The last pretence that this govt gives a hoot about the environment finally blown asunder.
Greenest govt ever? Lie. Not lower enviro standards? Lie. leave rivers in a better state? Lie. All of it Lies.
NOTE: You cannot offset a dead river. Feargal Sharkey
Easy, get govt to bin nutrient neutrality laws for house builders exactly what the likes of Persimmon PLC, Barrat Developments PLC and Taylor Wimpey did this morning & that’s exactly how much richer they are this afternoon. Feargal Sharkey 29 August on “X”
No longer will the polluter have to pay!
Taxpayers will pick up the bill for pollution by housebuilders, government officials have admitted, as rules on chemical releases into waterways are scrapped.
If an amendment in the House of Lords tabled on Tuesday passes, developers will no longer have to offset the nutrient pollution caused by sewage from new homes. The government has said it will double Natural England’s wetland funding to £280m in order to show it is trying to meet the requirements of its legally binding Environment Act.This extra £140m will come from the public purse, the government confirmed. When asked by the Guardian whether this meant the taxpayer was now picking up the bill for pollution caused by developers, a government official responded “yes”, adding that while “the polluter pays principle is very important”, it was having too many adverse impacts on small- and medium-sized housebuilders.
Helena Horton www.theguardian.com (Extract)
“Now instead of the polluter paying, the costs have been dumped on the environment and the taxpayer,” Craig Bennett, the chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts said. “Time and again the costs go on the environment and the taxpayer as a result of lobbying by industries and what we have seen here is another example of very effective lobbying from the construction industry.
“It is not only terrible value for money for the taxpayer but it’s breaking promises to the environment made only weeks ago by Rishi Sunak. How can we ever trust environmental promises he makes again?”……
….Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “What the government is proposing here is to remove legal protections for nature, throw away requirements for polluters to pay, and instead use taxpayers’ money to try to fill the gap. But a single, short-term capital injection will do nothing to make up for the harm that our rivers and wildlife will suffer as a result.
“Scrapping the rules may reduce the costs for big businesses, but those costs don’t disappear. Instead, the public will pick up the bill for pollution reduction, and the environment will bear an unbearable cost of yet more pollution in our most sensitive rivers and streams.”
Anyone believe increasing wetland funding will actually mitigate the damage this amendment will cause? – Owl
A picture is worth a thousand words – owl
Grant Thornton implicated in allegations of “Blame Deflection” – Owl
A critical report into how a mental health trust mismanaged its mortality figures was edited to remove criticism of its leadership, the BBC has found.
By Nikki Fox & Matt Precey www.bbc.co.uk
In June, auditors Grant Thornton revealed how the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) had lost track of patient deaths.
But earlier drafts included language around governance failures that were missing in the final version.
NSFT and Grant Thornton said the changes were due to fact-checking.
A number of drafts of the report were produced, with the first dated 23 February this year.
The first version described “poor governance” in the way deaths data was managed, with governance also being called “weak” and “inadequate”.
But many of these critical words were missing from the report released to the public, with “governance” also being replaced with “controls”, according to leaked documents.
NSFT said: “We responded to requests from the auditors to check the factual accuracy of their early draft report and to provide further information. This is a standard process to make sure that such reports are evidence-based.”
Grant Thornton said: “It is not uncommon for findings and language to be refined before being finalised.
“After the initial draft the engagement team at the trust changed, who then provided further information around controls and internal processes of which we were previously unaware.”
But campaigners have described this as blame deflection.
After losing her son Tim in 2014, Caroline Aldridge has been highlighting what she and others claimed had been the trust’s undercounting of deaths.
“I think people need to know what was removed and what was changed, because I suspect that the first report is a lot nearer to the truth,” she said.
Ms Aldridge added: “It takes all responsibility from governance, removing the words ‘inadequate’, ‘poor’, ‘weak’ governance, removing significant pieces of information that’s not factual accuracy.
“We cannot have people watering it [the report] down when it’s about deaths.”
Another section that did not make the final version highlighted a “culture of fear” among some staff, who reported anxiety around how the data was used.
It is understood this was removed after the trust challenged the number of clinicians Grant Thornton had spoken to.
The auditor said the trust had demonstrated its governance was “in line with national expectations”.
The review was launched at the behest of local NHS commissioners in October over confusion about the number of people in contact with the trust who had died.
In August last year, Norwich South Labour MP Clive Lewis cited claims from local mental health campaigners that there could have been as many as “1,000 avoidable mental illness-related deaths” – a figure the trust said it did not recognise.
Deputy chief executive at the trust, Cath Byford, told a local health scrutiny panel that Grant Thornton’s review had been established to find a “single truth” regarding the number of deaths.
But the review instead looked at the trust’s mortality data processes, finding that it could not provide assurance over the trust’s figures.
Referrals to mental health crisis teams across the country were up 30% since before the pandemic, according to NHS England.
The number of people aged under 17 receiving NHS-funded support had increased to 702,000 since 2019.
NSFT’s most recent annual report stated referrals to its children and young people’s services had more than doubled in the same period.
Two NSFT clinicians, who asked for their identities to be protected, described how there were not enough staff to deal with demand.
“The service I work for, we’re just not able to support as many people as we’d like to. We’re only supporting around 66-65% of the people that are contacting us,” one said.
They added: “One of my managers came up to me and said, ‘Don’t complete the patient incident forms,’ and they were actively encouraging us to not do that, because they’d have to do more work and it looked badly on them as a team.”
The other said: “Services have always been under pressure, but now it feels like demand just exceeds any capacity available.
“Staff don’t have time to be recording things as they would want to so they might not record every incident on the patient safety records, which should be highlighting any risk incidents up the chain to more senior management.”
Stuart Richardson, NSFT’s chief executive officer, said: “Over the last year we have introduced safer ways of working and supported colleagues to raise concerns or ask questions so that we can address and help resolve them at the time.”
The BBC showed the different versions of the report, and the responses from the trust and Grant Thornton, to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman.
Rob Behrens said: “I’m concerned at the difference between the draft report and the published reports, and because the differences in the texts at key points are so huge that this is not just a bureaucratic drafting issue.”
Grant Thornton said: “Whilst the overall findings of the report did not change, the new evidence did adjust our assessment of significance in some areas. In addition, wording changed in some areas to highlight areas of good practice that were brought to our attention and which we believed could be broadened out to help resolve issues.
“We maintain that the final public report is an entirely independent, robust and thorough assessment of the historic matters at the trust.”
Mr Richardson, from the trust, added: “We have been open and honest about the failings highlighted in this report, and are committed to bringing about the improvements that our service users and staff deserve.”
“Let’s get on and get the job done,” councillors in Teignbridge said this week as they agreed more changes to decision-making in order to speed up delivery of a £9-million project to transform Newton Abbot’s high street.
Alison Stephenson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk
Dogged by delays after the government awarded cash from its Future High Street Fund four years ago , Teignbridge District Council has decided now it will delegate decisions to officers but that the executive committee will keep overall control.
Liberal Democrat council leader Martin Wrigley (Dawlish North East) proposed that ‘delegated authority’ to be given to the head of place and commercial services so they can make decisions provided they have obtained approval from an executive member and that all decisions are reported to the executive.
He said decisions can be made effectively by officers but it is important to remember the executive was “making the bigger decisions on this project”.
Cllr Wrigley, who had previously put forward a motion for the executive to make all decisions alone – leading to an accusation of “control freakery” by Cllr Andrew MacGregor (South Devon Alliance Independent, Bishopsteignton) – said progress on the market hall regeneration and the cinema had been disappointingly slow.
It was likely that changes to these projects may be required because of inflation and economic changes since 2019 and delays since last November.
“The cinema has yet to obtain planning permission after nearly four years of the project. The council is concerned that the projects are progressing without detailed oversight,” he said.
Councillors were told this week that the whole scheme could be in jeopardy if decisions were made solely at executive committee meetings.
They also heard that there was now some flexibility in how the money could be spent after Michael Govem secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, announced that changes of up to 30 per cent could be approved locally.
Cllr Huw Cox (Lib Dem, Ashburton and Buckfastleigh) said: “I agree with the move to give officers authority to move things on a bit quicker but it’s been going on forever. We need to stop chattering about it and get the job done. We need to get it finished one way or another or we could still be here talking about it in ten years’ time.
Cllr Daws (South Devon Alliance, Ambrook) said the new flexibility was welcome. “I think now we need to grasp the nettle, reform the cinema application size and scale, since the demise of Cineworld, Empire cinemas going into administration and the lack of interest by local operator Scott Cinemas,” he said. “If there is one company that should have the handle on the viability of cinema in Newton Abbot, it is Scott Cinemas.”
“Let’s take this forward with a transformational plan which is in the community interest of the district. The Queen Street development can move forward, but it does not have the support of the retailers and we need to address that if there is to be a lively town centre.”
Cllr Jackie Hook (Lib Dems, Bushell) said plans to change Queen Street, including widening pavements , improving crossing, more planting and public seating and an introduction of a 20 mph speed limit between The Avenue and Courtenay Street, went through three stages of public consultation.
“The last one was close, but ultimately the residents of our town and district support that and they will be the people spending the money in Queen Street and that is what we have to remember.”
Cllr Gary Taylor (Lib Dem, Kenton and Starcross) said he is positive: “I am looking forward to transformational change within Newton Abbot town centre and I am am confident we will see it, albeit with some changes to the original plans. I am pleased we have flexibility now, with the economic conditions we have floating around us it is important we have that flexibility.”
But he added that the closure of Wilko was a blow. “I am very sad we will be losing one of major anchor stores, not least because it’s a tenant of ours, also because it provides a very good service to people of the town.
“It’s a huge shame to be losing them and whilst it does give us another opportunity, I do hope somebody comes along and continues to do something similar to what Wilko did for our high street as it took over from Woolworths when it came.”
Cllr Wrigley agreed it was a sad loss to the high street: “No doubt we will have decisions to make in the future regarding what happens there,” he said.
Four years on and no “Prime Contractor” yet appointed, only 5 of the 40 are actually new builds anyway, and in “most of the schemes the issue of affordability had not yet been considered” (NAO).
Place no credence on a Tory “pledge”. – Owl
Ben Gartside, Hugo Gye inews.co.uk
The Government’s flagship ’40 hospitals’ project is set to face further delays, piling further pressure on Rishi Sunak over missed Tory pledges.
An industry insider told i the Government appears to have “abandoned hope” of making significant progress before the general election next year.
The fresh delays raise the prospect that a future Labour administration will have to decide whether to continue with the project, or to abandon it and draw up new plans for hospital construction and upgrades.
The pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030, originally promised by Boris Johnson in the 2019 Tory manifesto, has been beset by delays and claims that some of the ‘new’ sites are just extensions to existing healthcare centres.
i has been told the latest delay relates to the appointment of a building firm to serve as the ‘delivery manager’ – a construction industry term to describe the lead contractor responsible for the overall progress and completion of a major project.
Insiders on the project told i that this crucial appointment has been delayed twice, with firms recently being told a hiring process will not begin until the new year. They fear little progress will be made before the next election if it is held in October or November 2024.
One told i: “It feels like the Government has abandoned any hope of moving the project on any time soon. Hiring a delivery manager has been delayed, and it feels like all big projects have been put on ice.
“We have a full team ready to work on the project, but we keep being told of delays to the procurement. We can’t keep waiting for the Government to start forever.”
Another company told i: “There’s no way the process will be completed much before October next year, by which point we might be dealing with a new Government.”
The next general election must be held no later than 24 January 2025.
Labour is committed to continuing with the construction of dozens of new hospitals if it wins the election, but insiders say the party may need to review the way the project works. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “The programme is already over-budget and behind schedule. Many are not ‘new’, others are not ‘hospitals’, and there aren’t 40 of them.
“If Rishi Sunak has now abandoned the Conservatives’ promise to build 40 new hospitals, then it is further proof there is no point of him or his government.” Labour is understood to be concerned about whether enough funding is available. A party source said: “It is about making it work, rather than ripping it up and starting again or allowing it to continue how it has. We’ve got to see what state it is in at that point.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said it is “on track” with appointing the lead contractor. Ministers admitted in May that eight of the “new hospitals” they pledged to build by 2030 would be delayed into the next decade.
At the time, Health Secretary Stephen Barclay stressed that they were still committed to meeting the pledge, highlighting how the refurbishment of five hospitals in urgent need of repairs and the building of three mental health hospitals would be added to the programme and prioritised instead.
In July, the National Audit Office warned that the New Hospitals Programme (NHP), the project’s official title, is “highly dependent upon [delivery] partners outside the direct control of the NHP, including the construction industry”.
Despite this, little progress has been made on appointing a lead contractor nearly four years after Mr Johnson first made the pledge, with two firms currently acting as interims.
The appointments process was set to begin in September but insiders said this has now been delayed until the new year.
The Government faced a stern rebuke from spending watchdog the National Audit Office earlier this summer, as it was revealed at least eight hospitals were expected to be completed after the initial 2030 goal.
The report stated that under Mr Johnson, in “most of the schemes the issue of affordability had not yet been considered”. i reported in October that cheaper prefab construction would need to be used for parts of the scheme due to a potential budget shortfall under the Liz Truss government.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, warned in the report that progress had been slower than expected and that the Government had failed to achieve good value for money. He said that cost-cutting and inaccurate modelling could also mean new hospitals are too small.
The Department for Health and Social Care said: “We are on track with the appointment of a programme delivery partner, and remain committed to building 40 new hospitals in England by 2030, which is now expected to be backed by over £20 billion of investment.”
The ’40 hospitals’ plan: a timeline
30th September 2019: Boris Johnson pledges to build 40 “new” hospitals during the 2019 election campaign, pledging £13bn in spending, with £2.7bn in the first 5 years.
However, initial praise for Boris Johnson’s landmark 40 hospitals pledge quickly became sceptical scrutiny due to the definition of ‘new hospitals’ used by the Government.
1st December 2021: Johnson defends policy
Mr Johnson addressed criticism that the Government had exaggerated the number of completely new hospitals. He said at Prime Minister’s Questions: “You obviously don’t go around building on greenfield sites… you rebuild hospitals and that is what we have said for the last two-and-a-half years.”
4th July 2022: Only 5 completely new hospitals?
The BBC reported that only five of the 40 would actually be completely new hospitals. Laurie Rachet-Jacquet, an economic analyst at The Health Foundation, told the BBC: “They are not all ‘hospitals’ as most people would recognise them.”
21st December 2022: Costs mount
i reports on costs spiraling on the project, with the Government looking at cheaper ‘prefab’ construction as a method of lowering costs. Rising inflation and material shortages looked set to cause significant strain on Government budgets.
May 2023: Stephen Barclay admits some projects will be delayed
The Health Secretary said that eight of the 40 original schemes would be completed after 2030 to prioritise five other more urgent developments.
He insisted the Government would still meet its manifesto pledge by prioritising the five hospitals that are at risk of collapse and the building of three mental health hospitals by the deadline.
17th July 2023: NAO report published
The National Audit Office since raised concerns about the project, with questions over the funding of the policies and the ability for the Government to meet it’s 2030 deadline for the hospitals.
The NAO report said that at least eight “hospitals” would miss the 2030 target, and that while Mr Johnson’s government had said the plans were “fully funded”, funding for some hospitals had still not been confirmed.
The quango also said the Government’s prefab plan to save time and money was as yet “unproven”.
Using an amendment to the “Levelling Up and Regeneration” bill!
Remember, Thérèse Coffey said there are more important things than beavers, and Simon Jupp keeps telling us that “I would never vote to pollute our water”. – Owl
“Not content with the levels of pollution in our rivers already, scrapping nutrient neutrality is a disgraceful act from the government. The Conservatives seem happy for Britain’s rivers to get even worse.” – Tim Farron
Helena Horton www.theguardian.com
Michael Gove is planning to rip up water pollution rules that builders have blamed for exacerbating England’s housing crisis but which environmental groups say are essential for protecting the country’s rivers.
The housing secretary, alongside Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, will announce the move on Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the plans, alongside hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of extra funding to mitigate the potential impact on England’s waterways.
The decision will spark anger among environmentalists, who say it will further add to water pollution, as water companies are already dumping raw sewage into rivers and seas. Political advisers say water pollution has already become a major political issue in coastal areas, and has the potential to cost the Conservatives important seats at the next election.
However, it will please major developers, who say the rules are being applied so strictly that they are unable to build new homes in large parts of England. Building industry projections say housebuilding in England is forecast soon to fall below levels not seen since the second world war.
Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Who would look at our sickly, sewage-infested rivers and conclude that what they need is weaker pollution rules? No one, and that should include our government. Scrapping or weakening limits on chemicals from sewage and farm run-offs would be a sure sign that ministers have completely given up on saving our great waterways and the precious wildlife they host.
“Instead of allowing housebuilders to cut corners, the Sunak administration should make sure we have the right infrastructure to handle our sewage so we can build new homes without sacrificing our rivers’ health. But that would require them to do what they’ve spectacularly failed to do so far – forcing water firms and housebuilders to invest their profits in upgrading treatment plants and pipes to a standard that a modern, functional country would expect.”
However, one source in the housebuilding industry said: “This is undoubtedly good news for Britain’s housing supply. The only question is why it has taken so long for the government to get round to doing something about this.”
The nutrient neutrality rules were put in place in 2017 when the UK was still a member of the EU. They say that in dozens of protected areas across England, local authorities should not give the go-ahead to any new development that is projected to add to river nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates, either through wastewater from new homes or run-off from building sites.
The regulations were first enacted by the EU in an attempt to prevent damaging buildups of algae and other plants, which can choke off aquatic life.
Developers, however, say they are being enforced by Natural England in such a strict way that they have been forced to put as many as 120,000 new homes on hold, and argue that farmland is a far bigger contributor to the pollution in question.
Under the existing rules, builders have to mitigate new nutrient loads caused by new populations in housing either onsite or elsewhere within the same catchment. They can do this by investing in new wetlands or by creating buffer zones along rivers and other watercourses. Builders have complained that doing so was costly and time-consuming.
In response to developers’ complaints, ministers launched a mitigation scheme in 2022 under which builders were allowed to buy “credits” to gain approval for their schemes. But those developers say that the process of purchasing such credits has occasionally led to unintended consequences, such as buying up farmland to take it out of use in an attempt to reduce water run-off.
Despite these changes, ministers say there is still a problem. Gove recently told the Sunday Telegraph that the rules should be changed as they get the “balance wrong”. In his announcement on Tuesday he will say the repeal of the rules is a “Brexit bonus”.
Those briefed on the plans say the government will try to change the law through an amendment to the levelling up and regeneration bill, which is currently in the House of Lords. Ministers might yet find it difficult to secure enough support for the bill, which must pass by the autumn or have to be reintroduced in a new bill in the King’s Speech in November.
The government is hoping to nullify some of the opposition with a package of hundreds of millions of pounds to reduce water pollution in other ways. They will give around £400m in grants to farmers and water companies to improve slurry infrastructure to make leaks less likely, and spend around another £300m helping builders mitigate the impact of their schemes.
Opposition parties are preparing to oppose the plans nevertheless.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ environmental spokesperson, said: “Not content with the levels of pollution in our rivers already, scrapping nutrient neutrality is a disgraceful act from the government. The Conservatives seem happy for Britain’s rivers to get even worse.”
Shaun Spiers, head of Green Alliance, said: “It’s hard to see how the law can be enforced without nutrient neutrality. Is the government proposing more pollution or that someone else (other than the housebuilders) pays for it? The trouble is, housebuilders always oppose proper regulation if they think they can get away with it, and governments are so desperate for more housing (and so unwilling to invest in it themselves) that they always believe them.”
Katie-Jo Luxton, director of conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “If nutrient neutrality rules are scrapped, pollution will accumulate unchecked and our rivers face total ecological collapse.
Land North West Of Scouse Lane Hawkchurch AxminsterRef. No: 23/1802/AGR | Validated: Fri 18 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision96 Mill Street Ottery St Mary Devon EX11 1AFRef. No: 23/1803/FUL | Validated: Fri 18 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionBovetts Farm Sidbury Devon EX10 0QNRef. No: 23/1796/FUL | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionChanters House The College Ottery St Mary Devon EX11 1DQRef. No: 23/1792/TCA | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionThornfield Tytherleigh EX13 7BGRef. No: 23/1793/CPE | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionKilmington Cross Service Station Kilmington Axminster EX13 7RBRef. No: 23/1800/FUL | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionMadeira Court Douglas Avenue Exmouth Devon EX8 2BURef. No: 23/1791/TRE | Validated: Wed 16 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionValkyrie Road From Sowton Lodge To Court Lodge Sowton Devon EX5 2AGRef. No: 23/1786/TCA | Validated: Wed 16 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionThe Old Reservoir Ridgeway Lane ColytonRef. No: 23/1785/FUL | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision20 Victoria Place Budleigh Salterton Devon EX9 6JPRef. No: 23/1788/TCA | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionUpper Heights Burscombe Lane Sidford Sidmouth EX10 9SFRef. No: 23/1775/TRE | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionApplelands Bickwell Valley Sidmouth Devon EX10 8RFRef. No: 23/1781/TCA | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision23 Victoria Place Budleigh Salterton Devon EX9 6JPRef. No: 23/1783/TCA | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionCouncil Offices Knowle Sidmouth Devon EX10 8HLRef. No: 23/1782/TRE | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionHigher Coxes Farm Weston EX10 0PGRef. No: 23/1769/FUL | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionGreendale Cottage White Cross Road Woodbury Salterton EX5 1EWRef. No: 23/1768/FUL | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionLittle Pacehayne Shute EX13 7QERef. No: 23/1767/FUL | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision123 St Johns Road Exmouth EX8 4EHRef. No: 23/1766/TRE | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionBlackenfields Farm Luppitt Devon EX14 4UBRef. No: 23/1770/AGR | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionThe Seagulls 235B Exeter Road Exmouth Devon EX8 3EDRef. No: 23/1774/TRE | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision72 Masey Road Exmouth EX8 4ARRef. No: 23/1772/TRE | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision12 Prestor Axminster Devon EX13 5BRRef. No: 23/1758/FUL | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionUnits 6 And 7 Sideshore Queens Drive Exmouth Devon EX8 2GDRef. No: 23/1752/FUL | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision7 Freelands Close Exmouth Devon EX8 4AERef. No: 23/1751/FUL | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionBeacon C Of E Primary School Beacon Place Exmouth Devon EX8 2SRRef. No: 23/1738/FUL | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionLittle Silver Clyst Hydon Devon EX15 2NFRef. No: 23/1735/GPD | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionOakfield Sanctuary Lane Woodbury Salterton Exeter EX5 1ETRef. No: 23/1687/FUL | Validated: Tue 15 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionBright Farming The Grain Store Ridge Honiton EX14 9ENRef. No: 23/1683/PVJ | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionAgricultural Building At Houndbeare Court Oak Road Aylesbeare EX5 2DBRef. No: 23/1664/PDQ | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision16 Newtown Sidmouth Devon EX10 8QFRef. No: 23/1665/LBC | Validated: Fri 18 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision2 Orchard Terrace Church Street Sidford Devon EX10 9RWRef. No: 23/1660/LBC | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionAxehayes Farm Units A1 A2 Yeo Business Park Clyst St Mary EX5 1DPRef. No: 23/1653/FUL | Validated: Wed 16 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionDe La Pole Court Fore Street Seaton EX12 2ADRef. No: 23/1624/LBC | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionSid Abbey West Sid Road Sidmouth Devon EX10 9HNRef. No: 23/1615/FUL | Validated: Thu 17 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decisionLittle Orchard West Hill Road West Hill Devon EX11 1UZRef. No: 23/1581/OUT | Validated: Wed 16 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision1 The Stables Shute EX13 7NYRef. No: 23/1507/LBC | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision231 High Street Honiton EX14 1AHRef. No: 23/0126/LBC | Validated: Mon 14 Aug 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision“Levelling Up” in action. – Owl
At least 26 councils in some of Britain’s most deprived areas are at risk of effective bankruptcy within the next two years, according to a leading local government group, which says many authorities simply have “nothing left”.
Rob Davies www.theguardian.com
Britain’s local government network has been shaken by a string of financial collapses in the past two years, starting with Slough and followed by Croydon, Thurrock and most recently Woking, which announced a deficit of £1.2bn in June after a risky investment spree.
The quartet could be only the tip of the iceberg, according to a survey of 47 councils in northern England, the Midlands and on the south coast, which revealed mounting anxiety that rising costs will blow irreparable holes in budgets that fund crucial local services.
Five members of the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities (Sigoma) – a collective of 47 urban councils – said they were in such dire financial straits that they were considering issuing a notice of their inability to balance their annual budget for 2023-24.
A further nine Sigoma members said they may have to in effect declare bankruptcy next year. The group called on the government to provide additional funding to local authorities struggling to manage.
A spokesperson for the government said it had already agreed extra funding, adding that councils were ultimately responsible for their own finances and should not take excessive risks with taxpayers’ money.
The growing threat of a wave of effective bankruptcies is said to be driven by the dwindling of cash reserves usually held over to plug gaps in budgets.
Councils said the most common cause of financial pressures was increased demand for children’s social care services after the government said these should be given equal priority with adult social care and funded accordingly.
Other significant factors cited were sky-high inflation costs and related wage rises, the local authorities warning that an imminent increase in the cost of borrowing would add to the financial pressure they face.
Sigoma said it understood that at least 12 other councils across the country, which are not part of the group, were considering issuing a section 114 notice – an official declaration of inability to balance their books – in 2023-24.
Sir Stephen Houghton, the Labour leader of Barnsley council and the chair of Sigoma, said: “The government needs to recognise the significant inflationary pressures that local authorities have had to deal with in the last 12 months.
“At the same time as inflationary pressure, councils are facing increasing demand for services, particularly in the care sector.
“Pay increases are putting substantial pressure on budgets, and so the government must ensure that local authorities have the additional funding they need to fully fund these pay increases or risk impacting future service delivery.
“The funding system is completely broken. Councils have worked miracles for the past 13 years, but there is nothing left.”
Houghton called on the government to provide clarity on the timing of local government funding reforms.
Some recent local authority bankruptcies have come in the wake of financial scandals, including a disastrous property investment binge by Woking’s Tory council and a doomed borrowing spree at Tory-run Thurrock.
Labour-run Slough revealed a “catastrophic” £100m black hole in its budget in 2021, while Labour-controlled Croydon announced its third bankruptcy in two years in November 2022.
A government spokesperson said: “Councils are ultimately responsible for the management of their own finances … local authorities should not take excessive risk with taxpayers’ money, and we have established the Office for Local Government to improve the accountability for performance across the sector.
“We recognise all councils are facing pressures and, as well as making it a priority to halve inflation, we have introduced a one-off funding guarantee to ensure that every council sees at least a 3% increase in core spending power before any local decisions on council tax rates.
“We are also providing around £2bn in additional grants for social care.”
Could the dangers of “Defensive Leadership” also apply in the case of John Humphreys and the safeguarding of children? – Owl
More babies will be harmed unless “systemic changes” are made to end the “defensive leadership” and unacceptable treatment of whistleblowers in the NHS, the health service ombudsman has warned in the wake of the Lucy Letby case.
Andrew Gregory www.theguardian.com
Rob Behrens said there were “lots of similarities” between the spate of baby death scandals in recent years and the failure of executives at the Countess of Chester hospital to act on repeated concerns raised about the neonatal nurse.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, he said rapid changes must be made to England’s maternity and neonatal services or more babies would suffer.
Senior doctors on Letby’s unit repeatedly raised concerns about her link to the growing number of unexplained deaths. But it was not until early July 2016 that her appalling crimes were finally ended.
Health workers must be “able to raise patient safety issues” and the “tribal approach” between different professions such as doctors and nurses must be eradicated, Behrens said.
Dr Stephen Brearey, a consultant paediatrician who was the first to alert an executive to Letby’s connection to unusual deaths and collapses, has claimed there was an “anti-doctor agenda” among the hospital’s executive team, which, he said, explained partly why senior executives treated the consultants’ concerns as “a case of doctors picking on a nurse”.
Behrens said: “The Letby case is unusual and horrific and not representative of the intentions and actions of the overwhelming majority of dedicated NHS staff. That said, it raises questions yet again about a dysfunctional, adversarial culture in many NHS trusts, sub-optimal methods for reporting and investigating wrongdoing and unacceptable attitudes to whistleblowing and raising concerns.
“Although the appalling actions of Lucy Letby are extremely rare, unfortunately the culture of fear in NHS trusts is not isolated to this case. Leaders dismissing the concerns of staff is a pattern of behaviour that we see repeated across the NHS.
“Some still pay a heavy price for speaking up and this victimisation discourages others from coming forward. It is unacceptable and against the principles of what the NHS stands for.”
Behrens added: “The reality is that the picture across many maternity services in the NHS is bleak, and the evidence to support this keeps mounting. Maternity services have had more policy recommendations than any other health area and there have been recent, significant, and well-documented major service failures.”
Three major inquiries since 2015 have laid bare serious failures that led to babies being harmed or dying at the Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford and East Kent NHS hospital trusts. A fourth inquiry, into the Nottingham hospital trust, is now under way.
Last week, the government announced a fifth inquiry, into how Letby was able to murder seven babies and attempt to kill six others. Pressure has been mounting from bereaved families and experts calling to strengthen the investigation to a statutory inquiry where witnesses would be compelled to give evidence.
Behrens has this week written to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, saying he supports the calls to upgrade it to a statutory inquiry.
He told the Guardian that despite the many inquiries into baby deaths in the NHS, there had been “insufficient change and implementation”, progress was too slow and patients remained in danger. “It is a tragic inevitability that until comprehensive, systemic changes to maternity care are taken seriously, more women and babies will be harmed.”
Behrens said he had identified four specific failures in the Letby case that matched patterns he had uncovered while investigating harm to patients in other NHS maternity and neonatal services.
“First, the trust leadership, both management and board were too defensive and more concerned about the reputation of their organisation than patient safety. Secondly, the board was insufficiently inquisitive or assertive and failed to show effective leadership at a critical time.
“Third, those clinicians who tried, repeatedly, to raise their concerns about the deaths were directly prevented from having the issues discussed, called troublemakers and threatened with disciplinary measures. Fourth, there was a reluctance to carry out serious incident reviews of the deaths and little or no appetite for commissioning wide-ranging independent reviews.”
People generally work in the NHS “because they want to help” and that “when things go wrong it is not intentional”, Behrens said. But the intended commitment to patient safety was often “undone” by a “defensive leadership culture across the NHS”.
While acknowledging some new NHS safety initiatives in recent years, including the creation of a specialist maternity investigation unit, he said there were “huge challenges still to be addressed”. There must also be a strategic review of the multiple public bodies tasked with patient safety so they are better coordinated and more accessible to the public.
Asked about the consequences if changes were not made, Behrens said: “Not only will families experience compounded harm, where those who have been harmed or bereaved are then subject to inadequate apologies, delayed responses, a lack of accountability and insufficient investigations, but at a systemic level, the harms and deaths will continue to happen.
“From what I have seen in casework over the years, if defensive leadership, which enables defensive cultures, is allowed to continue, more patients will be harmed and even die. We’ve seen it time and again in the various independent inquiries that have taken place.”
In a statement released after the Letby verdict, Dr Nigel Scawn, the medical director at the Countess of Chester hospital, said staff were devastated by what had happened and “committed to ensuring lessons continue to be learnt”.
“Since Lucy Letby worked at our hospital, we have made significant changes to our services. I want to provide reassurance that every patient who accesses our services can have confidence in the care they will receive,” he said.
An NHS England spokesperson said: “NHS guidance is clear, staff should be supported to raise concerns and that these are acted on. We have reminded NHS leaders about the importance of this following the verdict.
“It has updated its Freedom to Speak Up guidance, brought in extra background checks for board members to prevent directors involved in serious mismanagement from joining another NHS organisation, and now when NHS staff raise concerns, action can be taken and overseen by a non-executive who can use their independent role to hold the organisation to account.”
“Tackiness fundamental to their charm” Hmm? – Owl
[Sidmothians this may not be for you!]
The British seaside may be derided by some for being as tacky as the candyfloss stuck to the side of your mouth. Yet tackiness is fundamental to its charm, according to campaigners who say that seaside heritage sites should be protected as fiercely as castles and stately homes.
James Tapper www.theguardian.com
The Seaside Heritage Network (SHN) says amusement parks, lidos and scenic railways are all part of the UK’s role in the creation of modern tourism and should be cherished.
The network is running a public vote for its first annual Bucket and Spade List – a top 10 of the UK’s best seaside places and experiences – which includes staples such as Blackpool Tower and Bournemouth’s beach huts, as well as the Victorian-era Kursaal in Southend, one of the world’s first amusement parks, and the Morecambe Winter Gardens, which has been revived through the work of local volunteers.
“There are all sorts of preconceptions about the seaside,” said Dr Kathryn Ferry, a founder of the SHN. “We want to draw attention to some of the real quality of the historical structures, as well as the intangible heritage of something that’s really British and crucial to our sense of identity.
“OK, so people have been getting on aeroplanes and going abroad, but domestic tourism used to be the tourism. It was an industry, it was economically important to our country and it’s not often recognised. We’re still seeing much-loved landmarks fall into disrepair due to lack of investment.”
Southend’s Kursaal was built in 1898 and included a music hall, funfair, 90 shops and a menagerie, then was transformed into Luna Park in 1910 with joy rides including a rollercoaster. It was still a destination for Londoners into the 1960s, but declined as the package holiday grew. The last attraction was a bowling alley which closed in 2020 and the only remaining tenant of the Grade II listed building is a Tesco Express.
“It’s a really important part of Southend’s heritage,” said Matt Dent, a local Labour councillor and part of Concrete Culture, a group set up by musician Sam Duckworth of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. “There’s a lot of people locally who have memories centred around it and a lot of people from east London who do too. It’s a huge waste that it’s not open to the public – there’s a lot of Victorian architecture that’s gorgeous.”
Although Southend-on-Sea city council owns the freehold, the 200-year-leasehold is owned by a global property investment group which has so far shown no sign of intending to invest, Dent said.
There are plenty of other seaside structures with uncertain futures. The Regent, a 1928 art deco cinema in Deal, has been closed since 2009. There is now a proposal to build townhouses on the plot, and a local campaign against the plans. The New Palace and Adventureland in New Brighton, Merseyside, was reportedly facing closure two years ago, although the owner appears to have had a change of heart after the growth in staycations following the pandemic.
The Weston-super-Mare Odeon cinema closed permanently in June, and Ferry hopes that it might receive support like the resort’s Birnbeck Pier, which closed in 1994 but was bought by the local authority in July and will receive substantial investment.
“You could go to a mill or a coal mine and think about our industrial heritage, and we’ve come to a place where we can celebrate that, and it’s taken a few decades’ worth of work to get to that point,” Ferry said. Cornwall and west Devon’s tin mines and mills became a world heritage site in 2006. “There are things on the Bucket and Spade List like the Morecambe Winter Gardens because people have been raising money to restore the building, and they’re doing brilliant work.” The theatre and concert hall, built in 1897, is receiving nearly £2.8m from the government’s Cultural Investment Fund to restore it as a 1,600-seat music venue.
It will be close to the site of Eden Project Morecambe, an attraction similar to Cornwall’s indoor rainforest, and “those two things will mutually enhance the status of a resort that has had some major problems over the last few decades,” Ferry said.
Seaside buildings often receive less protection from English Heritage and Historic England because they have been altered due to the corrosive effects of salty sea air, according to Dr Allan Brodie, a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University who worked for both agencies and is a member of the SHN.
“There’s a plethora of plastic windows instead of original wooden sashes,” he said. “Therefore things don’t end up being listed.” Traditional shops may be well maintained, but the flats above them can be neglected, and in resorts with high levels of deprivation, it can be harder to meet heritage thresholds. “There are huge structural problems with seaside resorts and we argue they should be a special case for funding.
“I’ll take issue issue with anybody who slams the English seaside for being bad because it’s tacky. That’s one of the great things about it – it is tacky. We want to go there for a bit of tacky, and then go to a hotel. It’s got a decent ensuite, and a couple of decent restaurants around.”
Dr Anya Chapman, a member of the National Pier Society, said the trend was for more domestic holidays. “Inevitably we’re going to see a resurgence of more environmentally friendly forms of tourism – we certainly won’t be going to southern Spain or Greece in 20 years’ time in the summer.
“So we need to cherish the experiences we’ve already got, which are unique, because British seaside holidays were the first form of mass tourism in the world. We’ve really got something that we can be proud of.”
Police forces have committed to follow all “reasonable lines of enquiry” in an effort to improve investigations and drive down crime rates.
First find your Police Officer ! – Owl
Sophie Wingate www.independent.co.uk
The standards setting body published guidance for officers in England and Wales to consider all potential evidence – such as footage from CCTV, doorbells and dashcams, as well as phone tracking – if it could lead to a suspect or stolen property.
The public will therefore know what they can expect from police when they report a crime such as burglary or theft, according to the College of Policing.
It said this will make the service more consistent across regions and solve more crimes.
While the pledge applies to all crimes, home secretarySuella Braverman implored officers to act on leads for phone or car theft, shoplifting and criminal damage.
She said it was “unacceptable” such crimes have been treated as “less important”.
The commitment, agreed by the Home Office, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing, comes as part of a “crime week” of policy announcements planned by the government.
But Labour branded it a “staggering admission of 13 years of Tory failure on policing and crime”.
Ms Braverman said: “The police have made progress in preventing crime across the country with neighbourhood offences like burglary, robbery and vehicle theft down by 51 per cent since 2010.
“Despite this success, since I became home secretary I’ve heard too many accounts from victims where police simply haven’t acted on helpful leads because crimes such as phone and car thefts are seen as less important – that’s unacceptable. It has damaged people’s confidence in policing.
“Criminals must have no place to hide. The police’s commitment today is a huge step forward towards delivering the victim-focused, common-sense policing the public deserve.”
The move comes on top of a previous commitment for forces to attend every home burglary in a new set of standards announced last year.
Ms Braverman has also asked for plans from police chiefs on how they intend to improve visibility in communities.
Policing minister Chris Philp said “there is no such thing as a minor crime” and all “merit proper investigation where there are leads to follow”.
“There are now record numbers of police officers and record funding that has gone into policing, including for more patrols in hotspot areas of crime, and to make neighbourhoods more secure with better street lighting and CCTV. Along with camera images, combined with facial recognition, this will mean many more offenders can be brought to justice.”
Head of the College of Policing, chief constable Andy Marsh, said: “It is critically important the public know that when a crime has happened the police will consider all reasonable lines of enquiry and, where appropriate, arrest the person responsible.”
He said the new guidance will support time-pressured officers “to make effective decisions on what is a reasonable line of enquiry”.
“It means all forces are working to the same standard as we come down hard on criminals and deliver what the public want from their police service.”
He added: “Our focus will be on where there is information we can act on.”
National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for investigations, chief constable Scott Chilton, said: “Crime has changed and got more complex in recent years, but we have also seen big changes in technology, such as video doorbells and dashcams, that can greatly assist an investigation.
“It is important to remember that each and every case is different and has different complexities, however, officers will use these new technologies when appropriate to gather evidence to build a case for prosecution. There are opportunities to identify offenders that we never had before, and that is something to be very positive about.”
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “This is a staggering admission of 13 years of Tory failure on policing and crime.
“Pursuing reasonable leads like CCTV is what the police should be doing, but – because of abysmal Tory management – over 90 per cent of crimes go unsolved, the proportion of crimes prosecuted has dropped by more than two-thirds and more criminals are getting off.
“Instead of supporting our brave officers to catch criminals, the Conservative government have cut neighbourhood policing by nearly 10,000, left a 7,000 shortage of detectives, and allowed the growth of appalling delays between the police, CPS and courts.
“The fact that the Tories are boasting about asking the police to do the basic minimum that victims of crime should rightly expect, whilst failing to tackle the underlying problems they have caused shows how badly they have failed over the last 13 years.
“The Tories are weak on crime and the causes of crime. Labour will put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs back on our streets, increase detective recruitment and ensure more crimes are charged to keep our streets safe.”
(Not to be confused with rotting seaweed. – Owl)
For many years, Wyke Regis has been lovingly named “Windy Wyke” thanks to its coastal winds – but now it has a more unfortunate term thanks to its smell. The “Wyke Wiff”, as coined by residents, is so bad that a councillor and resident of the Weymouth area has called on Wessex Water to investigate and take action after an increase in residents’ complaints.
Trevor Bevins www.dorset.live
Cllr Kate Wheller says despite the company’s claim that all is well at their local treatment plant – a rise if people reporting problems suggests otherwise. She said: “There is a significant problem for Wyke residents and it does impact significantly upon them enjoying their gardens as they try to spend time with their families and friends during the summer.
“This is one more example of water companies, Wessex Water in this instance, showing scant regard for their customers and for the environment. I call upon them to investigate the source of the current problem and instigate corrective works as a priority.”
She has said that, in the past, residents have been encouraged to report to Wessex Water knowing that sometimes smells do occur, but are often short-lived. “Problems with smells from the sewage plant occur from time to time,.” the Weymouth mayor added. “Sometimes they are slight and relatively short lived and sometimes, as now, they are quite severe and prolonged (…) Sometime ago Wessex Water undertook a significant upgrade in their plant and their work practices to combat the problem, which seemed quite successful. In recent times they seem less keen to acknowledge any problem.”
In response to the water company’s statement that the treatment plant does comply with all the relevant rules and regulations, a leaflet campaign has now started in Wyke Regis to persuade the water company to do something to stop the smells. It advises people how to complain if they have been affected.
A Wessex Water spokesman said: “The site is operating normally and complies with all permits, along with an odour management plan which is being followed.”
Residents in Wyke Regis have been encouraged to report to Wessex Water knowing that sometimes smells do occur, but are often short-lived
Mr Orchard has also denied a residents’ claim of pollution from the plant following a fire in July: “Unfortunately our Weymouth water recycling centre suffered a third-party power outage which meant we had to use standby generators to maintain customers’ sewerage services.
“The site operated as normal throughout with no impact on the environment. Mains supply has now been restored and the generators have been removed.”
Said one resident: “We were asked by Wessex Water to keep a “smells diary” coming from the Langton Avenue treatment centre – but there seems little point, as we get the smells every day… which I have told the company, but they seem reluctant to do anything about it.”
The leaflet now being distributed lists a series of places to complain to include the environmental health team at Dorset Council, Wessex Water and South Dorset MP, Richard Drax.
It asks several questions including – has the smell from the water treatment plant become worse? Have you had to close windows and doors or been forced not to sit out in the garden because of the smell, or felt forced not to hang out washing, or felt unable to invite friends or family around because of the smell?
Said the leaflet: “ If the answer to any of these questions is yes I would urge you to make a complaint or this will become the new normal.”
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Doctors have launched a campaign to curb the use of unregulated assistants being deployed as a “short-term fix” to plug gaps in the NHS workforce.
By Nick Gutteridge, Political Correspondent www.telegraph.co.uk
Medics say that the health service is turning more and more to “associate” practitioners because they are much quicker and cheaper to train.
They have warned patients, often unaware when they are seen by such staff, that they are not being treated by a qualified doctor.
Associates do not go to medical school, and instead do two years of post-graduate training on top of a degree in a subject like biomedical sciences.
Ministers have unveiled ambitious plans to increase the number of them working in the NHS by almost fourfold to 12,000 by 2036-37.
Currently there are about 3,000 physician associates who support doctors in diagnosing and managing patients and 300 anaesthetist associates.
Unlike doctors and nurses, they are not overseen by a dedicated independent regulator.
For several years the Government and General Medical Council, which oversees doctors’ standards, have been discussing plans for associates to be regulated by the GMC, but the watchdog says this will not happen until “the second half of 2024 at the earliest.”
Senior medics have now sounded the alarm on their expanding use and said the NHS should put more money into training fully-fledged practitioners.
They have set up a group called Anaesthetists United and are piling pressure on the Royal College of Anaesthetists into opposing the plans.
“The Government is trying to solve the NHS workforce crisis, not by recruiting and retaining more doctors, but by training cheaper replacements,” it said.
“They wouldn’t do this in other safety-critical industries, why in medicine?
“We are calling for anaesthesia associates to be properly supervised and we’re not prepared to see individual hospitals opt-out of proper supervision just to save money.
“Patients need to be made aware when they are being anaesthetised by a non-doctor.”
The group is now set to trigger an extraordinary general meeting of the Royal College of Anaesthetists after securing the signatures of almost 500 worried doctors.
Richard Marks, a consultant anaesthetist in London, said associates need to be brought under the oversight of an independent regulator.
“As a doctor, you are registered with the GMC and in order to get onto and stay on the medical register you have to do a lot of things,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“There definitely needs to be some sort of regulatory system for individual medical associates, so the public has the assurance that they are properly qualified and are still fit to practise.”
He also warned that associates had been through “much narrower” training which raised concerns about “how people manage the 1pc of the time when things go wrong”.
“It’s like flying a plane. Most of the time it’s alright but it’s when things go wrong that you see the difference,” he said.
Dr Marks said hiring associates rather than training fully-fledged doctors was a “short-term fix” to the NHS’ staffing problems.
He added: “Patients are often confused about the terminology. They have a right to know who is looking after them, especially when they are asleep and unaware.”
There have also been concerns raised about the use of physician associates in place of fully qualified doctors, including at GP surgeries.
Emily Chesterton died last November after she was misdiagnosed by a physician associate who she mistakenly thought was a GP.
The 30-year-old, who lived in London, was seen twice by an associate and told that her calf pain was an ankle sprain when she actually had a blood clot.
A coroner ruled at her inquest that she should have been sent to A&E straight away and that if she had been then it is likely she would have survived.
Her mother, Marion, told the BBC that she “didn’t know she hadn’t seen a doctor” and that more regulation is needed around associates to guarantee patient safety.
“Physician associate sounds grander than a GP,” she said.
“If I had known earlier that she had not seen a doctor, I would have marched back to the surgery or gone straight to hospital.”
In June last year an investigation by BBC Panorama found that the UK’s biggest chain of GP practices was allowing associates to see patients without adequate supervision.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Our Long Term Workforce Plan will deliver the biggest training expansion in NHS history and recruit and retain hundreds of thousands more staff.
“Patient safety remains of the utmost importance, which is why we are working with the General Medical Council to regulate physician associates and anaesthesia associates.
“We are clear that the role of associates is to support doctors, including GPs, and not to replace them. This supports the government’s plans to grow the multidisciplinary NHS workforce.
The chief executive who was in post during the Lucy Letby scandal was stopped from running Cornwall’s hospitals trust by former staff who were “outraged and distressed” that he had applied, it has been claimed by a senior NHS source.
Make you wonder how Chiefs of public sector bodies are chosen. – Owl
Lee Trewhela, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk
The Times reported this week that Tony Chambers, who was chief executive of the Countess of Chester hospital trust at the time Letby was murdering babies, was due to be made the permanent boss of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust until senior staff were alerted to the Letby investigation by someone who worked at the Chester hospital.
Last week Dr Stephen Brearey, Chester neonatal unit’s senior paediatrician, claimed that Mr Chambers insisted that consultants who raised concerns about Letby should apologise to her and warned them that a line had been drawn and there would be “consequences” if they crossed it. Dr Brearey also claimed that Mr Chambers had told them he had spent a lot of time with Letby and her father, and had apologised to them. Mr Chambers said his comments to consultants had been taken out of context.
After leaving the Chester trust, Mr Chambers earned £345,000 as interim chief executive of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, where he worked between January 2020 and August 2021.
He then moved to Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) where he earned £90,000 for a five-month stint between August 2021 and January last year. A senior NHS source told The Times that Mr Chambers was thought to be the frontrunner to become its permanent boss until the trust was alerted to the Letby scandal by a member of the Countess of Chester’s staff, who was “distressed and outraged” that Mr Chambers could lead another trust.
According to The Times’ report, Dr Mairi Mclean, chairwoman of RCHT, telephoned an executive in Chester and, following the call, Chambers was not appointed.
We approached RCHT to comment on the report. A Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust spokesperson said: “Tony Chambers was interim chief executive for less than five months between August 2021 to the start of January 2022, whilst we went out to recruitment for a substantive chief executive. This interim appointment followed due process for an executive position and fully considered information available at the time.
“We cannot comment on personal information relating to a recruitment process. Mr Chambers was not appointed to the substantive position.”
A spokesperson for Dr Mairi Mclean referred to the above statement.
Last week Mr Chambers said that he was “truly sorry for what all the families have gone through”. He added: “As chief executive, my focus was on the safety of the baby unit and the well-being of patients and staff. I was open and inclusive as I responded to information and guidance.”
“Just look at it, this is the middle of the summer holidays,” says Phillip Garnsey, the exasperated co-owner of the Oggy Oggy pasty company, as he surveys an empty high street in Torquay.
Joe Middleton www.theguardian.com
Just a few hundred metres up the road in the Devon town, the juxtaposition could not be more stark as families relax on the beach, enjoying one of the first sunny days of August, and paddleboarders make their way through the crisp blue ocean. Squeals can be heard from the nearby funfair as children play on the rides and later beg their parents for ice-creams or candy floss, while young couples browse inviting street food at the market.
However, away from the levity of the seafront, shopkeepers in Torquay told the Guardian about a lack of footfall, decline in the town centre and struggles caused by the cost of living crisis.
Michael Jamieson, the owner of Café Crème, says: “It’s been the worst summer in 14 years. Look how quiet it is for August, usually the town’s packed. June, July, August and May, they’ve all been quiet, super quiet. It’s not just me, it’s everybody, cafes, the clothes shops, souvenir stores, you name it, we are all down, we’re all struggling to pay our bills.”
He adds: “When we’re in season, from April until the end of September, I start serving breakfast at 8am. Now, I’m opening at 9am and hardly anybody is coming. You look outside and it looks deserted, the town.
“Believe me, wait until this winter, it will be a lot [worse], I guarantee you, come March, April, there will be a lot more empty shops, because people are struggling.”
The town centre is already pockmarked with empty shops and the streets are quiet. Ryan Hanlon, the manager of the Cider Rooms, says demand at the sports bar was good but did not compare with the previous year, when the high street was packed “with a sea of people”.
This is the heart of the problem. Last summer, trade was exceptional for seaside towns as people embarked on domestic breaks after the pandemic lockdown, due to restrictions on travelling abroad. But this summer, travel providers and airlines have reported strong demand for foreign trips, with a spike in last-minute bookings due to the wettest July on record in some part of England and Northern Ireland.
Tony Galinos, 74, a professional musician, has owned and operated The Guitar Man music equipment shop in the town centre for the last four years and has seen the area’s decline. “Our turnovers have dropped, conservatively, from 50% to 80%, we’ve got 50 vacant shops on the Torquay high street … Without support from the government, I would say within the next 12 months at least another third of the remaining businesses will close.”
He says these economic difficulties are being faced by seaside towns up and down the country. “It’s everywhere, if you go to Southend-on-Sea, even places like Brighton are suffering.” He adds that trade is “not even close” to what they experienced in the town last year and “80% down”.
Galinos says part of the reason is more people flying to Europe this summer, but that the poor weather in July and early August has also put people off heading to the seaside.
Garnsey says the summer has been terrible for visitor numbers, “at least half down on last year”. But the 58-year-old argues that is not the only problem: “I don’t think there is anything to do down here. If you go to Cornwall there is a bit more … there is nothing much on down here, I don’t think, and the town is very grubby-looking. We have had a lot of holidaymakers say that they wouldn’t come back.”
The most recent data supports the idea that the domestic holiday trend is fading post-Covid. Analysis from the recruitment firm Reed, published by Bloomberg, says that job vacancies in 25 of the major seaside towns have declined significantly since last year.
James Reed, the chair of Reed, said: “Given how heavily reliant many of these coastal towns are on strong summer trading, it is certainly concerning that the usual summer boost in job postings hasn’t materialised. The staycation boom has come to an end.
“Even those in a stronger financial position may opt for a less costly foreign holiday package over a domestic staycation where UK businesses, hit particularly hard by rising costs, have had to hike up prices for consumers. Just by comparing the costs of travelling by road and rail in the UK with the costs of flights abroad, it’s clear why the staycation boom has failed to re-emerge.”
Just over 270 miles away from south Devon, in the popular Welsh coastal resort of Abersoch, Tom Leslie, the owner of the Potted Lobster, says the restaurant is still busy but businesses in the area think its quieter than last year. “People are still coming out and spending, but the spend is more limited. They’ll buy one bottle of wine instead of two.”
Leslie also part-owns a hotel, the Whittling House in Alnmouth, Northumberland, and said occupancy rates were 98% in the domestic holiday boom after the pandemic, but this summer they had dropped to 70%.
After the economy opened up following Covid-19, he said, there were “freakish” high levels of trade due to the specific circumstances around the pandemic, but this could now level out.
The post-lockdown visitor spike bucked a decades-long trend of economic decline in Britain’s coastal communities. A House of Lords report released in July titled The Future of Seaside Towns found such places had “significant potential” but faced a “persistent sense of disconnection” as well as complex social issues, a lack of jobs and deprivation.
Last month, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said she wanted to “supercharge seaside towns” to boost their economic prospects and create new jobs. If Labour won the next election she promised it would crack down on sewage dumping in rivers and the sea, scrap the current business rate scheme, let councils introduce a holiday lets licensing scheme, and help create new, high-quality jobs through an apprenticeship levy.
Analysis released by Labour at the same time found the economic output of seaside towns had increased by 12% between 2009 and 2019, far below the 20% overall increase in the UK gross added value, a measure of economic output.
Another key issue is poverty. A 2020 analysis of coastal towns published by the Office for National Statistics showed there was more likely to be higher levels of deprivation than in inland towns.
Alan Tilley runs Turning Heads, a community interest company in Torquay that runs a social supermarket offering food to struggling families at lower prices than traditional retailers.
He says demand has increased and every week someone new, who is almost always in paid employment, is asking to use the shop. “I’m astounded about the state of what’s going on,” he says.
Garnsey says not enough is being done to support seaside towns, and his pasty business is likely to close. “We’re finding it tough, but it’s not just because of the lack of visitors, it’s the cost of living going up.
“We’re not the only ones. If you look down the high street at the shops that are shut … It’s such a shame, we have a lovely shop and such fantastic customers, but it hasn’t worked.”
The UK competition watchdog has said it will probe land banking by the country’s biggest housebuilders as it identified a number of concerns regarding the sector.
City AM reporter www.cityam.com
The UK competition watchdog has said it will probe land banking by the country’s biggest housebuilders as it identified a number of concerns regarding the sector.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) formally started a probe into the housebuilding sector and the private rental market in February.
It said it was looking into the housebuilding industry amid worries that developers were not delivering homes at an adequate pace or scale.
“Having seen four previous housing market reviews in the last 25 years, we believe this one is very unlikely to lead to a different outcome or material changes for the sector,” analysts at Peel Hunt said in reaction the the news.
“This CMA review has been politically driven, as the conservative government has turned anti-housing under the current secretary of state, in light of the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June 2021,” a note from Peel Hunt read.
“The lack of housing and poor current affordability has been driven by supply bottlenecks, in particular planning. The deficit looks set to grow further, although a new Labour government may provide the industry with a shot in the arm.”
The CMA outlined five main areas it is investigating in relation to UK housebuilding.
It said this will include estate management charges, where homeowners pay private companies to maintain things such as parks and roads.
The regulator will also look at issues regarding land banks, amid concerns over whether some large portfolios held by bigger firms are slowing competition or housing availability in some areas.
It is also looking into wider concerns regarding planning rules, competition between builders and barriers for new businesses wanting to build homes.
In relation to the rental market, the CMA said it was taking action to provide updated guidance for letting agents regarding the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords.
The CMA also identified concerns related to zero deposit schemes, sham licences, onerous guarantee clauses, and possible unlawful discrimination.
It said it will investigate further and will take enforcement action if needed.
Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: “The CMA alone can’t resolve the problems in the UK housing market.
“But we have a role to play and will do our part to help ensure the private rental and housebuilding markets work better for people and businesses.
“In housebuilding, we’ll press on with our investigation of the five areas that are the focus of our market study so that we can get to the bottom of any potential competition concerns.
“Once complete, we will consider what actions the CMA can take to tackle any concerns identified or whether there are more effective ways to deal with those concerns such as through recommendations to government for legislative change.”
By Henry Saker-Clark, PA Deputy Business Editor
“You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.”
Nadine Dorries pulls no punches in her resignation letter, to the Prime Minister, see the extract below.
“Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?
And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of ’97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.
Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?
You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.
Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.
It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.
I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.”
Spot of rain during the night, Environment Agency advises against bathing today, as do Surfers against Sewage! – Owl
East Devon Watch 