Where is the “Progressive Alliance”? – Owl

Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck in the byelection battle for Nadine Dorries’ old constituency of Mid Bedfordshire, new polling has revealed.

Adam Forrest www.independent.co.uk

The Survation survey offers evidence that a split in the “progressive” vote could allow Rishi Sunak’s party to hold onto the seat despite wider unpopularity.

Campaigners are pushing Labour and the Liberal Democrats to form an unofficial electoral pact so only one of the big parties pushes to take the blue wall stronghold.

The new poll for Labour Together – which puts Labour and the Tories on 29 per cent – will add to pressure on Ed Davey to accept that Keir Starmer’s party has the best chance of overturing a 24,000 Tory majority.

The Lib Dems are languishing in third place on 22 per cent in the contest, set to take place on 19 October. Reform UK is on 7 per cent, while independent candidate Gareth Mackey has 6 per cent.

The Survation found poll also found that large proportion – 27 per cent – of people in the seat who are planning to vote remain undecided, with Labour activists pouncing upon the results to encourage Lib Dem supporters to switch to Sir Keir’s party.

Josh Simons, director of Labour Together, said the polling “clearly shows this is a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives”.

He added: “After 13 years, Britain needs the Conservatives out and Keir Starmer’s Labour in. Voting Labour is the best and only way for voters in Mid Bedfordshire to send a message to this shambolic Tory government.”

However, the latest poll suggests that Labour has lost its lead. An Opinium poll in June put Labour on 28 per cent, the Tories on 24 per cent and the Lib Dems on 15 per cent.

A source for Sir Ed’s party said the poll showed Labour had “stalled” because they only gained 1 per cent in a month, while the Lib Dem vote share had “surged” since then. They added: “We are fired up by this poll, which shows we are on track to win with 5 weeks to go.”

Polling guru Prof John Curtice has said the vote could “collapse” but they could still “hang on” because of an almost even vote split between Labour and the Lib Dems.

Tory peer and elections expert Robert Hayward also said Rishi Sunak’s party had a good chance of winning. “Keir Starmer’s determination to prove he can appeal to all parts of the country has surprised the Lib Dems,” he told The Independent.

The Compass campaign group have warned that the “ghost” of the recent Uxbridge by-election should loom large over Mid Bedfordshire – pointing to the Tories hanging on despite Boris Johnson’s unpopularity.

Lib Dem officials have argued that there is a natural ceiling to the Labour vote in Mid Bedfordshire because of the demographics in the rural constituency.

Mr Davey made his fifth visit to the home counties seat on Saturday, where he will spoke to voters in rural villages. He said “lifelong Conservative voters are turning to the Liberal Democrats to send this government a message”.

Mr Dorries finally formally resigned earlier this month having pledged to leave back in early June over her failure to gain a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.

The arch Johnson loyalist was furious at failing to win a peerage in her former boss’ resignation honours – alleging that “posh boy” Mr Sunak had blocked it.

The ex-culture secretary has claimed that No 10 is “pushing a line” that her delayed book launch is because she has broken the ministerial code and has been silenced.

Her book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, had been scheduled for release at the end of September to coincide with the start of the Tory. But the publisher announced a delay until November for legal checks.

Ms Dorries denied the book had been delayed because of ministerial code issues. “What they [No 10] don’t seem to get is that it’s not about me or my time in office, it’s all about them. It’ll be worth the wait.”

Author: Mike Wright, Head of Communications www.electoral-reform.org.uk 

This week three separate independent reports have exposed the extent of the unnecessary damage voter ID has wrought to our democracy. Voter ID was rushed through for the local elections in May which meant voters needed to produce a government-approved form of identification before they voted.

An interim report by the Electoral Commission published earlier this year showed that at least 14,000 people were prevented from casting their vote, after being turned away from polling stations and not returning. Further reports this week by the Electoral Commission, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution, and the Local Government Information Unit, have now shed further light on how this policy has affected voters.

“some people found it harder than others to show accepted voter ID, including disabled people and the unemployed”

The Electoral Commission: Report on the May 2023 local elections in England

The Electoral Commission released its full report on voter ID at the local elections and found that it had a disproportionate effect on disabled and unemployed voters, who were more likely not to vote due to not having ID. It also found a greater proportion of 18-25-year-olds as well as people from ethnic minority backgrounds said they had turned up to polls without ID.

The report called for a number of changes to the ID rules including reviewing the types of acceptable ID, allowing for vouching (where one voter attests for another), giving people without an accepted form of ID more time to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate, and to improve the data collected on who is affected by voter ID. The report concluded: “It is crucial that improvements are made at the earliest opportunity, particularly given there are important elections that are due to be held during the next 18 months, to improve accessibility and support those people who do not have an accepted form of ID”.

The current voter-ID system is, as it stands, a “poisoned cure” in that it disenfranchises more electors than it protects

The APPG on Democracy and the Constitution: Voter ID – What went wrong and how to fix it

This report found that voter ID had had a disproportionate impact on different people and warned that the “inherent ambiguity in the regime creates a real risk of injustice and potential discrimination.” The report highlighted the case of an immunocompromised woman who was turned away from a polling station after she refused to remove her mask to be identified. The report added: “The current voter-ID system is, as it stands, a ‘poisoned cure’ in that it disenfranchises more electors than it protects.”

Administrators were unconvinced that the introduction of voter ID has reduced public concerns about fraud

Local Government Information Unit: The Impact of Voter ID: The Views of Administrators

The Unit warned in its report that it “is still not clear that voter ID brings any benefits to the process” of elections and that electoral works did not see personation fraud “as a major issue” prior to the 2023 elections. However, it warned that voter ID had put additional pressures on electoral and polling station staff and warned that action is needed to “stop these invisible pressures from developing into unignorable election failures.”

Three reports, three different areas of failure for voter ID

These three reports lay bare in stark fashion how voter ID has made it disproportionately harder for different groups of voters to exercise their basic democratic right and also threatens to cause problems in the coming general election. We should be looking to strengthen our democracy by increasing turnout and increasing access to voting, not throwing unnecessary barriers in front of people.

With just one conviction and one caution for personation fraud recorded at the 2019 election, voter ID was always a solution in search of a problem. Yet now we can see it has caused problems with our elections that were not there before.

It’s clear that the Government needs to scrap this unnecessary and damaging policy before the next general election, or at the very least make sweeping changes to prevent it from causing major disruption.

A new £100 million redevelopment of Torbay’s tired hospital is an opportunity that only arises once in a generation, councillors have been told.

Guy Hender www.radioexe.co.uk

 New plans for Torbay Hospital (courtesy: Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust)

Some of its oldest buildings will make way for state-of-the-art new facilities, while a new medical hub in Torquay town centre will handle tens of thousands of appointments every year.

“These are really exciting times for Torbay’s NHS,” said Adel Jones, director of transformation and partnerships at the Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust.

“It feels like a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

The council’s adult social care and health committee was shown the latest plans for the massive hospital scheme, which has already started to take shape.

A new radiotherapy centre will open in October, followed by an endoscopy suite the following month. New day-case theatres will open in the new year.

It comes as part of the government’s New Hospital Programme and will be finished by 2030.

As part of the same project, a community diagnostic centre will be built in Torquay, operated by the privately-owned InHealth Group.

“We haven’t seen this kind of investment in the NHS here for a very long time,” said Ms Jones.

And programme director Chris Knights added: “It isn’t just about building a better hospital. It’s about the way we deliver our care.”

The committee was told that the changes would allow the overcrowded emergency department to expand, with twice as much space available.

“It was built in the 1960s for 1960s activity,” he said. “It needs to be upgraded completely.”

The new £5 million town centre hub is designed to offer more than 46,000 patients ultrasound, MRI, CT and other tests every year. It could open as early as April next year.

Councillors raised concerns about how the hospital will deal with an ever-growing Torbay population, and Ms Jones told them: “Care is changing.

“We will be using more digital techniques to help people stay in their own homes. People can be overseen by consultants while staying in their own homes and being monitored there.”

Council leader David Thomas (Con, Preston) said the project was ‘fantastically good news’ and a huge investment for Torbay.

And committee chairman Patrick Joyce (Con, Wellswood) added: “It’s exciting and it’s long overdue. We need to be able to support the people that live in Torbay, and there are really good things ahead.”

A new report by the Electoral Commission recommends expanding the list of accepted IDs, providing options for those without ID such as being vouched for by another voter, and raising awareness of the support available for disabled voters.

Sean O’Grady www.independent.co.uk 

A new report by the Electoral Commission raises significant concerns about the impact on the next general election of the new rules on voter ID. Under legislation passed in 2022, voters in mainland Britain are now required to show photographic ID at polling stations, and when registering for a postal vote. According to the commission’s survey of how officials dealt with the new rules at May’s local elections in England, significant improvements need to be made in voter awareness, and in resources available to returning officers, for the system to work better in the more intense atmosphere of a general election where turnout is typically twice as high. (Voter ID is already well established in Northern Ireland, where historically electoral fraud has been more widespread.)

The commission recommends expanding the list of accepted IDs, providing options for those without ID such as being vouched for by another voter, and raising awareness of the support available for disabled voters.

What’s wrong with the system?

The commission says its work confirms earlier interim findings after the May elections in England: most who wanted to vote were able to do so, but some groups struggled to meet the ID requirement. It says this stemmed from two overlapping issues: variations in levels of ownership of accepted ID (such as passports), and awareness of the new requirement. In particular, there seems to be scant use of the new Voter Authority Certificate, which is free photo ID for those without a passport or driving licence. Only 25,000 were used in May, for example. Voters who didn’t have the right ID tended to be poorer and from ethnic minorities. Given that municipal elections have lower turnouts anyway, the real impact on a national election is yet to be seen, and the commission has concerns.

How big is the problem?

It’s hard to be precise, but the commission has some estimates. The most visible manifestation of the problem is voters turning up to polling stations without adequate identification. (They are turned away; some, but not all, return.) “At least 0.25 per cent of people who tried to vote at a polling station in May 2023 were not able to because of the voter ID requirement – this was equivalent to approximately 14,000 people who were not issued with a ballot paper,” the commission says.

That is a relatively small figure, but regrettable because everyone has a right and civic duty to vote and the scale of fraud was always far less than those sorts of numbers. Frauds were also almost entirely confined to local, not general, elections and typically involved postal voting rather than ‘‘impersonation’’ at the polling station.

However, the much bigger problem is also far less visible: those who decide not to bother voting simply because the necessary photo ID isn’t readily to hand. The commission’s survey evidence indicates that “around four per cent of all people who said they did not vote at the elections on 4 May listed the ID requirement as the reason… three per cent blamed not having the necessary ID, and one per cent said they disagreed with the new requirement”.

Democracy Volunteers, a group of election observers, found that more than one per cent of voters were turned away from polling stations because of ID requirements at the local elections – half of whom appeared to be from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The emergence of a new phenomenon – ‘‘election greeters’’ on the street outside some polling stations – will also have turned voters away before they had a chance to record an unsuccessful attempt.

In any case, compulsory photo ID does suppress and distort the vote, and by more than fraud ever did. If maximising participation and maintaining confidence in parliamentary democracy is the aim, voter ID has failed.

What is the electoral impact?

It hits the poor and ethnic minorities hardest, and some commentators say that it therefore tended to hurt Labour and help the Conservatives. However, even if that were so, it is not quite absolute, because Labour doesn’t “own” 100 per cent of the votes of the poor or of all undifferentiated ethnic minorities in any case – so it’s a relative effect.

In addition, it depends on how the poor and ethnic minorities were going to vote. At the 2019 general election, the Conservatives did markedly better than normal and better than the opposition in harvesting support among older and less well-off sections of society. For this reason, the former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg declared at the National Conservatives conference earlier this year: “Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as, dare I say, we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they, by and large, voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”

But wasn’t it a Conservative election manifesto commitment?

Not exactly. The 2019 document ‘‘Get Brexit Done Release Britain’s Potential’’ merely promised: “We will protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.” So, yes to proof of identity, but no mention of passports or photo ID. In any case, adjusting a safe and secure democratic franchise is best done by cross-party consensus.

Would Labour reverse it?

They have not explicitly promised to, but it is heavily implied. Florence Eshalomi, shadow minister for democracy, has commented: “It is wrong that the Conservatives have snatched the ability of legitimate voters to have a say in their services and society… ministers are required to hold a comprehensive review into this discredited policy and there must be no more dither and delay.”

Cornwall Council has agreed to sell historic Grade II listed flats in Looe, which are worth £640,000, for just £1 to ensure affordable homes stay in the centre of a Cornish town.

Lee Trewhela www.cornish-times.co.uk 

The council’s cabinet approved a recommendation yesterday (Wednesday, September 13) to release the 11 Coastguard Flats in Looe to a community land trust for the nominal fee as the maintenance of the building is too costly for the council.

An appraisal was carried out by Cornwall Housing in 2021 which concluded that the refurbishment of the building on Looe’s North Road was financially unviable and consequently the property, which was previously four houses, was declared surplus to the council’s needs. With support from Looe councillors Edwina Hannaford and Armand Toms, Three Seas Community Land Trust stepped in and said it would be able to carry out a full refurbishment of the properties at a cost of over £1 million, which it will achieve by grant funding.

Cornwall Council’s deputy leader Cllr David Harris said: “This will retain much-needed affordable housing provision in Looe. Coastguard Flats is a substantial Grade II listed building. It is highly likely that an open market sale would result in the loss of affordable housing provision in Looe and have a negative impact on the housing service by increasing the demand for temporary accommodation.

“A community-led redevelopment scheme would ensure the flats would still be used for affordable housing provision. Three Seas intends to carry out a full refurbishment of the properties and have said the cost of works will be in excess of £1-million.”

The cabinet meeting heard that the project would be hard to achieve without grant funding, which is available from Homes England, which supports the project.

Cllr Ollie Monk, portfolio holder for housing, added: “When I first got the job, this was one of the first places I visited. I came away thinking that could be a great opportunity but it became quickly apparent that it was a really tricky site for the council. Thanks to councillors Edwina Hannaford and Armand Toms, and Three Seas Community Land Trust, we’ve managed to get a deal together.

“It keeps affordable housing right in the heart of the Looe community. Any affordable housing is now being built three or four miles away such is the shortage of land available in the centre of Looe. I can’t wait to see the progress of the project.”

Cllr Hannaford, said she is “delighted” by the move after years of campaigning, adding: “Providing secure affordable housing is incredibly important for the people of Looe. The lack of affordable housing in Looe is a real emergency, replicated across Cornwall.”

Rishi Sunak has admitted his key pledge to bring down NHS waiting lists is in doubt after latest figures show a record 7.68m people are waiting for routine hospital treatment.

Jane Merrick inews.co.uk 

The Prime Minister said it was “very hard” to meet his targets due to strikes by NHS staff including junior doctors and consultants.

In January, Mr Sunak pledged to bring down waiting lists before the next election as one of five key promises of his premiership.

Since that target was set, the number of people on the list has risen every month. The 7.68m figure relates to people waiting for a routine operation in July, and is set to climb even higher.

Mr Sunak told the BBC: “Well obviously that is challenging with industrial action. There’s no two ways about it.

“We were making very good progress before industrial action.”

Asked whether it was possible he would miss the waiting list target, the Prime Minister said: “Well with industrial action it’s very hard to continue to meet these targets, but what I would say is we are making very good progress despite industrial action.”

However, NHS waiting lists were already high in England before strikes by NHS workers began around a year ago, mainly due to the backlog caused by the Covid pandemic.

Industrial action by nurses and ambulance workers was resolved earlier this year but junior doctors and consultants are still staging walkouts over pay.

Professor Philip Banfield, chair of the British Medical Association, urged the Health Secretary Steve Barclay to return to the negotiating table to bring an end to the strikes.

He said: “It’s obvious the Health Secretary has no plan at all to put an end to strikes. He appears to be ‘hoping that doctors will give up’.

“This is simply not going to happen. Doctors have worked tirelessly to do what they can with rising waiting lists for over a decade, due to chronic underfunding, then saved lives through a pandemic in horrendous and often brutal conditions.

“You cannot run down the health service over 10 years, devalue the expertise of doctors and expect our resolve to stand up for patients to dissipate magically.”

Owl understands he was helicoptered in and out for a fleeting visit to a vulnerable seat,  indeed a fleeting visit to an electorally vulnerable region.

Many questions but do we have any answers? – Owl

The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has been talking about healthcare, housing and believes the region’s voters will back him in the next election. Mr Sunak met with North Devon MP Selaine Saxby on Thursday, September 14 at North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple, where he met with staff and patients.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

He toured the hospital’s new £2million discharge lounge and Coronation Suite which was built as part of an initiative to support hospital discharge procedures.

He also spent ten minutes talking with DevonLive reporter Lewis Clarke, who asked him about healthcare, as well as wider issues surrounding the region.

He started the interview saying: “I love North Devon, I came to see Selaine up in Ilfracombe at the Landmark Theatre, which was on the sea, and absolutely stunning, so this is my second time in the area. I was Chancellor then, so this is my first time as Prime Minister , and it was breathtakingly beautiful.”

He was asked about plans for a new accommodation facility at the hospital, and whether he was confident this would be delivered soon.

He said: “Yes I am. I think it’s a great sign of the Govnerment’s commitment to the area, but also this incredible hospital.

“Healthcare in rural areas is something that requires particular care and attention. Selaine has rightly championed that and her and I have spoken in debate on this issue when I was between jobs last year. That’s why building accommodation on site is so important to provide the healthcare that people here need, and that their clinical staff have somewhere to stay. The hospital here is part of our 40 hospital programme and is an exciting sign of our commitment to the area and particularly healthcare.

“It comes on the back of investments we’ve already made here. I have been walking around here today and seen two things the government has done in the last year in the new ward doing elective orthopaedic surgery, brilliantly protecting that, so it’s separate to whatever is happening in the rest of the hospital, so they’re able to crack through people’s orthopaedic surgery and hip replacements, which is already making a huge difference to people thanks to Government funding last year that allowed that new ward to open.

“I’ve also seen the discharge lounge which just opened a couple of months ago; again, brand new, Government investment gone in. It’s a discharge lounge which means people will be able to go in, get home quicker from hospital, which is good for them, but also good for the hospital because it frees up beds so that it means A&E performance, emergency performance and the rest of the hospital will continue to be strong.

“That is already committing and delivering for the people of North Devon when it comes to healthcare.”

Following a petition launched by Ms Saxby calling on the House of Commons to ask the Government to assist with emergency dental provision in North Devon., the Prime Minister was told that people were visiting hospitals because they were unable to see their own dentist.

He was asked whether the Catch Up Dental Plan would be released by the Treasury soon.

The Prime Minister said: “This was the first letter Selaine wrote as an MP so she has been talking about this issue, rightly and passionately, from the day she became an MP.

“I’m aware, and Government is aware about the challenges of dentistry in rural areas. What I can tell you, is that we’re investing record sums nationally in dentistry; £3bn. Overall the amount of dental activity in the last year has gone up over 20% thanks to the reforms that we have made to the dentistry contract and the extra funding, but I get there are particular challenges in rural areas and we’re always going to keep looking at ways to improve people’s accessibility for dentistry.

“One thing we are doing, which is important for people to know, is that we’re investing now to train the dentists of the future. Earlier this year I announced a long-term workforce plan, which we are putting the money now in increasing the number of training places for dentists by around 50% and nobody has ever done anything like that before. That’s not going to help today, but it should give people the comfort that we’re making the right decisions for the long term, so that in the long term, North Devon will have the dentists it needs because I made a decision this year to start training more of them.”

The Prime Minister was then asked about the housing crisis facing the region, with a Devon Task Force recently announcing ‘broken housing markets’ across the county, with a lack of long-term rental properties.

He was asked whether there would be anything in the Autumn Statement to address the inequalities over short term and long term rental.

The Prime Minister replied saying: “First thing to say is that I live in a very rural area, up in North Yorkshire, which is also popular with people who like to come and stay there. I think many of the challenges you face here are ones I’m familiar with personally and indeed something Selaine and I have been talking about since the day she became an MP and I was Chancellor about how best we can address this issue.

“We have taken some steps already. We’re making it possible for councils to charge double council tax on second homes. That is something people have asked for which we are delivering. We are also working through plans which again Selaine has rightly championed about a registration scheme for short-term lets, because that would give councils more control over what’s happening in their areas.

“We have strengthened the local planning process because that allows councils, in their local plan, to designate housing and areas which are for local occupancy.

“It’s hard for me to comment, and I never do about things which may or may not be in the Autumn Statement, but I would say that thanks to the efforts of MPs like Selaine, representing an area that has these types of challenges, the Government is aware of the particular issues, so we can say we have looked and put a series of things in place to help mitigate it.”

Another key issue in the South West, which was pertinent in the Conservative’s loss in the Tiverton & Honiton by election was Tiverton High School.

At the Exeter hustings in 2022, Mr Sunak vowed to get a new school built for the town and he was asked when this may happen.

He responded saying: “My understanding is that Tiverton High School is part of our flagship school rebuilding programme that we have and Tiverton High School has been greenlighted as part of that programme. We are completely committed to it.

“The programme in totality is delivering at the pace that we expected and I don’t have any reason to believe that Tiverton is not progressing as planned through that process. We remain committed to Tiverton High School, it’s part of our flagship school rebuilding programme.”

He was also asked, that following that historic defeat to the Liberal Democrats, and also more recently in the Somerton & Frome by-election as well as gains for the Lib Dems in May’s local elections, why voters should stick with the Conservatives in next year’s expected General Election, and how he planned to win back their trust.

He responded saying: “My job is to delivery on people’s priorities, and my priority is the cost of living and easing the burden on it. We are on track to halve inflation which is the first of my priorities because that is the most important thing we can do to ease the strain on family budgets.

“We are also making progress in other areas like cutting waiting lists and improving NHS performance and this hospital that I’m standing in is a prime example of that.

“I know people want to see more action on tackling illegal migration, this is a difficult issue which can’t be solved overnight. For the first time ever since the small boats crisis emerged, the number’s this year are down on the year before, which shows our plan is working. There is more work to do, but that should give people some comfort.

“The other thing Selaine and I talk about is our commitment to the natural environment and Selaine has done a superb job on making sure that we’ve got an incredibly robust plan to improve our natural environment, particularly our plan for water, which has three parts. It’s about more investment; the water companies are investing £56bn over the coming years, with £2bn happening immediately.

“Also, the Government investing in things like slurry infrastructure grants for farmers to help them improve what they’re doing.

“The second bit is regulation, where we are banning things plastic wet wipes and forever chemicals.

“The last bit is enforcement where we’ve given Ofwat unlimited power for unlimited fines for water companies, and we’ve seen record fines on water companies for the unacceptable behaviour, but also strengthening their power so that water companies can’t pay dividends or bonuses if their environmental performance is not sufficient. We’re also giving more money to the Environment Agency to do inspections.

“So, with more investment, good regulation, and good regulation, and better enforcement, we’ve got a strong plan which will tackle the issue which I know people are concerned about.

“This is partly about what I’m delivering nationally, but we’ve got fantastic local MPs here like Selaine who are doing an incredibly good job for their constituents, and I think people will recognise and reward that.”

Following the visit Selaine Saxby MP said: “It was fantastic to welcome the Prime Minister to North Devon, and the district hospital here has done an incredible job. It was a real pleasure to show him the discharge lounge, a Government initiative using Government funding which is delivering real improvements to the flow of patients through this hospital, and it was a real pleasure to hear from staff who are running these facilities how the discharge facility but also the Jubilee Suite, how well these facilities are working, and the great patient care that they deliver.

“It’s always a real privilege to be able to welcome the Prime Minister. For him to come to the hospital, which is going to be rebuilt, but also we’re going to be working on the housing which is needed for key workers at the hospital.

“It was also good for him to see the fantastic team here, because this hospital is built on an incredible team of staff, and thankyou to all of them. I think he will get the enthusiasm of the staff and patients alike.

She spoke about what she hopes Mr Sunak will take with him from the meeting. She said: “I think some of the figures we gave him about discharge in a rural area and some of the challenges we have in social care up here. The team here at the hospital are doing a fantastic job, we just need to join it up well, which is obviously much harder in a rural community.

“He’s from a rural constituency himself so much of that resonated. I did do a debate with the Prime Minister in Westminster when I described him as being in between jobs on both of our rural hospitals, so I think there is a real understanding on that. I think the numbers he took with him today were quite stark and I very much hope he will work with the hospital trust here on some of the exciting initiatives they have.

“The other one, is the wearable technology. The chief medical officer explained the wearable technology that we’re championing here, which makes a real difference in enabling people to go home and be properly monitored. That’s a great and exciting initiative that perhaps people are not fully aware of and is already happening in North Devon.”

On being questioned why the Prime Minister made a visit, and if it was because the Conservatives were worried about losing the constituency to the challenging Liberal Democrats, Ms Saxby responded: “I think today was all about a big healthcare announcement and getting ready for winter, and therefore he’s come to a fantastic hospital to make that announcement.”

One of the biggest coastal climate adaptation and habitat creation projects in England moves a step closer to final completion with the installation of a new 70-metre footbridge.

Chris Collman www.eastdevon.radio

The Lower Otter Restoration Project (LORP) is a partnership initiative between landowners Clinton Devon Estates and the Environment Agency to restore the historic floodplain of the Otter estuary near Budleigh Salterton, East Devon. The Environment Agency managed the development of the scheme, appointing engineering consultant Jacobs to lead the design of the project and contractor Kier to undertake the construction works. Once construction is complete, the 55 hectare site will be managed by the Pebblebed Heaths Conservation Trust.

Over the last week, a new 70-metre footbridge has been craned into place. Work will now commence to remove 70 metres of embankment, which will allow tides to reach a large part of the Otter estuary for the first time in over 200 years.

Installation of the bridge secures continued access along the South West Coast Path following the connection of the historic floodplain to the Otter estuary (please note the South West Coast path will remain temporarily diverted until the end of October to enable completion of works). This work was initially planned for earlier in the year but was postponed to allow breeding birds (who were flocking to make use of the new habitat) to finish nesting in the area that will flood tidally.

The project has already made a positive difference to the local community. During heavy rain in May, South Farm Road, once notorious for flooding, but which has been raised by the scheme, stayed free of the rising water, allowing local businesses to continue trading and residents to move freely. Budleigh Salterton Cricket Club, whose ground in the past was frequently subject to serious flooding, have been playing this season on a new flood-free pitches created as a result of the project, while a new pavilion for the club is nearing completion.

Dr Sam Bridgewater, Director of Environment Strategy and Evidence at Clinton Devon Estates said: “After more than a decade of planning and hard work, it is fantastic to see the project nearing completion. The benefits for people and the planet are already clear to see. It’s really encouraging that a wide variety of bird species have been visiting the site during the construction phase and we look forward to seeing further wildlife gains as the landscape and habitats develop once the lower valley again becomes tidal as it was two hundred years ago.”

Environment Agency Project Manager Dan Boswell reflected: “Undertaking landscape change of this scale is a huge challenge in terms of engineering, the environment and communication. The efforts of the team to rise to these challenges and deliver a fantastic legacy for the local community as well as improving the environment are to be commended. We are already seeing the positive impact for people and wildlife and that will only increase with time.”

Ecologists working on LORP are confident that habitats developing in the newly restored intertidal zone will increase biodiversity. Mud colonised by invertebrates will provide rich feeding grounds for wading birds like black-tailed godwits, dunlin and redshank, while the warm, shallow waters will also be used by many fish, particularly juveniles. Inter-tidal habitats are also well known for being able to store large amounts of carbon, helping to combat the climate crisis.

Members of the public can already enjoy the improvements and the wildlife they have attracted through 3.3km of improved footpath network that is more resilient to flooding as sea levels rise. Seven new viewing areas have also been constructed to enable visitors to enjoy and learn about the new wildlife have also been built with orientation signs, including a map and information on how to help care for the site.

In addition, unsightly overhead power lines that once ran through the site have been buried on both sides of the Otter valley, putting 2.5km of cables below ground. The work was undertaken in partnership with National Grid and the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Oh dear, chickens coming home to roost as a result of failed property investments.

What was it that Simon Jupp said regarding failing local authorities and fitness to govern? – Owl

Michael Gove’s local council is warning that it faces effective bankruptcy within two years after racking up millions of pounds in debt for failed property investments overseen by its former Conservative administration.

Richard Partington www.theguardian.com 

Surrey Heath borough council is in the parliamentary constituency of Gove, who as levelling up secretary is the cabinet minister in charge of local government.

The tiny Surrey local authority – where the Liberal Democrats seized power in May after almost half a century of Conservative control – said its finances were under “severe pressure” as it struggles with debts worth £165m, while warning that high inflation and rising debt interest payments could leave it in “effective bankruptcy”.

“Clearly he [Gove] and his colleagues have been asleep at the wheel for a long time,” said Shaun Macdonald, the council’s new Lib Dem leader.

“You’ve ended up with this cosy Conservative club in places like Surrey, where the parish, borough, county, and national government representatives are the same people. You really have to question who’s overseeing these things.

“It feels as if people are going to the casino and putting it all on black.”

The comments come amid an escalating crisis for town halls across the country after years of budget cuts and local mismanagement, as growing numbers of English councils warn that huge debt piles are leading them to the brink of financial meltdown.

Birmingham city council, the largest local authority in Europe, became the latest to declare that it was in effect bankrupt last week, issuing a section 114 notice to signal that it does not have the resources to balance its budget.

Although Rishi Sunak has sought to capitalise on the meltdown at the Labour-run council as a sign that Keir Starmer’s party would “bankrupt Britain”, dozens of other local authorities from across the political divide are in financial distress.

Seven local authorities in Surrey, largely controlled by Tory or Lib Dem administrations, were included on a list of 20 councils with the highest levels of debt in England relative to their size this week by the rating agency Moody’s. It warned that more were likely to go bankrupt after a string of high-profile failures at Woking, Croydon, Thurrock and Slough.

Highlighting a financial crisis in Gove’s constituency, Macdonald said Surrey Heath’s debts would take decades to pay off, while rising borrowing costs, high inflation, and soaring demand for services had left its finances on an unsustainable trajectory.

In 2016, the then Tory council borrowed to invest £113m in a shopping centre complex and House of Fraser department store in the town of Camberley. However, the properties are now valued at £33m – a loss of £79m.

Macdonald said the previous Conservative administration had lumbered Surrey Heath with £60m in short-term debt that would cost millions of pounds to refinance, while suggesting the investment spree had been undertaken without adequate scrutiny.

He warned that without central government support, the council could be forced to make cuts to discretionary services – such as provision of swimming pools and grants to voluntary organisations – in a similar package of localised austerity to neighbouring Woking.

“It’s not just here, it’s other places. The deals have gone sour – and the taxpayer locally is left to foot the bill,” he said.

Gove was warned in writing about Surrey Heath’s financial woes earlier this year by its former Tory leadership. The council wrote to the secretary of state asking him to intervene to help it sack its auditors, after lengthy delays in the checking of its accounts.

The council’s last set of fully audited accounts was for the 2018-19 financial year. Lee Rowley, a minister in Gove’s department, replied on his behalf, saying the government could not intervene.

A Conservative source said: “Sadly, this is the Lib Dems playing politics. It looks like an attempt by the Lib Dems to justify huge council tax hikes on residents.”

Simon Jupp please note! – Owl

Devon County Council is expecting to overspend by more than £9m next year. BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

Senior councillors were told at a cabinet meeting the authority would also have a deficit of £36.6m in services to children with special educational needs.

There were angry exchanges at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

Adult social care and children’s services account for the majority of the overspend.

Conservative councillor Phillip Twiss outlined the figures and said the council was in a much better position than it had been this time last year when it was looking at a £35 million overspend.

He said savings could be made to create a £10 million “safety valve” to support the special educational needs deficit.

“This will signal to the Department for Education that we mean business and we will deal with it,” he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Julian Brazil said it was “incredibly frustrating” to hear that Devon’s problems were caused by Covid, inflation and the war in Ukraine when every council in the country was facing the same pressures.

He said: “If we continue along these lines of trying to pretend that everything is okay, we will go bankrupt.”

Independent councillor Frank Biederman added: “We are going to have to make savings, and it will be the most vulnerable people in our society that suffer.”

Rishi Sunak blocked plans to rebuild five hospitals riddled with crumbling concrete three years ago, prompting warnings of a “catastrophic” risk to patient safety, the Guardian has learned.

Pippa Crerar www.theguardian.com 

Just two of the seven hospital rebuilding projects requested by the Department for Health were signed off by the Treasury at the 2020 spending review when Sunak was chancellor and Steve Barclay, now the health secretary, was his chief secretary.

The other five were finally added to the new hospitals programme in May, when the government amended the list, but it has meant a three-year delay in starting to rebuild dangerous hospitals. In their most recent risk assessments, all five have been graded at “catastrophic” risk with warnings that an incident is “likely”.

The five hospitals are Frimley Park hospital, in Surrey; Airedale general hospital, Keighley, West Yorkshire; Hinchingbrooke hospital, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire; Leighton hospital, Cheshire; and the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

The revelations will revive the row over reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) which dominated the start of the new parliamentary session, with Sunak and his education secretary, Gillian Keegan, coming under fire for uncertainty and disruption over crumbling concrete in England’s schools.

NHS bosses have told hospitals across England to be ready to evacuate staff and patients if buildings containing concrete at risk of collapse start to fall down.

NHS England issued the instruction to all 224 health trusts on Tuesday in a letter from Dr Mike Prentice, the organisation’s national director for emergency planning and incident response, and Jacqui Rock, its chief commercial officer, telling trust officers that they should familiarise themselves with a “regional evacuation plan” drawn up by the NHS in the east of England so that hospitals can implement it in the event that buildings that contain Raac start to crumble.

The 2023-4 risk register of Frimley Park hospital, which serves Michael Gove’s constituency, reported widespread crumbling across its buildings. It warned: “There is a risk of injury or death to patients, visitors, and staff due either to delamination of a roof plank whereby a part of it falls, or a sheer collapse with no warning due to limited bearing on the concrete support beam.”

Across the five hospitals there were more than 100 incidents, according to NHS figures, where estate or infrastructure failures resulted in clinical services being delayed or cancelled in the year after the Treasury’s decision not to include them in the new hospital building programme.

Between them, they had a “high risk” infrastructure backlog – where repairs must be urgently prioritised to prevent major disruption – totalling £117m, but less than a third of that amount was spent. There were 21 patient safety incidents related to critical infrastructure risk in 2021-22 at the five hospitals.

An NAO report in July, Progress with the New Hospital Programme, suggested the risk of Raac to the five hospital buildings was known at the time of the Department for Health’s bid to the Treasury. However, the government decided against including all seven hospitals because “further assessment” was required.

Yet after a school roof collapse led to a national alert in 2019 about the risk of sudden failure, NHS England asked trusts to survey their estates for Raac. Forty-one buildings at 23 trusts contained the material, including the seven hospitals with Raac present throughout, which were at particular risk.

At a Westminster policy forum on Tuesday, Tim Phillips, director of Health Value for Money at the National Audit Office, said: “The NHS knew back in October 2020 that it had a lot of Raac across its estate, including seven hospitals that are to all intents and purposes constructed entirely of Raac.

“Back in 2020 the Department of Health actually proposed to the Treasury that NHP should be used to replace all seven Raac hospitals at that point, so in effect that all seven hospitals should be part of 40 new hospitals as early as 2020.

“But at that time, government decided that only two of the seven would be put in the programme. What we’ve seen since is that government has had to row back on that decision.”

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said: “Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay are the guilty men of the crisis in our NHS. They literally failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining, putting patients and staff at risk and leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill.

“There is no image that better sums up what the Conservatives have done to our public services than the sight of crumbling hospitals and schools.”

A source close to Barclay suggested that as chief secretary to the Treasury he was responsible for setting the overall spending envelope, and that it was for the department to prioritise schemes.

A government spokesperson said: “These claims are untrue. The funding was not rejected by the Treasury, or the chancellor and chief secretary at the time, and there was an agreement to link these decisions into the wider new hospitals programme.”

They added that the full extent of Raac issues were not known until 2022 following an independent report by engineering consultants Mott MacDonald.

The government has lost its bid to relax rules around the pollution of waterways after a rebellion in the Lords.

Simon Jupp: “I would never vote to pollute our water” – watch this space if the government tries to introduce a new bill in the commons. – Owl

Jennifer Scott news.sky.com

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove unveiled the plan last month, saying scrapping so-called “nutrient neutrality” measures would free up developers and lead to thousands more homes being built in England.

But the Tory amendment introduced in the Lords – which would have seen the policy tagged on to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill – was rejected by peers over the risk it would pose to the environment.

Nutrient neutrality rules were first introduced across the EU back in 2017, designed to stop developers from polluting local wetlands and waterways in protected areas when building homes.

In practice, it meant companies had to show how they would prevent or offset that pollution in order to win planning permission.

Developers claimed new homes only made a “negligible contribution to the river pollution”, so scrapping the measure would help ramp up projects – something Mr Gove and the government agreed with.

But opposition parties and environmental campaigners said it would lead to even more issues in the country’s waterways.

Putting the plan to peers, communities minister Baroness Scott said the powers were “necessary and proportionate”.

She said the current rules had “effectively stalled or blocked completely housing development in affected areas” and were “burdensome and expensive”.

But Labour’s Baroness Jones said scrapping the measure would set a “dangerous precedent”.

And Tory former environment minister Lord Deben – who chaired the Climate Change Committee until recently – said it was “one of the worst pieces of legislation I have ever seen and I’ve been around a long time”.

After the vote rejecting the policy, shadow levelling up secretary Angela Rayner called the defeat “humiliating” for the government, and said the “flawed plan” was just an attempt to “score cheap political points”.

She added: “We stand ready to sit down with the government, housebuilders and environmental groups to agree on a workable solution to build the homes we need.

“If they refuse this opportunity, ministers have only themselves to blame.”

The Liberal Democrats’ Lords spokesperson, Baroness Pinnock, called the vote “a great victory”, adding: “The Conservatives have continually promised not to roll back our environment rules, it is deeply shocking that they can’t be trusted to keep their word.”

But posting on X – previously known as Twitter – the Conservative Party said: “Starmer and Labour just voted to block 100,000 homes.

“Why? Short-term politics over the needs of British families.”

The current government has pledged to build 300,000 new homes every year by the mid-2020s.

Parliamentary figures show housing supply has increased year-on-year from a low point of 125,000 in 2012/13, reaching a high point of 243,000 new homes in 2019/20 – but they have not yet reached the target.

Louise Laybury commented on Simon Jupp’s Twitter post moaning about car parking charges asking him whether Lib Dem’s blaming Conservatives for the lack of investment within council owned spaces and therefore the need to put up [parking] prices was fact or fiction?

He didn’t answer the question directly but said that it was an incoherent argument that he was used to from “our” poorly run council. He then added: “Increased parking charges should be invested back into car parks as per government advice. If they aren’t, I’ll look into their spending a little deeper…”

Unfortunately this statement has failed Owl’s fact checking team.

It is factually incorrect, false in other words.

Somewhat surprising since Simon Jupp is a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Transport!

Louise, the answer to your question is FACT, (and the government trousers 20% of the parking fees to boot). – Owl

Report from Owl’s fact checking team

In East Devon most of the carparks are run by  EDDC (East Devon District Council), and on street parking by DCC (Devon County Council).

DCC is responsible for “on-street parking”  and is restricted by Government legislation  to ensure  any surplus after expenditure from fees is required to be spent on enforcing parking, contributing to off-street parking provision and, if the provision of further off-street parking is unnecessary or undesirable funds can be spent on public transport or highway improvements only.

*20% VAT is not applicable to on street parking and therefore “0 rated”.

EDDC is responsible for “off-street parking” in their carparks under Government legislation  any surplus after expenditure can be used for “environmental improvement” which can  include.

(a) The reduction of environmental pollution (as defined in the Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999)

(b) Improving or maintaining the appearance or amenity of a road or land in the vicinity of a road, or open land or water to which the general public has open access.

(c) The provision of outdoor recreational facilities available to the general public without charge.

Therefore, in the case of EDDC this could include waste collections, street cleaning,
public conveniences, recreational open space, expenditure on the countryside or commons.

*20% VAT is required to be charged for off street parking therefore 20p in the £ goes directly to Government.

Consultation for off street parking requirements

If parking charges are to be introduced  at new locations that were previously free, then under the RTRA Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984 an Authority is required to  carry out a full “public consultation”.

If prices are to be changed, it is perfectly legal for a council to make a “parking order” and to simply provide a “public notice“ at each carpark and council office and website to inform the public of an intended price change.

Conservative government funding reduction

Since 2010 this Council along with all other authorities have seen significant cuts in general Government funding to support core service delivery, a reduction in funding of 50p in the pound since that point.

Summary of the facts

• East Devon is the only District Council in Devon not to borrow from reserves or cut services for this current year and we continually provide a balanced budget.
• There is not a government requirement that carpark charges are invested back into carparks.
• Government funding has halved in real terms since 2010.
• The Government benefit from carpark charges at 20p in the pound.

BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

The House of Lords has blocked the UK government’s plan to relax restrictions on water pollution to encourage housebuilding in England.

Labour led a rebellion in the Lords to defeat the government in a vote on removing the EU-era “nutrient neutrality” rules.

Ministers believe up to 100,000 new homes could be built by 2030 if water pollution regulations are loosened.

But environmental groups said the move would mean more polluted waters.

The government announced plans to scrap these rules through an amendment, or change, to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, currently going through the House of Lords.

Because of the late stage at which the government tried to introduce the change, it cannot try again in the House of Commons now it has been defeated.

Ministers would need to bring the proposal forward in a new bill.

The defeat is a victory for Labour, whose deputy leader Angela Rayner led opposition to the plan in her new role as shadow levelling up secretary.

Ms Rayner, who is also Labour’s deputy leader and shadow deputy prime minister, said the defeat showed “the Tories have utterly failed in their attempt to score cheap political points with a flawed plan”.

She added: “We stand ready to sit down with the government, housebuilders and environmental groups to agree on a workable solution to build the homes we need.”

The attempt to ease the rules, by amending the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill, was defeated by 203 votes to 156, a majority of 47.

Liberal Democrat Lords spokesperson for communities and local government, Baroness Pinnock, hailed the result as a “great victory”.

“The Conservatives have continually promised not to roll back our environment rules, it is deeply shocking that they can’t be trusted to keep their word,” Baroness Pinnock said.

Green Party peer Baroness Jenny Jones said the government should consult the public before they consider bringing back the plan to scrap pollution rules in a separate bill.

“They can then consult properly and justify it to a public who are already fed up with polluted local rivers and beaches,” Baroness Jones said.

Natural England rules currently mean 62 local authorities cannot allow new developments unless builders can prove their projects are “nutrient neutral” in protected areas.

The government said by removing the restrictions, housing developers will deliver an extra £18bn in economic activity.

But environmental groups and opposition parties opposed the plans, with Labour arguing the change would increase river pollution.

At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Labour under Sir Keir Starmer could not be trusted to build more homes.

He said Labour’s opposition to the government’s plans was “typical of the principles-free, conviction-free type of leadership that he offers”.

Sir Keir’s spokesman rejected the charge, saying the government’s plans were “rushed and flawed”.

“We do have serious concerns about the way in which the changes the Tories are proposing will harm our waterways and ecosystems,” he said.

Angela Rayner, Steve Reed www.thetimes.co.uk 

After 13 years of Conservative government, England is facing a housing crisis. And things are set to get even worse thanks to Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove’s reckless decision to scrap mandatory housing targets and send housebuilding into freefall.

It is not in dispute that nutrient neutrality rules are making it challenging to secure consent for new housing development. The status quo is clearly not an option.

Yet the Conservatives are being thoroughly disingenuous in suggesting that the only way we can build the homes we need in river catchment areas is by weakening environmental law. No one should fall for it.

This is just the latest in the long list of Conservative failures on the environment. Their record speaks for itself.

They recklessly slashed enforcement and monitoring of the water companies that now routinely pump toxic raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas. The country is suffering from the highest levels of illegal discharges on record and the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) says the government itself may have broken the law in allowing this.

We must build the homes people need while also protecting the environment we live in. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The government’s proposed solution to this challenge is deeply problematic. It would allow councils to ignore environmental regulations and authorise new housing development without mitigation for environmental harm on the basis that the nutrient pollution problem will be solved by other means.

Their approach would not only significantly weaken environmental law and increase river pollution but would fatally undermine the emerging market in nutrient pollution reduction that developers are already making use of.

We know there are far better ways to build the new homes we desperately need than green lighting water pollution. To give just one example, the government could direct local authorities to approve planning applications held up by nutrient neutrality rules, subject to so-called Grampian conditions.

This would allow developers to start building homes that are stuck in the planning pipeline but would require them to put in place measures to counteract any environmental harm before those homes are occupied. Such an approach would allow time for Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme or other off-site mitigation schemes to bed in, while also providing certainty to the housebuilding industry that the wait would not be indefinite.

We fully appreciate the concern among housebuilders about the need for an adequate supply of mitigation credits to make it work. It is indeed a failure on the part of the government that more has not been done to identify and bring forward sufficient suitable sites to enable the credit market to flourish.

To ensure that enough mitigation schemes are available, the government would need to provide Natural England and local authorities with support to identify suitable sites and bring more credits to market. But any solution to the impact of housebuilding on nutrient neutrality in sensitive catchment areas is going to require the government to quickly get serious about strategically planning for mitigation.

The alternative is to place the entire burden of alleviating the impact of housebuilding on nutrient pollution levels on tackling the primary causes of nutrient pollution at source. But we know from the government’s failure over many years to tackle the impact of pollution from agriculture and water companies’ wastewater treatment works that we cannot rely on their promises to do so now.

To guard against the risk of developers being unable to find a mitigation despite their best endeavours to find one, Grampian conditions could be designed to lapse after a specific period of time.

Instead of taking time to explore and consult widely on workable solutions like this, the Conservatives’ approach is to weaken environmental law, ignoring the stark warnings of the OEP in the process. It is reckless and irresponsible.

This government has made the housing crisis worse by torpedoing housing supply. Now it is trying to cover up this failure by conjuring up a false narrative that pitches housebuilding against protecting our natural environment.

Like always this is the Tory solution, a quick sticking plaster here, no sense of what the impact is on the future. We do not accept this, and nor do we believe people want to see further harm caused to precious waterways the Conservatives have already flooded with raw, untreated sewage.

We have set out a credible alternative and will table our own amendment when this is put to a vote in the House of Lords later today. If they refuse this opportunity, we will vote against the government’s plans.

Labour knows we can build the homes we need without further damaging nature and the environment.

Here is another thing our PPS to the Secretary of State for Transport could be earwigging his boss about. – Owl

Pothole repairs on local roads in England sink to lowest level in five years

The mileage of local roads in England being resurfaced or treated to avoid potholes has fallen to its lowest level in five years, research has shown.

Gwyn Topham www.theguardian.com 

There has been a decline of almost one-third in the total amount of life-extending road maintenance by local councils, according to analysis of government data by the RAC motoring organisation.

Only 1,123 miles of roads were surfaced in 2021-22, compared with 1,588 miles in 2017-18, while only 3,551 miles, down from 5,345 miles four years earlier, were maintained with surface dressing – the more cost-effective preventative method, according to the road repair industry.

The RAC said the figures helped explain the decline in England’s roads – widely described as “pothole-plagued” this year with an estimated repair backlog of £12bn – and called on the government to do more to help councils maintain roads, including ringfencing funding.

It found that of 153 roads authorities surveyed, 31% did no resurfacing, while 51% failed to carry out any surface dressing.

Simon Williams, the head of policy at the RAC, said: “These figures paint an incredibly stark picture of road maintenance in England and confirm our worst fears about the overall decline in the state of the country’s roads.

“While the government has made more money available to authorities to fill potholes, it’s the general reduction in road improvement work that’s causing potholes to appear in the first place.

“It’s abundantly clear that councils in so many areas are barely scratching the surface when it comes to getting their roads up to a reasonable standard.”

He said local authorities should take a more preventative approach to make budgets go further, and called on the government to increase roads funding.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said the huge backlog was caused by years of funding cuts, followed by recent inflation in the cost of repairs.

Shaun Davies, chair of the LGA, said: “Decades of reductions in funding from central government to local road repair budgets has left councils facing the biggest ever local roads repair backlog. This has been compounded by recent extreme weather as well as rising inflation, pushing up the cost of materials such as bitumen.”

He said that the government should help motorists by working with councils “to develop a long-term, fully funded programme to bring our roads up to scratch”.

MPs also called on ministers to ringfence road funding and give long-term settlements to councils, in a report issued by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Better Roads.

The MPs said that road conditions had worsened since a dedicated pothole fund ended in 2021. Only 50% of England’s local roads are now classified as good, the lowest level since 2016, according to asphalt industry data cited in the report.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “It’s for local authorities to maintain their highways, and to help them do that we’re investing more than £5bn from 2020 to 2025, with an extra £200m announced at the budget in March, to resurface roads up and down the country.

“We’ve also brought in new rules to clamp down on utility companies leaving potholes behind after carrying out street works.”

Ministers and regulators may have broken the law by allowing water companies to dump sewage into rivers and seas, according the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), a new statutory watchdog.

John Rentoul www.independent.co.uk 

It found the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency (EA) and Ofwat may have misinterpreted the law and allowed water companies to pollute waterways when they shouldn’t.

Combined sewer overflows are only meant to be used in exceptional circumstances, such as after unusually heavy rain to prevent sewers backing up and flooding homes and businesses.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey described the OEP’s findings as “environmental vandalism on an industrial scale” while “ministers and regulators are sitting on their hands”.

Therese Coffey, the environment, food and rural affairs secretary, has two months to respond to the findings and to set out what she intends to do about them. Her department’s initial reaction has been to concede that the volume of sewage discharged is “completely unacceptable” but to insist it has not broken the law. It argues that the OEP has got the law wrong. The OEP, meanwhile, says it has “reasonable grounds for suspecting” that the government has misinterpreted the legislation.

What is the Office for Environmental Protection?

The OEP is a kind of super-regulator, set up by the Environment Act two years ago, to supervise various public bodies responsible for protecting the environment. These include not just Defra but industry regulator Ofwat and the public body charged with regulating land and water pollution, the Environment Agency.

Helen Venn, its chief regulatory officer, said: “As a result of our investigations so far, we think there may have been misinterpretations of some key points of law. The core of the issue is that where we interpret the law to mean that untreated sewage discharges should generally be allowed only in exceptional circumstances, such as during unusually heavy rainfall, it appears that the public authorities may have interpreted the law differently, permitting such discharges to occur more often.”

Who might have broken the law?

The OEP has in effect put all three organisations in the dock, saying that they have all failed to force the water companies to prevent sewage discharges, which they are required to do by law.

So what will happen next?

The net effect of all this legal and regulatory action is hard to discern. All the organisations concerned strenuously declare that the failure of the water companies to reduce sewage discharges is unacceptable, and they all admit that it is difficult and expensive to do anything about it.

Ms Venn of the OEP says: “Improving the quality of water in our rivers and seas is a complex challenge. There are no quick fixes.”

Indeed, she goes further: “We recognise that a great deal is already being done to tackle the issue of untreated sewage discharges, and we welcome the intent of government measures such as the Plan for Water and storm overflow targets, as well as commitments to increase investment.”

In other words, all the regulators and the water companies are trying to sound as if they are doing everything they can to tackle the problem, but they know that they are lagging well behind public opinion.

“We don’t believe a spy would have been able to find any intelligence whatsoever in this administration”

Residents raise £20k for legal help

Devon villagers go into a fierce ‘grass not glass’ battle on Tuesday, with a barrister and a high-profile pressure group preparing to fight their corner.

Guy Henderson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

The county’s branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) are backing residents of Marsh Green near Aylesbeare as they take on a company that wants to build a 60,000-panel solar farm across 27 fields.

Planning officers recommended the scheme should go ahead when it came before East Devon District Council (EDDC) last December, but councillors voted narrowly to reject the scheme.

The site was waterlogged when councillors went to visit, which supported the protesters’ argument that the land is not suitable for a solar farm.

Councillors are also concerned about visual impact, land classification and the impact on a designated heritage asset.

An inquiry will be held at the district council’s offices in Honiton, with protesters’ legal costs being paid for after a £20,000 crowdfunding campaign.

Cllr Todd Olive (Lib Dem, Whimple and Rockbeare), who is an expert witness on planning, is supporting residents. He said: “We’ll be fighting hard to make sure the democratic voice of residents is properly heard – and respected.

“It is an uphill battle for us. EDDC has dropped a couple of the reasons for last year’s refusal that the planning committee no longer felt were defensible, which is unfortunate.

“Impact on the landscape and heritage are the two main prongs of attack EDDC is pursuing. We are contributing quite substantial evidence on the landscape front and are continuing to pursue issues relating to flooding and concerns about bringing HGVs down tiny Devon lanes.

“The other point of contention that we are defending is the issue of agricultural land.”

The CPRE has a nationwide ‘grass not glass’ campaign which opposes what it claims are ‘industrial-scale’ solar farms like the one proposed near Aylesbeare.

Devon CPRE director Penny Mills said: “The Marsh Green application was turned down for the right reasons last year, and we hope the inspector will respect the wishes of the local community this time around too.

“Residents have clearly said ‘No, we don’t want this’. Will their voices be heard by the inspector or will the wishes of yet another small rural community be ignored? It’s a matter of democracy.” 

Solar farm developments have recently been permitted elsewhere in the east of the county, at Whimple and Clyst Hydon. Another is pending at Aylesbeare.

The government ignored its nature watchdog’s advice in weakening rules on pollution from housebuilders in England, the Guardian can reveal.

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

Michael Gove, the housing secretary, and Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, recently announced they would be ending what they termed “defective” EU laws, which require developers to offset any extra nutrient pollution they cause in sensitive areas, under the habitats directive. These areas include the Lake District and Norfolk Broads.

Ministers are aiming to remove the legal requirement via an amendment in the House of Lords, which requires local authorities to ignore potential pollution risks when approving developments. It will be debated on Wednesday.

Gove and Coffey’s amendment proposes that instead of forcing housebuilders to invest in local wetland sites to soak up any extra sewage pollution and mitigate damage, this legal requirement would be scrapped and taxpayer money would instead be used to double the funds for a scheme by Natural England to reduce nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates in waterways. These nutrients choke the life out of rivers and cause damaging algal blooms.

Despite the increase in funding to Natural England, no officials from the quango came forward to endorse the announcement at the time. Now correspondence from the nature watchdog to Lady Barbara Young of Old Scone, a Scottish Labour member of the house, shows the watchdog said the rule changes were not necessary and that the current scheme was working to deliver homes and reduce nutrients.

The advice from Natural England recommends making developers pay for the pollution: “Our experience in similar schemes suggests that upfront, fixed-rate contributions from developers could be faster and offer more certainty in enabling planning permissions to be granted and support emerging green finance markets.”

It also said the European Union habitats regulations, which were carried over into UK law after Brexit, and which this amendment would undermine, had worked in delivering homes and reducing pollution. “There are a number of well-established schemes that implement the [habitats regulations] with regard to housing, where a case by case approach has been replaced by a more strategic scheme – familiar cases include the Thames Basin Heaths scheme, mitigating housing pressure operating across 13 local planning authorities, and the national district level licensing scheme which has replaced the need for individual newt licence solutions for great crested newts.”

Natural England pointed out that its nutrient mitigation scheme had thus far offered credits to developers to enable more than 3,500 homes and two temporary prisons, with a pipeline of schemes for a further 4,500 homes in place for this financial year. It said that in total all providers across England had created sufficient mitigation for approximately 16,000 homes, with a well-advanced pipeline to enable an additional 35,000 new homes.

Although the government said current rules choked small and medium housebuilders, Natural England said the scheme “has deliberately prioritised [small and medium-sized] housebuilders, so for example in the Tees catchment we were able to meet demand for credits for all small developments (50 homes or less)”.

Despite this advice, the government went ahead with plans for the amendment. Wildlife groups have accused ministers of ignoring Natural England. Craig Bennett, the chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “The government brought forward outrageous plans to weaken environmental law in the final stages of the levelling up bill, without any public consultation. Now it is plain that they have ignored their own advisers as well. The result is poorly conceived plans that will not work, but will leave lasting damage to rivers and to UK environmental protection.”

Dr Richard Benwell, the chief executive of the environmental coalition Wildlife and Countryside Link, added: “Natural England’s advice reveals that this regression – which would expose protected river habitats to more pollution, while letting polluters off the hook – is totally unwarranted. Environmental charities are united in opposition to these plans, and we hope all parliamentarians who care about rivers and nature will resist them.”

Peers are trying to squash the bill. The Duke of Wellington, a crossbench peer, has laid an amendment that would nullify the government’s one, and he has support from other Tories. Lady Jenny Jones of the Green party is hoping to force a vote against Gove and Coffey’s amendment which would delete it from the bill. The Office for Environmental Protection has also written to the secretaries of state, calling the move a “regression” in environmental standards.

Young added: “The government’s proposal would force local authorities to ignore pollution, even when it is plain to see. In the process, it would take a wrecking ball to the habitats regulations, the UK’s most important nature laws. The advice I have received from Natural England shows that both are unnecessary and that effective other measures are available to release much needed houses and protect their environment. I plan to oppose these provisions when they come to parliament tomorrow.”

A government spokesperson acknowledged Natural England had suggested alternatives to ripping up the EU-derived law and said: “We believe the approach we are taking will best deliver our objectives of unlocking much needed homes, continuing to offset the small amount of additional nutrient pollution caused by new housing, and shifting our focus from mitigation to site restoration. Over 100,000 homes are held up due to retained EU laws and will be unblocked between now and 2030, delivering an estimated £18bn boost to the economy while protecting the environment.”