds short on average during the winter and NDDH about 40.

It said even with the funding it would expect to be a total of about 100 bed short on its “most challenged days”.

The trust said “additional measures could be implemented at pace” to mitigate the gaps, but it would require further funding.