Artificial intelligence will be used in south-west England to predict pollution before it happens and help prevent it.

By Jonah Fisher www.bbc.co.uk 

It’s hoped the pilot project in Devon will help improve water quality at the seaside resort of Combe Martin, making it a better place for swimming.

Sensors placed in rivers and fields will build a picture of the state of local rivers, rainfall and soil.

AI will then combine that data with satellite imagery of local land use.

It will predict when the local river system is most vulnerable to things like agricultural runoff, allowing for measures such as asking farms to hold off on applying fertiliser.

Computer systems company CGI is running the artificial intelligence project with mapping experts Ordnance Survey. CGI said it was more than 90% accurate during a test run.

It’s being trialled in what’s known as the North Devon Biosphere Reserve, a 55-sq-mile (142-sq-km) protected area that includes important natural habitats as well as farmland and small towns.

“We’ll give (the AI) the history,” said CGI’s chief sustainability officer Mattie Yeta. “We’ll give it all of the geographic information, as well as data sets from the sensors for it to learn and develop the predictive mechanisms to be able to inform where these incidents are occurring and indeed when they will take place.”

It’s hoped the project could clean up the seaside resort town of Combe Martin, where the quality of bathing water has long been a concern.

“It’s always been bumping along the bottom in terms of water quality,” says Andy Bell from the North Devon Biosphere Reserve.

Though the water at Combe Martin was last year rated by the Environment Agency as ‘good’, Mr Bell says that was mainly down to dry weather. More typical years, he says, were 2018 and 2019 when it received a ‘poor’ rating, which meant a notice being posted advising people not to swim.

“There is very much a fear in the community of what would happen if the bathing water status was rescinded.” Andy says

“It would impact on the cafes, the restaurants, the B&B’s… people want to come to a clean place to enjoy themselves.”

The River Umber is the main culprit, according to Mr Bell. It reaches the sea through a corridor of lush green algae on the edge of the beach. The Umber is usually little more than a stream but it receives discharges both from a sewage treatment plant and agricultural runoff from farms.

Cleaning up the Umber is seen as a first step towards improving the water quality on the beach and the key to that, according to the artificial intelligence project, is a huge amount of real-time information.

A couple of kilometres upstream from Combe Martin beach, a floating water sensor is being installed in the river. It’s a square black box with solar panels on top and is moored by a cable to the bank.

It automatically transmits a stream of data on six key indicators of water health including acidity (pH), ammonia, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water and how clear the water is (turbidity).

“It’s a really good overview of water quality,” said Glyn Cotton, the chief executive of environment-focussed technology company Watr, which is supplying the £2,000-a-go ($2,557) sensors to the project.

“If sewage was being discharged upstream we would see spikes in things like ammonia and pH and we can then cross-reference that with temperature and dissolved oxygen levels.”

About 50 connected sensors are being used across the catchment area, a mix of water, soil and rain gauges. Mapping company Ordnance Survey are providing the expertise to integrate that information with location specific data and satellite imagery.

Mapping experts Ordnance Survey are helping integrate the sensors with satellite imagery in the AI model Image source, Ordnance Survey

“We can start training the model using data to get it understanding that when there was a pollution event – whether it was associated with a particular area?” said Donna Lyndsay from Ordnance Survey. “Was there for example a particular rainfall event that washed it all off?”

The hope is that the AI might, for example, advise a farmer to stop putting more fertiliser on his field, if the soil is dry and heavy rain forecast because of the likelihood of it being washed into the waterways.

Preventing raw sewage being discharged by water treatment plants – a practice allowed when heavy rainfall overwhelms facilities – is more complicated. The AI might see it coming after heavy rainfall but that doesn’t mean the water company has the capacity to stopped it being released.

The first phase of the AI project was a desk-based model using historic data, with CGI saying it predicted pollution events with 91.5% accuracy. Now the AI model is being unleashed ‘in the wild’ and the question is whether it can do the same.

“We’re starting very small here (in North Devon) … but the idea is very much to scale up and roll this out to different parts of the UK.” said CGI’s Mattie Yeta.

Snouts still in troughs – Owl

Downing Street has rejected calls to strip Boris Johnson of the £115,000 a year expense allowance given to former prime ministers – after an inquiry found he had repeatedly misled parliament.

Jon Stone www.independent.co.uk 

The ex prime minister is facing a ban from holding a parliamentary security pass after a devastating cross-party committee blasted his handling of the Partygate scandal.

But there are now calls that Mr Johnson should be stripped of the other trappings of office, including generous lifetime expenses and gongs for his allies and cronies.

Under rules, former prime ministers are entitled to claim the Public Duty Costs Allowance of up to £115,000 a year, for life, for the “necessary office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position in public life”.

The system was established after Margaret Thatcher resigned and it currently pays out more than half a million pounds a year on total to former PMs.

In 2020/21 both Tony Blair and John Major claimed the full £115,000 for their work, with Gordon Brown and David Cameron claiming slightly under. Theresa May was an outlier and claimed just £57,832.

“Rishi Sunak must cut off Johnson’s ex-Prime Minister allowance to stop him milking the public purse for his own personal gain,” said Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.

“Anything less would be an insult to bereaved families who suffered while Boris Johnson lied and partied.”

The senior MP said the report “should be the final nail in the coffin for Boris Johnson’s political career”, branding him “a law-breaker and serial liar, who treated the public and Parliament with total disdain”.

But asked whether the allowance should be rescinded from Mr Johnson, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman told reporters:

“I’m not aware of any plans to do that.These arrangements are fairly long-standing – it’s not a personal salary or allowance, it’s the reimbursement of expenses for office and secretarial costs.”

No 10 also rejected suggestions that Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list should be rescinded, as called for by some opposition politicians.

“When it comes to honours, that’s a long-standing convention, the Prime Minister has abided by convention, that’s not going to change.”

There are also “no plans” to recoup the cost of Mr Johnson’s publicly-funded legal fees for the inquiry, the spokesperson said.

As well as the secretarial allowance, former prime ministers also continue to receive security protection after they leave office.

And like ministers, PMs are entitled to a severance payment of 25 per cent of their annual salary if they hold office and are not appointed within three weeks. Mr Johnson was entitled to a severance payment of £18,860, according to the Istitute for Government think-tank.

Polling conducted on Thursday by Savanta found that two thirds (66 per cent) of voters agree with the privilege’s committee report’s conclusion that he deliberately misled the House of Commons, with just 19 per cent believing he did not.

The vote to accept and approve the “House of Commons Committee of Privileges: Matter referred on 21 April 2022 (conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson): Final Report”, takes place on Monday. 

The report is forensic and worth a read.

It will be a free vote and already there is much press speculation on how many Tories will find it politic to be absent. 

Supporters of Boris Johnson have vowed to target Conservative members of the privileges committee and Tory MPs who endorse its findings for deselection. They are likely to be very vociferous over the weekend.

For example, Boris Johnson describes the findings as follows:

“The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events.

This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.”

Though a small proportion of the electorate, the influence of Party Members is disproportionate to their number.

It was the membership who chose both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. So any Conservative voting to approve the report risks upsetting diehard party members, maybe face deselection.

Not voting will send a strong signal to the electorate at large that such an MP is not prepared to “move on”.

Simon Jupp has been a PPS under both Boris and Truss. We wait to see which way he jumps.  

The BBC even  speculates on whether Rishi Sunak will attend. 

That’s the Prime Minister who promised that his government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.

The council ran up a £500m deficit after gambling hundreds of millions of pounds on risky commercial investments and declared effective bankruptcy in December.

Anyone spot any familiar themes in the official findings? – Owl

Thurrock Council Best Value Inspection Report (extract from “Our Findings”)

“Our inspection has found that Thurrock Council has experienced repeated failures both in the delivery of its investment strategy, and in the delivery of major infrastructure and regeneration projects. These failures have resulted in the loss of substantial sums of public money. When initially faced with these failures, members and senior officers within the Council have attempted to conceal bad news and avoid public scrutiny.

This pattern of failure, and the nature of the Council’s response, has been enabled by dereliction in political and managerial leadership, inadequate governance arrangements and serious weaknesses in internal control. 

The Council’s lack of openness and transparency has given rise to a culture of insularity and complacency. Internal challenge has been discouraged, and external criticism and challenge have been routinely dismissed. This has undermined the Council’s ability to learn from others and from its own previous mistakes. It has placed the Council in a state of ‘unconscious incompetence’ and has undermined its ability to secure continuous improvement. Thurrock Council has, therefore, failed to meet the ‘Best Value Duty’ placed on all local authorities. 

Urgent change is required. The scale of the financial challenge now facing the Council means it is inevitable that, in addition to making extensive efficiency savings, the Council will have to undertake a significant and rapid reduction in the scope of local services. Many services, which have been relatively well funded over the past decade may, as a consequence, be equipped to do little more than the statutory minimum for the foreseeable future. Leading this transformation will be a hugely difficult task, not least because the Council does not have a good record in delivering major projects. This transformation will need to be effectively managed at both the corporate and service level if the Council is to avoid serious operational failures.“

Southern Water is refusing demands by the information watchdog to publish internal communications between board members relating to discussions about raw sewage discharges.

Not much transparency here – owl

Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com 

The company, which was fined £90m in 2021 for discharging billions of litres of raw sewage into protected coastal waters, was ordered to publish 53 documents by the information commissioner at the end of last year because of the “substantial and weighty public interest”.

But the company said they contained “sensitive” internal decision-making processes on a live issue relating to sewage discharges, and has refused to release them. Seven months on from the information commissioner’s order to publish, Southern is taking the case to the first-tier tribunal to appeal against the ruling and to keep the documents secret.

First reported in Private Eye, the 53 documents relate to discussion at board level in 2020 and 2021, including agendas and minutes of meetings of the board discussing sewage spills or storm overflows.

Ofwat, the industry’s regulator, has promised to apply new scrutiny to the boardrooms of water companies.

Southern has tried to cite exceptions under the environmental information request (EIR) rules to defend its decision not to release the documents. But the information commissioner has said the exceptions largely do not apply and there is a public interest in releasing the documents.

The company argued that the documents should remain secret because of “the need to protect Southern Water’s internal processes of deliberation and decision-making and with regard to the sensitivity of the information and the circumstances surrounding the request”. The company said the request for the documents on sewage spills or overflows in 2020-2021 related to live issues and should not be published.

But the commissioner said the public interest favoured disclosing the information, and said there was even greater public interest because the company had pleaded guilty in July 2021 to 51 individual offences of discharging sewage illegally. Evidence presented showed the company had presented a picture of compliance to regulators that was deliberately misleading.

“Set against this backdrop, the commissioner considers that there is a substantial and weighty public interest in understanding what measures the public authority was taking, during the period covered by the request, to improve its performance and put measures in place to prevent a recurrence of the offences,” the information commissioner has said.

Ed Acteson, of the campaign group SOS Whitstable, said: “Southern is repeatedly saying it is going to be more transparent but we are just not sure that is the case.”

He said data on the company’s Beachbuoy app had recently been changed to make it more difficult for the public to see where raw sewage discharges were taking place or their impact.

Last year Southern was accused of “environmental vandalism” after discharging raw sewage for more than 3,700 hours at 83 bathing water beaches during the first eight days of November alone.

The information commissioner said the company operated a monopoly and if customers were dissatisfied with the way wastewater was being handled, they did not have the right to ask another company to handle it instead.

“One of the few powers consumers do have, is to make use of the EIR to seek environmental information such as this and use that information to hold the public authority to account, the information commissioner said.

Southern Water said as there was a court process under way it could not comment.

Furious Boris Johnson Accuses ‘Deranged’ Privileges Committee Of Lying

Furious Boris Johnson has lashed out at the “deranged” findings of the partygate probe which found he misled parliament.

Sophia Sleigh www.huffingtonpost.co.uk  (Full 1,700 word rant published in the Telegraph – owl)

A crossbench group of MPs, on the privileges committee, concluded the former prime minister made “repeated contempts” of parliament with his partygate denials.

Their report published on Thursday morning said his actions warranted a 90-day suspension.

It would have paved the way for a by-election for the former prime minister if he had not resigned ahead of the publication.

Johnson quit the Commons last week after reading the report’s findings.

But he issued a blistering statement as the report was published, hitting out at what called a “deranged conclusion”.

Johnson called the committee led by Labour veteran Harriet Harman “beneath contempt” and claimed its investigation had delivered “what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”.

He said: “The committee now says that I deliberately misled the house, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the house my knowledge of illicit events.

“This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.”

Johnson argued that the police investigated his role in events highlighted by the panel, adding: “In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful.”

The outgoing MP also said Downing Street did not believe that what they were doing was wrong, adding: “After a year of work the privileges committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.”

He also took aim at Tory MP on the committee Sir Bernard Jenkin who has been accused of attending a gathering during covid rules.

“The hypocrisy is rank,” Johnson said. “Like Harriet Harman, he should have recused himself from the inquiry, since he is plainly conflicted.”

During his lengthy statement, Johnson claimed the “craziest assertion” was their “Mystic Meg claim” that he saw a December 18 event with his own eyes.

He goes on to describe the report as a “charade” and that it marked a “dreadful day” for MPs and for democracy.

“For the privileges committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.”

The MPs recommended that Johnson should not be given a former member’s pass, which would grant him access to the parliamentary estate.

“We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt,” the MPs said.

“The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the prime minister, the most senior member of the government.

“There is no precedent for a prime minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House.

“He misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly.

“He declined our invitation to reconsider his assertions that what he said to the House was truthful.

“His defence to the allegation that he misled was an ex post facto justification and no more than an artifice. He misled the committee in the presentation of his evidence.”

“The question which the house asked the committee is whether the house had been misled by Mr Johnson and, if so, whether that conduct amounted to contempt. It is for the house to decide whether it agrees with the committee. The house as a whole makes that decision. Motions arising from reports from this committee are debatable and amendable. The committee had provisionally concluded that Mr Johnson deliberately misled the house and should be sanctioned for it by being suspended for a period that would trigger the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act 2015. In light of Mr Johnson’s conduct in committing a further contempt on 9 June 2023, the committee now considers that if Mr Johnson were still a member he should be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process, by:

a) Deliberately misleading the house.

b) Deliberately misleading the committee.

c) Breaching confidence.

d) Impugning the committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the house.

e) Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee.

We recommend that he should not be entitled to a former member’s pass.”

House of Commons Committee of Privileges: Matter referred on 21 April 2022 (conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson): Final Report. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15 June 2023

Emotional appeals have been made to stop potential cuts to adult services by Devon County Council.

Ollie Heptinstall, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

The local authority has consulted on plans to withdraw a number of services across adult social care, including stopping £1.5 million being spent on preventing homelessness and closing its North Devon mental health and wellbeing service.

It could also close a respite service for people with learning difficulties in East Devon, seven learning disability and older persons day services, and stop its funding contribution towards a scheme called Wellbeing Exeter.

The council says no decisions have yet been taken but it needs to “prioritise spending on our statutory responsibilities” as part of savings of around £45 million.

Final proposals are expected to come before Devon’s ruling cabinet for a decision in mid-July, but the council’s health and adult care scrutiny committee has agreed to hold a special meeting before then to look at the plans.

It comes after hundreds of consultation respondents criticised the potential cuts. On Tuesday [13 June] the committee heard from several public speakers – including heads of local homeless charities – urging councillors to think again.

Peter Stephenson, head of St Petrock’s, a charity in Exeter, said: “Instead of enabling people to live in a place they call home, ending this funding will render some of the most vulnerable and traumatised people in our county homeless, without any real hope they will ever be able to access shelter, let alone a home.

“The numbers of vulnerable adults sleeping rough will rocket, making the government’s commitment to end rough sleeping by next year completely unattainable.”

Mr Stephenson described the consultation as “half-baked at best, with almost no effort to make the public aware it was even taking place … Despite this, the people of Devon have spoken. They recognise the dangerous injustice of this proposal and the 990 responses were almost entirely opposed [to the council’s proposals].”

He called on the committee to ask Devon’s ruling cabinet to scrap the proposed homeless budget cut “for the sake of basic humanity and democratic accountability.”

Si Johns, joint CEO of YMCA Exeter, also criticised the consultation process. He said the council had posted more times on social media about a cycle path consultation and claimed that both service users and homeless people weren’t properly consulted.

He added the scrutiny committee was being “bypassed” with no firm proposals on the table before they’re due to be decided by Devon’s ruling cabinet in mid-July.

“Aren’t you meant to see what is being recommended and scrutinise it?” he asked. “Maybe tweak a proposal or two before it goes on. Aren’t you meant to scrutinise the recommendations on health and adult care, as the health and adult care scrutiny committee?”

Meanwhile, on the future of the North Devon mental health centres, which provide day services and drop-in sessions, one public speaker warned their closure would lead to a “large increase in mental health related emergencies,” as well as “self-harm and suicides.”

And, in a tearful address to the committee, a user of the service said they had been made to feel like “second-class citizens,” adding: “This should be about lives, not money.”

“We have the right to preventative care,” they said. “The link centre often prevents escalations to a mental health crisis.

“Please treat us with respect and dignity. We are not stupid. We are intelligent people. This is going to detrimentally affect service users and our families.

“So, please don’t close our support network. Save the links. Save our lives.”

Several members of the committee then criticised the potential impact of the cuts, and why it had no formal proposals to scrutinise. Councillors subsequently voted for a special meeting once plans had been drawn up, so it could look at them before July’s cabinet meeting.

In a statement, Councillor James McInnes (Conservative, Hatherleigh & Chagford), cabinet member for adult social care, said: “I would personally like to thank everyone who has responded to our consultations. No decisions have been made and won’t be until we have fully analysed all the feedback.

“These are challenging times, and I do not for one moment underestimate the impact of these proposals.

“I said at the very start of these consultations that these are the difficult decisions a council has to make. We have a duty to deliver the best value out of every pound we spend; to make sure services are as effective as possible; and that they are services people want to use.  Never has that been more important than now, amid rising costs and increasing demand for our adult social care services.

“And having put forward these proposals, it is only right now that we take this time to fully consider all the responses we’ve received before reaching our decisions at our cabinet meeting in July.”

The UK government knew as early as September 2020 that its desire to free up hospital beds in the early stages of the pandemic had been “to the detriment” of care homes, openDemocracy can reveal.

So why contest the Cathy Gardner Judicial Review?

Cathy gained permission from the court to proceed in November 2020. – Owl

Jenna Corderoy www.opendemocracy.net 

It is one of a number of explosive admissions in a highly secret Covid “lessons learnt” review document that was released tonight following a two-year transparency battle between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and openDemocracy.

Ministers have publicly maintained they “threw a protective ring” around adult social care and “specifically sought to safeguard care homes” even after losing a high-profile court case last year over their failures. But behind closed doors, the department admitted the “operational response centre” (ORC) at the heart of the government’s Covid response had prioritised hospital capacity and failed to fully understand social care.

“The unprecedented speed with which this new virus emerged inevitably focused attention primarily on how the NHS would be able to cope,” reads the draft document, which is marked “OFFICIAL SENSITIVE”. “This prioritisation of the protection of hospital capacity, without adequate acknowledgement of key interdependencies, was to the detriment of ASC [adult social care].”

The Covid-19 public inquiry is a historic chance to find out what really happened.

The review also reveals the precarious staffing levels of the ORC itself as the disease crept towards Britain. As late as February 2020, 37% of shifts in the unit – also called the “incident response team” – were unfilled because civil servants who had received special training for emergencies could not get permission from their bosses to be released from regular work.

The DHSC carried out the review, dated September 2020, “as an informal, internal-only” overview of the first wave of the pandemic.

It used a “mixture of interviews with senior figures”, including “stakeholders” outside the department, and a survey that received 276 responses from across the DHSC. According to the DHSC, the review was not intended for publication, was not finalised, and “remains in draft form”.

Under the heading ‘Organisation’, the review says staff worked slower because the department did not have the right software: “The lack of a collaboration document management system, such as SharePoint or Google Drive, impacted teams’ ability to work at pace.”

In a passage that is likely to catch the eye of data privacy campaigners, the review also criticises Foundry, the controversial database software provided to the NHS by digital giant Palantir – saying even health secretary Matt Hancock was unable to use it.

“There is no single departmental overview of the range of available [DHSC] datasets, their origins, ownership and structure and the governance arrangements relating to access to those datasets,” the review states. “NHSE created the ‘Foundry’ data sharing platform to partially address these issues but staff (and the Secretary of State) experienced access issues and its utility as a central resource was limited.”

Palantir initially offered its services to the NHS for just £1, openDemocracy investigations revealed at the time, but subsequently won contracts worth £22m after getting its foot in the door. openDemocracy successfully sued the government over the deal and secured a vow that it would not work with the CIA-backed ‘spy tech’ firm again without consulting the public – a promise that was not kept.

The ‘lessons learnt’ review also reveals that documentation about key early decision-making may not exist – something that is likely to create a headache for the official Covid-19 inquiry, which began taking evidence this week, as well as the government itself, which has already been hauled over the coals for its refusal to release unredacted information.

“Due to the dynamic situation,” the document says, “complex discussions were sometimes taken in senior meetings without a formal submission to set out accountability. While this assisted decision-making at pace, it meant there was not always a clear audit trail for rapidly evolving strategy.”

Ministers have been heavily criticised for not doing more to protect care homes, where more than 20,000 residents died in the first wave of the pandemic.

Respondents to the survey criticised “glaring omissions in strategic direction of integration and preparedness” within the sector, “meaning that the social care system was not able to respond to a major health emergency”.

Indeed, some said they had not anticipated that the government would need to have a centralised role with care homes at all, assuming – wrongly – that the largely privatised care sector would be “responsible for their own response” to Covid.

The review also admits that putting a hold on routine care home inspections by the Care Quality Commission watchdog “removed one of the department’s lines of sight into ASC [adult social care] and limited its direct knowledge of what was happening on the ground”.

The DHSC says in the document that it “would have benefitted from a fuller understanding of the response by Asian countries (recognizing the contexts are very different) earlier in our planning, which might have enabled us to start to build testing systems earlier in January 2020”, but does not go into detail about what information officials lacked, or why it was unavailable. It also notes there was an “absence of a unified leadership for Test and Trace” at the start of the pandemic, but again stops short of going into detail.

On the subject of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, gowns and gloves, the review recommends “more rigorous… vetting of PPE suppliers” in future. During the pandemic, the government set up a so-called ‘VIP’ lane for suppliers of the kit – a separate channel for politically connected firms.

But PPE supplied through the government’s VIP lane was three times more likely to be useless to the NHS than normally procured PPE, according to analysis by openDemocracy. The total value of contracts awarded to suppliers through the high-priority lane was £1.7bn. Some £4bn of unusable PPE bought by the government in the first year of the pandemic later had to be burnt.

The existence of the ‘lessons learnt’ review was first revealed by HuffPost UK in May 2021. The DHSC refused openDemocracy’s request to see a copy, but the information rights watchdog – the Information Commissioner’s Office – ruled in our favour. The DHSC initially appealed against the ruling, threatening to take the ICO to court, but has now handed it over.

The ICO held that there were “significant public interest arguments in favour of disclosure”.

Pollution from farms has prevented housing developments being approved by 35 councils, analysis by The Times and Watershed Investigations, the not-for-profit organisation, can reveal.

Rachel Salvidge | Leana Hosea www.thetimes.co.uk 

Natural England, the regulator, has issued advice to 74 local authorities where water bodies were already in “unfavourable conservation status”.

The public body told them that new developments should be approved only if they would not worsen the already polluted rivers. Nutrient pollution, in the form of excessive nitrogen and phosphorus from farm fertilisers, animal slurry and human sewage, damages rivers by causing an overgrowth of algae. With the water starved of oxygen, the wildlife is suffocated. In extreme cases, this can lead to dead zones.

The Home Builders Federation estimates that more than 120,000 houses have been stuck in the planning system.

Developers are trying to work out how to show they are “nutrient neutral” — that the extra sewage they bring to an area will not add to the pollution.

The Times and Watershed Investigations used Environment Agency data to determine why rivers failed to meet “good” environmental standards at 64 of the affected councils. Agriculture was found to be the main problem facing 35 councils. Of the known reasons, across all 64 councils, 44 per cent were reported to be due to agricultural pollution and 21 per cent a result of the water sector.

The Times’s Clean It Up campaign has called on the government to maintain the nutrient neutrality rules laid out by Natural England. The campaign is also to encourage farmers to curb their pollution of rivers.

Several housebuilders said they backed the scheme but wanted the burden shared between water companies and farmers. The analysis found farm pollution was a problem in Cheshire and Devon, while the water sector was the main cause in 14 local authorities.

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman at the Home Builders Federation, said his members were “committed to protecting the environment”. He called for measures “that address the contributors to the poor quality of our rivers”.

Mike Burke, director for sustainable development at Natural England, said “comprehensive action across all sectors” was needed. “Pollution in rivers comes from a range of sources,” he said.

Richard Benwell, of the Wildlife and Countryside Link coalition, called for an end to “intensive” agriculture. He said the government should encourage “agro-ecological” farming.

An official at Water UK, the industry body, called for more innovative approaches and partnerships with farmers “to deliver benefits”.

The National Farmers’ Union was approached for comment.

The future of Plymouth’s troubled city centre redevelopment is again in question after a key subcontractor went bust. Somerset-based groundworks and civil engineering firm GWKS Ltd has collapsed into administration blaming inflation, supply issues and the war in Ukraine.

William Telford www.plymouthherald.co.uk

The company was a subcontractor working on the regeneration of Plymouth city centre and staff in Plymouth have been told they have been made redundant. Plymouth City Council – which is behind schemes in Old Town Street and New George Street, Civic Square and the stalled Armada Way revamp – has been asked whether the projects will be affected.

Construction giant Morgan Sindall is overseeing all three schemes and would only say that GWKS, trading as G Works Construction, was “part of the public realm” works. PlymouthLive has been told staff were given their cards on Tuesday with one worker saying: “I’ve just got off a team call. We’ve just been told we’re now redundant and the company is in administration.”

In total 88 of the 109 staff working for the Bridgwater-headquartered company have been axed as soon as the company went into administration. Lucy Winterborne and Dan Hurd, of EY-Parthenon’s turnaround and restructuring strategy team, were appointed as joint administrators of GWKS Ltd, but said subsidiary G Works Surfacing Ltd is not in administration.

They said the firm is mainly focused on site preparation for customers across the South West. They said they will be undertaking “an orderly winding down” of the company and will look to realise assets for the benefit of creditors.

Ms Winterborne said: “Rising operating costs, supply chain challenges and labour shortages combined with the Covid-19 pandemic and wider geopolitical disruption has had a significant impact on the financial performance of the company. Our priorities as joint administrators are to protect the interests of the company’s creditors and to support the impacted employees who will be offered appropriate advice and support.”

Details of GWKS involvement in the city centre revamp are still being awaited. But it is another potential blow for the regeneration project which has been hit by setbacks, protests and even a legal battle.

The £7m upgrade of Old Town Street and New George Street got back on track recently after delays and the exit of original contractor Dorset-based Mildren Construction in 2022. The first phase began in lower New George Street in late 2021, the second phase began in April 2022. The overall idea includes creating a better link between Drake Circus Shopping Centre and The Barcode leisure and cinema multiplex But in July 2022 work stopped after the construction turned out to be more difficult than originally thought and Mildren Construction left the site.

The council then appointed Morgan Sindall, which was already chosen for the upgrade of Civic Square, to complete the work. The revamp was stopped before Christmas to give traders a break during the busy shopping season.

In January 2023 the council said the site had thrown up surprises including a length of Victorian tramline still embedded in cobbles buried beneath concrete. There was also discovered rubble from bombed out shops, cellars and other voids. Construction began again in February.

Meanwhile, Plymouth City Council is attempting to end the legal battle over the delayed £12.7m Armada Way regeneration. The authority will make an application directly to the High Court asking it to consider stopping the judicial review brought by protesters.

The newly-elected Labour council has already decided to take a fresh look at the design of the regeneration after the furore following the destruction of 110 trees in March.

GWKS’ most recent accounts, for the year to the end of June 2022, revealed the company was concerned about increasing labour and material costs. Nevertheless, it boasted a strong balance sheet and full order book, and said it had a “positive outlook” for 2022/23. Although turnover had fallen by £2m to £27.6m, it made an increased pre-tax profit of £431,664. It was the fifth straight year of profit. It paid out £100,000 in dividends.

Independent Woking councillor, John Bond, now retired when he dared to raise issues.

How many of us have been belittled, talked over or ignored, in Tory EDDC or Tory DCC either as an independent councillor or public speaker”? – Owl

Bust Woking council to cut ties with firm behind debt-ridden skyscraper

Richard Partington www.theguardian.com 

Woking council plans to sever ties with the Northern Irish developer behind a skyscraper venture that helped tip the tiny Surrey local authority into effective bankruptcy.

Amid ballooning costs and delays, a dramatic plunge in the value of the council’s Victoria Square development – which is 52% owned by Moyallen, a business from Dungannon, County Tyrone – is at the centre of the local authority’s financial meltdown.

Built as the tallest towers outside a major city in England – with the ambition they could be seen from the top of the Shard in central London 30 miles away – the scheme was first planned in 2013 as a £150m taxpayer-funded regeneration project, before costs more than quadrupled to £700m.

Involving a shopping centre, public plazas and a four-star Hilton hotel, the council warned last week that Victoria Square was among the main reasons for the failure of a risky investment spree overseen by its former Conservative administration, leaving the council facing a £1.2bn deficit.

Woking’s crisis comes amid intense pressure for the owners of physical retail after a collapse in footfall in the Covid pandemic and dramatic growth in online shopping, made worse in recent months by the cost of living crisis.

Ann-Marie Barker, Woking’s Liberal Democrat leader, told the Guardian that plans were being made to sever relations with Moyallen.

“The intention, always, with the relationship with Moyallen was that it was there for the development period [at Victoria Square], and that the relationship would come to a natural end at some point,” she said. “That is something we would anticipate happening.”

The details come as documents filed in the past month at Companies House show Moyallen had amassed debts worth £188m to Bank of Ireland in connection with its ownership of three other shopping centres, including another site in Woking.

Bank of Ireland placed four of Moyallen’s other operating units into administration – including two entities used to control the Peacocks Centre, a separate 1990s shopping centre adjacent to Victoria Square. Moyallen is run by the brothers Peter and John Robinson. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Those four entities are separate from Moyallen’s Victoria Square joint venture with Woking council, which continues to operate as a going concern. However, the details pose fresh questions over the suitability of the firm as the majority partner in a taxpayer-funded project costing more than the 2012 Olympic Stadium.

Documents filed at Companies House show the council was forced in the administration process to chase repayment of a £6m loan it made to Moyallen for running the Peacocks Centre, which was settled in full earlier this year. While the company operated the lease on the Peacocks shopping centre, Woking remained the freehold owner.

“We have been watching it [the administration] with some interest. There was work that had to be done by the council [to recover the £6m loan],” Barker said.

Woking’s former Conservative council leader had been warned about Moyallen’s financial position in 2018 by John Bond, an independent councillor at the time, who raised concerns that its Bank of Ireland debts posed risks to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

Bond, who has since retired as a councillor, said: “Everything I thought was wrong has since happened.”

“I was shouted down, literally shouted down by the Conservatives. I was very concerned [about Moyallen], but they had the backing of the senior officers.”

The council’s former Tory leadership dismissed Bond’s concerns at the time, arguing that Bank of Ireland had indicated it was supportive of the company. Bank of Ireland declined to comment.

The latest available accounts for Victoria Square Woking Ltd, the joint venture company behind the project, show the council loaned it £700m. However, the value of its assets plunged by more than £360m in 2021 to stand at just £116m – leaving the joint venture with a financial shortfall worth more than half a billion pounds.

Moyallen, which does not have a website or publicly available phone number, was paid £1.1m in development manager fees for the year.

The fresh details come as commissioners installed by Michael Gove’s levelling up department investigate Woking’s financial dealings to establish how the projects were approved and structured, with the aim of extracting the council from costly schemes and recovering money by selling assets.

Most of the council’s spending had been financed by an obscure arm of the Treasury – the Public Works Loan Board – with £1.3bn worth of borrowing that Woking could now struggle to repay.

Documents show the administration of Moyallen’s shopping centre assets is not expected to recover the full £188m owed to Bank of Ireland, after efforts to sell them were hit by the economic turmoil triggered by Liz Truss’s mini budget.

The business was forced to sell its three shopping centres as part of the Bank of Ireland administration process – including the Peacocks Centre, alongside the Magowan West and Rushmere shopping centres in Northern Ireland.

The two businesses behind the Peacocks Centre, which Moyallen had acquired in 2008 for £166m, owed the bank £88m out of its £188m debt at the time it was placed into administration by its creditors in April 2022.

Documents from the administrator Grant Thornton show a prospective buyer pulled out of a deal for the Peacocks Centre “with the specific reasons being linked to the UK’s economic instability and wider macro-economic factors … the Liz Truss mini budget occurred on 23 September 2022, followed by her resignation on 20 October – these factors most definitely had an adverse impact on our sale.”

After slashing the asking price and finding a new buyer, documents show the Peacocks Centre was sold for £15m, out of about £65m recovered overall from the Moyallen fire sale – less than half the value of the Bank of Ireland debt.

A dye test that was supposed to determine the site of a storm overflow in Devon has failed.

[It is possible the pipe could be in a different location to where SWW had understood it to be! – Owl]

By Brodie Owen www.bbc.co.uk

Campaigners looking to see the release of dye at Exmouth. Image source, Geoff Crawford

South West Water (SWW) said it released the dye near Maer Rocks on Exmouth Beach at the request of the community but the test was “inconclusive”.

The company said it would “explore further options” to confirm the discharge location.

Campaigners said beachgoers needed to know the location of the outfall pipe due to concerns over water quality.

Geoff Crawford, from End Sewage Convoys and Pollution Exmouth, said the exact location of the pipe would determine how frequently the water would need to be tested.

He said it was possible the pipe could be in a different location to where SWW had understood it to be.

SWW said the dye test was inconclusive. Image source, Geoff Crawford

“The dye test is for all of us – for them to know where it is – and for the public to be confident,” he said.

“At the moment they test once or twice a week – if the pipe is closer to the beach they would have to test more often.”

SWW said the dye test did not work as planned on Wednesday.

A spokeswoman said: “The purpose of the dye test was to confirm the discharge location of our outfall pipe to provide reassurance to the community that our outfall functions as designed.

“Unfortunately, the test was inconclusive. We suspect this was due to lack of available water to flush the dye in the network out through the pipe.

“We were grateful for the support of the local community during the test and we will explore further options in order to confirm the discharge location.”

Mr Crawford said all parties were “in a situation now where we haven’t proven anything and we have dye in the tank”.

SWW had reassured swimmers before the test that the dye was “harmless” and turning the water yellow or green would only be “temporary”.

It said the dye had the potential to show on swimmers or animals but this was unlikely.

The firm agreed to conduct the test to reassure the community that the outfall functions as designed.

Dangerous metal poles embedded in the sand of Jacob’s Ladder beach have been removed after photos of the hazard were shared on social media.

Philippa Davies www.sidmouthherald.co.uk 

The poles were sticking out of the sand below the waterline, posing a danger to swimmers.

It’s not clear how they got there, but they were close to the walkway where scaffolding is in place for East Devon District Council’s work to improve the sea defences.

During last weekend (June 10 and 11) local tree surgeons Devon Arborists posted

the pictures in the Facebook group Sidmouth Community for the People, warning people to take care.

People reacted with shock and concern, with one person describing the embedded poles as ‘a horrible accident waiting to happen, especially when the tide is in and you can’t see them’.

The Herald contacted the council on Monday, June 12, and was told that its contractors have now removed the poles.

A spokesperson said: “We are monitoring the site and will remove any further pieces of metal as they come to light. 

“While we try to make sure that our beaches are as safe as possible, it is important to remember that the coast is a constantly changing environment and no area can ever by guaranteed to be entirely free of hazards. 

“We would strongly encourage beachgoers not to dive or jump into any area of water without first checking for hazards and the depth of the water.  For more beach safety advice, follow this link: https://rnli.org/safety/beach-safety”

Everyday that Boris Jonson leads the headlines on the news is a good day for opposition parties. 

That’s all yo need to know for the week!

Oh and then there will be Fizzy Lizzy’s “Honours” list to savour! – Owl

[The honours system recognises people who have:

• made achievements in public life
• committed themselves to serving and helping Britain

They’ll usually have made life better for other people or be outstanding at what they do.]

Paul Arnott www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

Readers may have seen that East Devon District Council is setting up a new drive to support the amazing work of volunteers across East Devon, using funds from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Often such schemes are loaded with acronyms which stand in the way of understanding what is really being facilitated. Who amongst us really knows what the VCSE sector is? The answer: the wonderful groups leading work in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise area.

The best way to illustrate it is to look at the well-established work of the agency EDDC is partnering with to deliver the scheme, Devon Communities Together (DCT), whose website at http://www.devoncommunities.org.uk tells their story.

In essence, DCT tries to identify gaps in our response to making Devon communities sustainable, in an area where there are often hidden semi-rural and rural problems in small communities. This can be anything from advice for people trapped using oil for heating in the current crisis to advising on grant funding for emergency planning. Having seen the terrible effect of flash flooding in Newton Poppleford and Tipton St John recently, it is clear that many communities in East Devon do not have a resilience plan in place.

In other areas of their work, DCT encourage small business start-ups facing Devon-specific challenges, and were advisers to village halls and community centres last winter as they strove to provide warm hubs. They have also been a central agency recently supporting the organisation of the redistribution of surplus food to individuals, households and groups in order to reduce food waste, feed people and build community capacity and resilience.

It is completely pointless to get political about why this work is more crucial now than ever. You are a very lucky person indeed if you do not now personally know someone struggling with soaring mortgage interest rates, private rental charges or food inflation around essentials. What matters now is less about blaming the government and more about seeing how we can collectively respond.

Unfortunately, there is also worrying local news which I discovered on Monday this week is far from unique when I was told of a Hilton Hotel near Bristol Airport that has been housing migrants awaiting the processing of their applications for leave to remain in the UK for many years. My source was a Somerset-based chef and volunteer who was appalled that the residents in the hotel have no access to proper cooking facilities.

I was stupefied to hear about this, because that is precisely the problem recently reported by residents and professional and volunteer visitors to the hotel near Exeter Airport which is being run along exactly the same lines. Marooned miles from a shop, with little cash in hand, the residents have been rendered dependant on ready meals driven down the M5 from as far away as Birmingham.

I have heard convincing worries from educational professionals who deal with the children of these families – by basically feeding them at schools with no extra government support – that malnutrition is becoming an evident problem. Malnutrition.

Socially the effect is completely demoralising. Both the Bristol hotel and Exeter hotels have professional kitchens, yet residents are lucky to get access to a microwave. Cooking binds families together as much abroad as it does here.

This time I will get political. Government through the Home Office has turned its back on all of this, leaving private companies, a melange of local authorities and the unfortunate residents to muddle through.

I cannot unhear what I have heard. This is now a major Safeguarding issue, and I’m sending up the distress flare. Action, please, central government. Now. I’m pretty sure volunteers would come forward in their dozens to help supervise access to the kitchens.

So Simon Jupp, the chicken-run Tory MP for Exmouth who’s now standing for the new Honiton & Sidmouth constituency, is trying to counter Richard Foord’s pledge to support community hospitals. He’s done a photo-op outside Sidmouth Community Hospital- the only one in the new constituency that hasn’t had its beds ripped out by the Tories. Funny he didn’t come to Seaton, Axminster, Honiton or Ottery St Mary, isn’t it? – Martin Shaw seatonmatters.org 

‘I will always fight to protect our local NHS’

Simon Jupp, MP www.exmouthjournal.co.uk  (and other local news papers)

For many, going to the local GP surgery is the front door to our NHS.

The latest figures show GPs are seeing on average 20 additional patients every working day compared to before the pandemic.

More staff than ever are working tirelessly to deliver that. Numbers are up by a quarter since 2019.

And more money is going into primary care than ever before. Funding is up by a fifth compared to seven years ago, even when taking inflation into account.

But we should be honest that the pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on healthcare services which led to treatment delays.

One of the Prime Minister’s priorities is to cut NHS waiting lists. And rightly so.

By the end of the year, patients who need prescription medication will be able to get it directly from a pharmacy, without a GP appointment, for things like earache, sore throat, and other infections.

By expanding the role of pharmacies with a £645 million investment over two years, fewer people will need to see their GP by default – freeing up appointments and lessening the ‘8am rush’ to get one.

We should also acknowledge that some pharmacies in East Devon are stretched. In Parliament, I’ve pressed Ministers to get funding to our pharmacies as quickly as possible. I visited Morton’s Pharmacy in Axminster last week and I’ll be relaying the feeling from the front line in my regular discussions with Health Ministers.

Money is going in to tackle NHS waiting lists at our hospitals. The multi-million-pound Exeter Nightingale Hospital has been kept open to help diagnose conditions and take pressure off the RD&E.

In Exmouth, I had the pleasure of visiting the hospital recently to see the £1.5 million for refurbishment that’s come from public funding and the hospital’s League of Friends. In Sidmouth, £353,000 of capital investment has been spent to improve facilities in the last year. 

These investments acknowledge the key role that community hospitals like Sidmouth, Exmouth, Ottery St Mary, Seaton, Axminster & Honiton play in caring for people closer to their homes. I will always fight to protect our local NHS.

“The Environment Agency (EA) declared in 2015 that there is a ‘risk to life’ of the children attending the hub and that it must be rebuilt outside of the flood zone.

However, a  £3.5million bid to the Priority Schools Building Programme was rejected in the same year.“

The upcoming election focusses minds! – Owl

Senior government officials will visit Tipton St John to help speed up plans for a site to be found for a new school, following recent flash flooding which led to the evacuation of Tipton St John Primary School.

Radio Exe News www.radioexe.co.uk

After Simon Jupp MP held an urgent meeting with Education Minister Baroness Barran in the days after the flooding, Department for Education officials will be visiting prospective sites in the coming weeks to consider appropriate locations for the new school.

The village of Tipton St John was severely impacted when intense rainfall of up to 130mm fell across a few hours, leading to the evacuation of children and staff from the local primary school who had to be rescued by the fire service.

Working with the Department for Education, Diocese of Exeter, Devon County Council and the local school leadership team, East Devon’s MP has called for a new school to be built in a safe location as soon as possible. In December, the Department for Education confirmed funding would come from the School Rebuilding Programme to build a new school to replace Tipton St John Primary.

Today in Parliament, Simon Jupp MP called for building work to be prioritised to protect pupils and staff and has secured a further meeting with Ministers.

Simon Jupp, MP for East Devon, said; “Children and staff had to be rescued by the fire service after Tipton St John Primary School flooded recently, and it’s clear action is needed now more than ever. Since being elected, I’ve raised the school’s situation in Parliament, regularly met with Ministers at the Department for Education, visited the school many times, and worked with the Diocese of Exeter and Devon County Council to secure its long-term future. Last December, I was pleased to confirm the government would fund the building of a new school. Since then, work to assess every possible option to keep the school in the village has continued and I’m looking forward to welcoming senior government officials to Tipton St John in the coming weeks. I’ll continue to press for the urgent relocation of the school as the safety of children and staff must come first.”

Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State for Schools, said in Parliament today; “I was sorry to hear about the flash flooding and the impact that this has had on the school and the local community. Tipton St John Primary School was selected for the School Rebuilding Programme in December which will ensure a long-term solution for the school, protecting children and staff from flooding in the future. Officials are working with the Diocese of Exeter, Devon County Council, and my Honourable Friend to identify and secure a new site for the school, and I thank him for his support to help make this happen as quickly as possible.”

Fluorescent dye will be added to the water at Exmouth beach after the community called for an investigation into a sewage outlet.

Fluorescent dye test for the water off Exmouth beach aims to address pollution fears

Becca Gliddon eastdevonnews.co.uk

South West Water (SWW) has announced it is dye testing water off Maer Rocks,  Exmouth, from 8.30am on Wednesday, June 14, after residents raised concerns about black sewage seen on the beach.

Exmouth Town Council, backing the testing, said the aim of the dye testing was to ‘demonstrate the water company’s commitment to openness and transparency’, pinpoint the location of the storm overflow pipe – where extra rainwater or wastewater is released into rivers or seas – and to ‘create confidence’ through showing how the set-up works.

SWW said the yellow-green florescent dye was harmless to water quality and wildlife and would ‘take some time’ to move through the water network.

A South West Water spokesperson said: “On 14 June, we will be carrying out investigative work at Maer Rocks in Exmouth involving dye testing.

“The work follows a request from the local community for us to confirm the location of the discharge point from our outfall pipe.

“As a result, customers may notice some yellow/green discolouration to the sea near Maer Rocks on Wednesday morning.

“We would like to reassure local residents and visitors that the dye is harmless and other than a temporary colouring, will not affect bathing water quality or the wider ecology of the beach or Exe estuary.

“We thank customers for their patience while we carry out this work.”

Exmouth Town Council said the timing of the test had been planned to ensure optimum tidal conditions for the process to take place.

It said the testing would prompt the council to push for a simpler alarm system, because there was ‘much confusion’ over the current method.

Councillor Olly Davey, town mayor, said: “ We are really pleased that South West Water has agreed to carry out the dye testing.

“This will go a long way to reassure the local community and help with understanding the issues involved.

“We will also be pushing for the alert system to be clarified and possibly simplified as there is much confusion over when a discharge actually takes place.”

The town council said recent reports of sewage, turning sand black in the the area of Maer Rocks, was found to be rotting seaweed.

A town council spokeswoman said: “South West Water internal tests and the Environment Agency’s independent investigation have conclusively shown that the reported incidents were unrelated to South West Water’s infrastructure or sewage systems.

“However, in an effort to address any concerns from residents and demonstrate its commitment to openness and transparency, South West Water have decided to conduct dye testing in the area.”

Further vindication for Cathy Gardner. – Owl

The care minister, Helen Whately, has declined to back Matt Hancock’s claim that the government threw a “protective ring around care homes” at the start of the pandemic.

Robert Booth www.theguardian.com 

Whately worked under the former health secretary in the first 18 months of Covid, but she avoided endorsing her former boss’s assertion, which will be tested at the public inquiry which starts in earnest this week.

Asked whether Hancock was right in May 2020 when he told parliament “we absolutely did throw a protective ring around social care”, Whately told the Guardian she wanted to “use my own words which is that I look back on doing everything I felt that we could to help care homes and social care more broadly at an incredibly difficult time”.

In the first wave of the pandemic there were almost 27,000 “excess deaths” in care homes in England and Wales compared with the 2015–19 average. The virus penetrated care homes so widely and spread so fast that 13 homes in England saw two dozen or more Covid deaths each in just 11 weeks at the start of the pandemic, official figures have revealed.

Evidence sessions examining the UK’s preparedness for the pandemic start this week and Hancock, who resigned from the government in June 2021 after breaking lockdown rules, is due to give evidence this month.

Lawyers for trade unions are expected to highlight the chronic underfunding of social care and its fragmented provision in an opening statement to the inquiry this week. Government policy at the start of the pandemic of not requiring the isolation of untested hospital patients discharged into care homes has already been ruled illegal in the high court, where judges described it as “irrational”.

“I look back on it, how hard it was at that time when we were trying to get PPE out to social care,” Whately said. “We had so few tests available.”

She added: “I know looking back on it, it was very hard in the early days … We were really doing all that we possibly could. Still, it was really hard because people who were living in care homes were particularly vulnerable to Covid, as we know.”

Labour’s Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, seized on the comments as an admission by the Conservatives of “what the country could see: their ‘protective ring’ was an insult to the staff, families and care home residents who were not only vulnerable but voiceless”.

She said: “For the 43,000 families mourning the loss of a care home resident, nothing will bring their loved one back. But they will be looking to the inquiry for answers and lessons to be learned.”

Leaked WhatsApp messages have already revealed Whately warned Hancock against restricting visits to care homes in October 2020 saying it would be “inhumane” and some elderly people were “just giving up”. Earlier, on 8 April 2020 she urged Hancock: “We should be testing all care home residents and staff who have had Covid contact, irrespective of symptoms.”

However, care homes were not able to start testing residents or staff without symptoms until the end of April. She also complained to Hancock that PPE supplies were “all over the place” and that discharging hospital patients into care homes was “my biggest concern”.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, who preceded Hancock as health secretary, has also been called as a witness in the module starting this week on pandemic preparedness, alongside David Cameron and George Osborne, who are set to be asked about the impact of their austerity policies from 2010 onwards on the nation’s readiness.

The module on care homes is not due to start hearing from witnesses until spring 2025.

Broader government handling of social care, which looks after over a million people in England, has been widely criticised.

It is estimated that an extra 480,000 care workers are needed in England by 2035 and there are already 165,000 vacancies. In 2020 when Hunt was out of government under Boris Johnson and chaired the Commons health and social care select committee, he said the annual social care budget must rise by £7bn by the end of 2024. The Health Foundation charity estimates the funding gap will be £9.3bn by next year but last autumn the government raised spending by equivalent to £3.75bn a year.

Whately told the Guardian there had been “big, big workforce challenges” over “many years”.

“The thing that I hear from the frontline is we need to be able to pay the care workforce better,” she said. “And for that, we need better funding to come through from local authorities for the care rates.”

Asked if the latest £7.5bn increase in central government funding over two years was the right amount, she said: “I want to see social care really well funded, but I’m not making the decisions for how all of government is funded. I will argue the corner for my sector.”

Today in England about 10,000 people live in the worst inadequate care homes, where problems are often caused by lack of staff. Asked if she accepted staff shortages were causing pain and suffering, she said: “You’ll understand if I choose my own words, but I know … for some providers, staffing is one of their big challenges. Really good care homes have staff there for a long time but others are finding it really difficult. I think we’ll see quality of care improve if we can help providers retain staff.”

She said increasing recruitment of care staff from overseas by adding them to the shortage occupations visa list was helping in the short term, but it was not a long-term answer.

“I want everyone to be in a good, if not outstanding, care home,” she said. “That is why I think the workforce reforms and the funding for social care are really, really important. But I don’t think anybody sitting in my position could come in and fix it in 24 hours. This is a long-term problem.”