An empty 1970s shopping centre in Nottingham could be transformed into wetlands, pocket woodlands and a wildflower meadow as part of a post-pandemic urban rewilding project.
The debate about Broadmarsh shopping centre, considered an eyesore by many, has rumbled on for years. This year it was undergoing a £86m revamp by real estate investment trust Intu when the firm went into administration.
The number of empty shops on UK high streets has risen to its highest level in six years, and as retail giants such as Debenhams and Arcadia Group falter, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has come up with a new model of inner city regeneration: urban rewilding.
The trust wants to bulldoze the already half-demolished Broadmarsh building and turn it into 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of scruffy green space at an estimated cost of £3-4m. The designs were created with Influence Landscape Architects and could set a precedent for what to do with the growing amount of vacant retail space in other cities. “It’s unbelievable to hear that stores like Debenhams are in the position they are in – they’re stalwarts of the city, but it does put out an opportunity,” said Sara Boland, managing director of Influence.
The Broadmarsh post-Covid rewilding scheme would fit in with Nottingham’s ambition to become the UK’s first carbon-neutral city. Photograph: The Wildlife Trusts
Ponds surrounded by reeds, crocus meadows and wet grasslands would attract butterflies, dragonflies and a range of birds including reed warblers and black redstarts, according to the Wildlife Trust, which is calling on people to back its green vision. It will put its plans to Nottingham city council in the coming weeks as the authority canvasses views on what Broadmarsh could become as part of a 10-week consultation process.
The proposed scheme would run counter to the conventional idea of urban parks and instead hark back to what Broadmarsh would have looked like in centuries gone by. “Often open spaces in cities can be manicured and a bit formal,” said Boland. “The idea of this was to have more rewilding, restoring, protecting – this kind of connectivity, so the zones we then developed were about foraging, pond dipping and protecting species.”
Nineteenth-century maps helped architects get a clear picture of what this part of Nottinghamshire once looked like – a fertile garden area covered in fruit trees. Old street names include Pear Street and Peach Street; those fruits would be grown in the park to reflect its heritage. Crisscrossing the park would be walkways based on centuries-old street layouts.
Nottingham Wildlife Trust has long wanted to create green corridors in this area of the city to connect it to Sherwood Forest to the north. It has put up nest boxes on many buildings close to Broadmarsh to encourage black redstarts, which used to live in the city but are now rarely seen.
“We’ve actually spent quite a bit of time over the past 20 or 30 years looking at various redevelopment proposals for this part of the city and for the Broadmarsh centre. We’ve submitted ideas for roof gardens and new avenues, all sorts of greener features,” said Erin McDaid, head of communications and marketing at Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. “We feel this could be a real opportunity for the city to stand out from the crowd as cities across the UK look to recover their economies and find a new direction for urban centres.”
The Broadmarsh centre was opened in 1975, in an area of the city designed with drivers in mind. Now times are changing, said Nottingham resident Ewan Cameron. “I don’t think people really want [a shopping centre]. It’s kind of a 90s style of thinking … Broadmarsh felt like a place that people used to walk through, but there was no sense of community, no sense of life.
“Anyone coming into Nottingham on the train would have to pass by it before they reached the city centre, and it was just this horrible, ugly building with no windows. It was very unwelcoming,” he said. When Intu went into administration five months ago, Cameron started a petition to turn the unloved shopping centre into green space. It struck a chord with many people, and already has 10,000 signatures.
The Broadmarsh centre was in the process of being demolished but work had to stop when the company developing the site went into administration. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Last year Nottingham city council won the Guardian’s public service award for its ambitious policies to become the UK’s first carbon-neutral city. The city met its 2020 target to reduce carbon emissions by 26% four years early and the energy consumption of council buildings has fallen by 39%. A green development would show the city’s commitment to securing 30% of land for nature by 2030, the Wildlife Trust says.
David Mellen, Nottingham city council leader, said the conversation about the Broadmarsh site had captured people’s imagination. He said: “It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine a significant space right in the heart of one of the country’s core cities and build a new vision for urban areas following the coronavirus pandemic that is people centred and green but also leads to jobs and housing, improving quality of life.”
Cameron said he was “blown away” by the new designs. “It’s a chance for people to rethink how cities work and how we can design cities to make people’s lives better, rather than a place to shop,” he said.
“I hope the council will genuinely listen to people and I hope they haven’t made their mind up already and this isn’t a box-ticking exercise.”
Anderson, who has led Liverpool for a decade, was one of five men arrested across Merseyside on Friday in an investigation into building and development contracts in the city. He is being interviewed by police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation.
Merseyside police have not named any of the men arrested, but the Guardian has been told by several sources that the 62-year-old mayor is one of those being held.
A Liverpool city council spokeswoman said: “Liverpool city council is cooperating with Merseyside police in relation to its ongoing investigation. We do not comment on matters relating to individuals.”
The others arrested are: a 72-year-old man from Aigburth, on suspicion of witness intimidation; a 33-year-old man from West Derby, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation; a 46-year-old man from Ainsdale, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation; and a 25-year-old man from Ormskirk, on suspicion of witness intimidation.
Sources said Anderson had been suspended from the Labour party in light of his arrest. A former social worker and publican, he has led the city since 2010 and has been mayor since 2012. He has been a councillor in Liverpool for 22 years and leader of the Labour group since 2003.
He ran unsuccessfully to be the mayor of the Liverpool city region, a post won by the former Labour MP Steve Rotheram, and to be an MP for Liverpool Walton in 2017. Last year he secured the Labour party selection to run to be mayor of the city for a third term in May’s delayed elections.
Anderson’s eldest brother, Bill, died in October after contracting coronavirus. The mayor has spent most of 2020 shielding at home due to underlying health conditions.
The government has quietly cut £1 billion from the rail infrastructure investment budget, effectively cancelling improvement schemes across the country.
The austerity comes after the Chancellor promised “record” infrastructure investment, and casts doubt on Tory claims to be “levelling up”.
The rail industry warned that the austerity meant it was now “unclear what schemes will be going ahead and what will not be”.
Network Rail’s budget for 2019-24 had been set at £10.4bn but it has now fallen to just £9.4 billion, rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris announced this week.
The government did not mention the cuts in the spending review documentation unveiled by Rishi Sunak earlier this month.
The reductions come at a time of record low interest rates on government borrowing, meaning investment is cheaper than ever.
But some small-state Conservatives are concerned about the level of spending and investment during the coronavirus crisis and want the government to reduce its spending.
Despite reducing public investment in the network, since the start of the pandemic government has spent £3.5 billion in day-to-day support for private train operating companies to keep the trains running.
The cuts, which was only revealed in a reply to a parliamentary written question, will affect smaller local schemes and are unlikely to land on projects like HS2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail, which are government priorities.
Darren Caplan, chief executive of the Railway Industry Association, said: “Recent confirmation, following the Spending Review, that rail enhancements investment will reduce by more than £1 billion over the current five year funding period, is very disappointing.
“Rail enhancements are essential in ensuring our rail network is fit for the future, improving reliability, connectivity, customer experience and helping to reduce carbon emissions.
“Taking our foot off the pedal now on rail investment will not help for when passengers return following the Coronavirus pandemic.
“The rail industry still doesn’t have sight of what rail enhancement projects are coming up – we were told earlier this year that there are more than 80 projects in the Government’s Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline, yet with the news today that there is over £1 billion less in the funding pot, it is unclear what schemes will be going ahead and what will not be.”
In a written answer to a parliamentary question about Network Rail’s budget, Mr Heaton Harris, the rail minister, said: “Network Rail’s operations, maintenance and renewals budgets have not been changed as a result of Spending Review 2020 and workbanks will continue to be based on the five-year regulatory funding settlement for 2019-2024.
“The Spending Review settlement means that the comparable figure for the enhancements budget over the same period would now be £9.4bn. As part of SR2020 over £2 billion of funding has been confirmed in 2021-22 for rail services and builds on the estimated £12.8 billion of support for transport services that the government has already committed to provide in 2020-21
“The Spending Review Settlement includes over £58 billion of investment confirmed for road and rail transport between 2021-22 and 2024-25, delivering some of government’s largest capital portfolios and levelling up across the country. This includes record investment in strategic roads and rail.”
The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed across Devon and Cornwall has fallen in the previous seven days to the lowest weekly total since the start of October.
[And the MSOA with the biggest cluster of cases is……………………………………….Budleigh Salterton! Who would have thought it. Illicit bridge parties? -Owl]
By the way: (MSOA) Middle Layer Super Output Areas are a geographic hierarchy designed to improve the reporting of small area statistics in England and Wales. Owl is none the wiser.
A total of 1,047 new cases have been confirmed across the two counties – the lowest since the week ending October 2.
But while cases are falling in most areas, Exeter, the South Hams, and West Devon have seen very small rises – the latter two from very low levels of cases – while Torridge’s figures have risen up significantly, although skewed slightly by a high level of backdating.
Government statistics show that 1,047 new cases have been confirmed across the region in the past seven days in both pillar 1 data from tests carried out by the NHS and pillar 2 data from commercial partners, compared to 1,266 new cases confirmed last week.
Of the 1,047 new cases confirmed since November 27, 146 were in Cornwall, 149 in East Devon, 149 in Exeter, 51 in Mid Devon, 95 in North Devon, 165 in Plymouth, 38 in South Hams, 48 in Teignbridge, 67 in Torbay, 94 in Torridge, and 45 in West Devon.
This compares to the 1,266 new cases confirmed between November 21 and 27, of which 232 were in Cornwall, with 180 in East Devon, 141 in Exeter, 59 in Mid Devon, 104 in North Devon, 231 in Plymouth, 33 in South Hams, 73 in Teignbridge, 119 in Torbay, 51 in Torridge and 43 in West Devon.
Of the 1,047 new cases, 756 had a specimen date between November 27 and December 3, with 120 in Cornwall, 114 in East Devon, 104 in Exeter, 40 in Mid Devon, 53 in North Devon, 119 in Plymouth, 29 in South Hams, 43 in Teignbridge, 42 in Torbay, 52 in Torridge and 40 in West Devon.
By specimen date, cases are falling in Cornwall, East Devon, Mid Devon, North Devon, Plymouth, Teignbridge and Torbay, with Exeter, the South Hams and West Devon flat, but a rise in Torridge.
The number of people in hospital in the South West has fallen in the last seven days, now at 826 from 938 last Friday, and there are currently 60 patients in mechanical ventilation beds, down from 67 as of last Friday.
The number of patients in hospital across Devon and Cornwall following a positive Covid-19 test has fallen in the last week – as Exeter’s Nightingale Hospital has taken in its first patients.
NHS England figures show that as of Tuesday morning (December 1), there were 255 patients across Devon and Cornwall, in hospital after a positive Covid-19 test. This compares to 272 as of November 24.
Patient numbers within hospitals in Cornwall have decreased, as they have at the Royal Devon and Exeter, Derriford Hospital and Torbay Hospital – the latter for the third week running – but there has been a rise in patient numbers at the North Devon District Hospital.
And the Nightingale Hospital in Exeter has taken in its first patients, with 20 occupying beds as of Tuesday, having opened on Thursday, November 26.
The figures show there were 101 patients in the Royal Devon and Exeter (down from 128), 45 in Derriford Hospital in Plymouth (down from 53), 28 in Torbay Hospital (down from 35), 37 in North Devon District Hospital (up from 29), five at the Royal Cornwall Hospital (down from nine), six in Cornish Partnership Trust hospitals (unchanged), while 12 beds at Livewell SouthWest facilities in Plymouth (up from 11) and one bed at Devon Partnership Trust facilities (unchanged) were also occupied, as well as the 20 patients at the Nightingale.
And the number of patients in Mechanical Ventilation beds has fallen as well, dropping from 21 down from 19, with two patients in Torbay Hospital, five at the RD&E, and six North Devon District Hospital and at Derriford Hospital, with none in Cornwall.
The figures show the amount of patients in hospital following a positive COVID-19 test who are currently occupying a bed.
But not every patient would necessarily have been admitted to hospital due to COVID-19, with a number of patients either contracting the virus inside the hospital, or being admitted for unrelated reasons but subsequently testing positive asymptotically when given routine tests.
In the last week, there 22 deaths within hospitals in Devon and Cornwall within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 death, with 10 in Exeter, three in Torbay, eight in Plymouth, one in North Devon, and one in Cornwall.
And while NHS 111 data for Cornwall is slightly up on last week, Devon is down by 10 per cent, and the R-Rate for the South West fallen to 0.7-1.0 from 0.9-1.1
In terms of the latest MSOA cluster maps, that cover the period of specimen dates between November 23 and November 29, Budleigh Salterton (24) and Wonford and St Loye’s (29), are the only areas with a cluster of 20 or more, while Bude and Stratton (17), Pinhoe and Whipton North (16), Barnstaple Sticklepath (17), Barnstaple South (16), Bideford South and East (18) and Holsworthy, Bradworthy & Welcombe (17) have more than 15.
Bradninch, Silverton & Thorverton (7), Ford & Blockhouse Park (14), Woolwell & Lee Mill (9), Starcross & Exminster (10), Ellacombe (11), Tavistock (10) are the areas in the other districts with the highest cluster numbers.
But while cases have fallen in most age groups, they’ve risen in people aged over 80.
Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon (Designate), said: “While it’s really good news that overall cases are falling, the continued rise in cases in the over 80s is still a concern for us. It is therefore absolutely vital that we do our bit to continue to drive down rates in Devon.
“Please follow the Tier 2 guidance. Do not meet up indoors with anyone who is not in your household or in your bubble. And please remember at all times, keep your distance, wear your face coverings when you’re indoors in a public space, and please wash your hands regularly.”
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The COVID-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and sending these specimens to laboratories around the UK to be tested. If the test is positive, this is a referred to as a lab-confirmed case.
Confirmed positive cases are matched to ONS geographical area codes using the home postcode of the person tested.
Cases received from laboratories by 12.30am are included in the counts published that day. While there may have been new cases of coronavirus confirmed or people having tested positive, those test results either yet to reach PHE for adding to the dataset or were not received in time for the latest daily figures to be published.
NHS staff will no longer get the coronavirus vaccine first after a drastic rethink about who should be given priority, it emerged last night.
[Owl thinks the order of who gets the vaccine first in the highest priority group will remain very fluid in the early days as the tricky handling procedures are refined in the light of experience]
The new immunisation strategy is likely to disappoint and worry thousands of frontline staff – and comes amid urgent warnings from NHS chiefs that hospitals could be “overwhelmed” in January by a third wave of Covid-19 caused by mingling over Christmas.
Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “If we get a prolonged cold snap in January the NHS risks being overwhelmed. The Covid-19 restrictions should remain appropriately tough.
“Trust leaders are worried about the impact of looser regulations over Christmas.”
Frontline personnel were due to have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine when the NHS starts its rollout, which is expected to be next Tuesday after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved it on Wednesday.
However, hospitals will instead begin by immunising care home staff, and hospital inpatients and outpatients aged over 80. The new UK-wide guidance on priority groups was issued by the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) amid uncertainty over when the rest of the 5m-strong initial batch of doses that ministers ordered will reach the UK.
NHS personnel will be able to take the vaccine into care homes to immunise residents later this month if, as expected, the MHRA agrees that the batches of 975 doses it comes in can be subdivided and the stability and safety of the drug be maintained.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the leader of the British Medical Association, said it backed care home residents getting the jab first. However, that means NHS staff will be left at higher risk of getting infected and potentially dying, he added.
“Doctors and other healthcare staff will recognise the need to vaccinate care home residents and older patients first, but will likely be frustrated at the government’s inconsistent messaging changing from yesterday to today.
“In the first wave, we saw far too many health and social care workers become incredibly sick with Covid – with many tragically dying – and therefore those working on the frontline need to be given the opportunity to get protected early,” he said.
NHS bosses have warned the 800,000 doses that comprise the UK’s first consignment from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Belgium may be “the only batch we receive for some time”, raising questions about how soon further supplies will arrive and how long frontline personnel and vulnerable groups will have to wait for their two jabs.
The change in priorities came as NHS Providers, which represents health service trusts in England, warned hospitals would struggle to maintain normal care in January if a fresh spike in infections after Christmas leads to beds again filling up with Covid patients, just as they are trying to manage their winter crisis.
NHS Providers and senior doctors made clear their anxiety that the government’s decision to allow up to three households to mix indoors in England between 23 and 27 December may prove ill-advised and backfire, because people will pass the infection on to vulnerable relatives. They pleaded with the public to exercise caution about how they socialise.
Dr Susan Crossland, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine, which represents hospital doctors, said they shared concerns “about the possibility of a Christmas wave of Covid in January, as well as the potent threat of this combined with ‘normal’ winter pressures exacerbated by cold weather”.
“In my opinion the relaxation of rules at Christmas is crass in the extreme. Combined with the bickering among politicians we have seen in recent days over the tiered system, it further weakens the importance of maintaining safety measures,” she said.
The NHS already being “on a knife-edge” due to intense demand and under-staffing means “it is the responsibility of everyone to limit contact and follow safety measures over the coming weeks and months to avoid mass stress burdening the NHS in the difficult winter months,” Crossland added.
One hospital boss said: “Normally people give their elderly relatives colds and flu and respiratory disease over Christmas and they end up in hospital in January. This year that’s more complicated. [There is a] very necessary relaxation over Christmas as people need a break, but recognise that there will potentially be an impact.” Their trust assumes January will be “really tough”, despite the vaccine’s imminent rollout, they added.
The World Health Organization on Thursday also advised that the threat of a “Christmas wave” emerging just after the new year should make people think twice before using the festive break from restrictions to attend gatherings with other people.
“We are looking, many of us, towards the holiday season, towards Christmas, whether it is called a third wave or a Christmas wave,” said Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe. “The question we have to ask ourselves if we are going to come together, or we are thinking about an activity during which transmission can happen, we have to ask the question, is it really necessary?
“Because if the restrictive measures are being eased and the basic public health measures are not adhered to, whatever the country in the region or globally, absolutely there will be again an increase because the vaccine will come too late for this winter.”
A government spokesperson said:“This Christmas, families and friends can meet up in a limited and cautious way thanks to a balanced and workable set of rules. We agreed these UK-wide measures based on scientific and clinical advice on how best to minimise the risks, and following Sage advice we have introduced strengthened local restrictions to protect the progress gained during national restrictions and continue to suppress the virus.”
Meanwhile, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, has raised the prospect of people needing annual vaccination against coronavirus, in the same way they get immunised against winter flu. It is important to have further Covid vaccines available in case revaccination is required, he told the BBC.
“It is really unknowable at this point. But it is very much something that I see now as one of the goals only just over the horizon to get my head around, what if – and if – we will at any point in the future need to think about revaccination,” he said.
This is Derek Johnston, the ‘step-grandfather’ whose death brought Health Secretary Matt Hancock close to tears when he paid an emotional tribute to him in Parliament on Tuesday.
Mr Hancock, 42, was wrapping up a highly-charged debate on the Covid lockdown tiers when he referred to Mr Johnston as his ‘step-grandfather, Derek’ who died last month of the virus.
In fact, Derek was not Mr Hancock’s step-grandfather and their relationship, MailOnline has discovered, was more complex than that.
Former construction worker Derek, 77, was the second husband of Mr Hancock’s stepfather, Bob Carter’s ex-wife, Marjorie.
Mr Carter married the Health Secretary’s mother Shirley in 1984 after she split from Mr Hancock’s father Michael when the MP was six years old.
Mr Carter had been married before to Marjorie Slater, but after their divorce, she married Derek Johnston in 1983.
The fractured and complex family background of the Cheshire-born MP has been thrust into the spotlight by the surprising intervention of Mr Hancock.
Mr Johnston (left and right), who died in Liverpool on November 18, was married to Marjorie Johnston, who is Mr Hancock’s stepfather Robert Carter’s first wife
The family tree shows how Mr Hancock and Mr Johnston are distantly related. The complex nature of his family background was highlighted by the surprising intervention of Mr Hancock
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Hancock told the Commons: ‘We talk a lot of the outbreak in Liverpool, and how that great city has had a terrible outbreak and got it under control.
‘This means more to me than I can say, because last month my step-grandfather Derek caught Covid there and on 18 November he died.
‘In my family, as in so many others, we’ve lost a loving husband, a father, a grandfather to this awful disease.
‘So from the bottom of my heart I want to say thank you to everyone in Liverpool for getting this awful virus under control.
‘It’s down by four-fifths in Liverpool, that’s what we can do if we work together in a spirit of common humanity.
‘We’ve got to beat this, we’ve got to beat it together.’
Mr Johnston married Marjorie (above) in 1983 after she split from Mr Hancock’s step-father
Mr Hancock’s father Michael, 74, told MailOnline of Derek: ‘He was older me, he was in a home and he had Alzheimers – the usual story. It was just a few weeks ago.’
Asked if the family had managed to see Derek before he died, Michael said: ‘You know that it is like with his dreadful disease, it is very restricting.
‘It is not my side of the family.’
When pointed out that his son was upset talking about Derek’s death in the Commons, Michael added: ‘Matt wears his heart on his sleeve. He is affected by these things.’
Speaking from his home in Tarporley, Cheshire, he went on: ‘My son is the health secretary trying to do a job against a constant barrage of criticism and you cannot appreciate the amount of energy he has.
‘The amount of intellect he has, and he is far cleverer than me, that he puts all this into it.
‘And from my perspective all I see is people moaning all the time.’
Referring to Mr Hancock’s public mention of Derek, Michael said: ‘Presumably it is highlighting the fact that this disease is affecting everybody, nobody comes above it.’
Asked about Derek’s death, Mr Hancock’s mother Shirley said: ‘It’s very sad.’
When asked if her husband Bob was related to Derek, she added: ‘Yes, we’re all in a big family.’
Derek – who worked for construction giant Kier in the north-west for many years – suffered from dementia in later life.
On a tribute page on the ‘much loved’ website, he is fondly remembered by his widow Marjorie and described as ‘a much-loved, devoted husband, dad, brother, uncle, grandad and friend.
‘Derek will always be remembered for his kindness, his loyalty, generosity and his quirky sense of humour.’
In his speech, Mr Hancock told the Commons the outbreak in Liverpool ‘means more to me than I can say because last month my step-grandfather Derek caught Covid there and died’
Donations in his name are invited for the Willowbrook Hospice in St Helens, and four days ago, Bob Carter made a donation, with the Health Secretary and his wife Martha also pledging a sum on Tuesday, the day of his speech in the Commons.
Matthew John David Hancock was born on October 2, 1978 in Chester to businessman Michael Hancock and then wife Shirley Hills.
But by 1982, his father had left Shirley, Matthew and his elder sister Emily to marry Vera Atkin in Chester, who already had a daughter, Katherine from a previous relationship.
The following year, Vera gave birth to Matthew’s half-brother Christopher Hancock, now aged 37.
In October 1984, Mr Hancock’s mother married company director Robert Carter, and the pair went on to found Border Business Systems, an early software company in the north-west.
Later, Mr Hancock, who attended the prestigious £16,500-a-year King’s School, Chester, and won a first in PPE from Exeter Oxford, and a Masters in Economics at Cambridge, would work briefly for the firm.
Border Business Systems is said to have pioneered the ‘address management’ technology which allows people to enter their postcode and choose from a list of addresses.
From 2000 to 2005, father-of-three Mr Hancock worked as an economist for the Bank of England, and soon his meteoric rise through the Conservative Party would begin, becoming a Secretary of State aged just 39.
But there seems to be a bit of confusion or a lack of communication (Western Morning News reports the Sandy Park choice), obviously “work in progress” – Owl
“A system has been approved and the NHS are leading on the subject and not completely up to speed on what they plan to do. Sandy Park is to be used as a one of the major sites in the county, the last thing I knew.”
Sandy Park will not be used as a mass coronavirus vaccination site, Devon County Council has tonight confirmed.
Earlier today, Cllr Roger Croad – Cabinet Member for Community, Public Health, Transportation and Environmental Services – confirmed that detailed planning is underway in Devon for two mass sites to deliver the vaccine.
Cllr Croad said that in addition to the two sites, there will be more localised sites as well, and all of which will be supplemented by the delivery of vaccines in vulnerable settings by local primary care teams.
Speaking at Thursday’s meeting, Cllr Croad said that while the NHS are leading on the roll-out of the vaccine in the county, the last thing he knew was that Sandy Park, the home of the Exeter Chiefs located just off the M5 in Exeter, was going to be used as one of the major sites in the county.
However, Devon County Council has tonight confirmed that after consideration, Sandy Park will not be used as a vaccine site.
A spokesman said: “Sandy Park was one of a number of sites being considered. However, this has now been ruled out. “
Having been asked by Cllr Rob Hannaford to report on pressing issues around vaccinations, Cllr Croad said in his report: “Detailed planning is underway in Devon for Covid-19 Mass Vaccination so a local vaccination programme can commence as soon as the vaccines are authorised for us.
“Two mass vaccination site have been identified by the Devon CCG in additional to more local primary care network sites all of which will be supplemented by the delivery of vaccines in vulnerable settings by local primary care teams. Devon County Council is in active in discussions to ensure that our health and social care staff can be vaccinated.
“There is a comprehensive workforce plan to ensure sufficient staff can safely support the programme, and not negatively impact other services. We expect existing vaccinators, newly recruited and trained personnel, and volunteers to all have a role to play.”
He added: “A system has been approved and the NHS are leading on the subject and not completely up to speed on what they plan to do. Sandy Park is to be used as a one of the major sites in the county, the last thing I knew.”
Steve Brown, Public Health Director (Designate) for Devon, added: “Mass centres are being planned but that is just one route for vaccines, so there will be other routes of going into care homes, GPs, more localised sites, but the undertaking cannot be underestimated as it’s vaccinated the population twice, as its two doses.
“It is a huge task and even when we get the vaccine, the logistics of vaccinating everyone won’t happen quickly but will take months to get through the process for everyone. It is a significant undertaking, not to be underestimated.”
More than 50 NHS England hospitals are ready to start administering the approved Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine from next week, with Derriford Hospital in Plymouth on the list.
The UK has so far ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to immunise 20 million people.
Even in an era when British politics seems endlessly surprising, this was an eye-opener: one of the biggest individual political donations this year has gone not to the Conservative party or to Labour but to a tiny group in Surrey with just one councillor.
The news came in the quarterly update of donations produced by the Electoral Commission. Amid a list dominated by unions and businesses handing sums to the big parties was notice of £204,888.20 going to the Hersham village society.
It is fair to say that outside the somewhat niche political circles of Elmbridge borough council, most people will not have heard of this particular party. One of a string of village-based independent groups that run Elmbridge council in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, it has for decades represented the interests of a small commuter-belt outpost best known, if at all, as the home of the punk group Sham 69, who immortalised it in their 1979 hit Hersham Boys.
The money came in the will of Richard Greenwood, a Hersham man who died last year aged 84, seemingly without any living relatives. The bequest came as a surprise even to his local party.
“I can’t even say I knew him, actually,” said Roy Green, the party’s one councillor. “He only made out his will about three days before he died, and he left big sums of money to various organisations, not just us but a local hospice and the MCC.
“He left over £1m in all. No one knew he was that rich – he lived in this little ex-council house. I think one of our committee had lived opposite him and helped him in the past. He must have decided we should benefit.”
There is only one snag: as well as being the Hersham village society’s only councillor, Green, who has represented it since 1979, is likely to be its last. “I’m up for re-election in May, and I actually don’t think we’ll even be putting anyone up for election, as most of us have just got too old to carry on,” he said. “My brain is willing, but physically it’s getting difficult. Last night I had a three-hour council meeting, sitting in my office, staring at a screen, and my back was killing me. And that was the third long meeting this week.
“On Monday, I went to the funeral of one of our members who was in his 80s, and he’d been with us for over 30 years. But we don’t have younger people coming forward.”
Luckily, the money is still being put to good use. Green said the society was “more of an amenity and social group”, although it has to register as a party because members stand for election, meaning Greenwood’s bequest was registered as a donation.
It provides volunteers to run the local community centre, which will now get a revamp, along with funds for activities such as a youth group and a Saturday night cinema club. Green described the cinema club as “mainly for older people, so they can get out at least once a week”.
The society is in the process of handing most of its unexpected windfall to other local groups, including the Brownies, a scheme to help homeless people, a charity housing former racing greyhounds, and Hersham in Bloom, which plants flowerbeds.
Up to now, Green admitted, the tiny party/community group had tried to keep its new wealth quiet so as not to be inundated with requests. It was a nice problem to have, he added. “It was a lovely sum of money, a complete surprise, I can tell you. So we’re giving donations where we can. There’s not much money going to these small organisations, it normally goes to the bigger ones.”
A businessman who won £276m in PPE contracts has defended his work during the coronavirus pandemic after he purchased properties in Devon and Cornwall.
Businessman Steve Dechan is the owner of Gloucestershire-based Platform-14, which specialises in medical devices for people with chronic pain.
A national newspaper has reported that despite the company making a loss of close to £500,000 last year, he was awarded a £120m contract to supply masks in March, followed one in June worth £156m to supply gowns and masks.
According to the Sunday Times, Mr Dechan has bought a £250,000 holiday home in Cornwall and a £50,000 house for his parents in Exeter to add to his £1.5 million, grade II listed property in the Cotswolds.
Mr Dechan, a former Conservative councillor on Stroud Town Council, denied he had benefited from his political affiliations, insisting that it was done ‘on merit’.
Steve Dechan (Image: Gloucestershire Live)
It has been reported there was not a competitive tender for either of the contracts awarded to his company.
In a series of exchanges on Twitter, Mr Dechan claimed: “What businessman delivers ahead of schedule, Below budget on contracts he has been doing for 8 years. makes money, pays his taxes in U.K & creates more jobs, pays his team bonuses and didn’t cheat.”
A National Audit Office report revealed that the Government had established a fast-track VIP lane to purchase billions of pounds of PPE from little-known companies with political contacts in the Conservative party.
Roughly one in 10 suppliers processed through the VIP channel – 47 out of 493 – obtained lucrative PPE contracts, compared to less than one-in-a-hundred suppliers that came through the ordinary lane.
Mr Dechan told Stroud News that his company had not benefited from this.
“We had no VIP or fast track. No help,” he claimed.
“It was done on merit, great price, great PPE delivered in amazing time.
“How many front line workers did we protect? Answer: hundreds of thousands.
“We didn’t and still don’t know if it was a competitive tender or not, we still assume it was. That’s a question for the buyers.”
He also told the Sunday Times that he had done ‘very, very well out of the pandemic’, but defended the work he had done to battle Covid-19, saying that the PPE he had delivered helped ‘millions of people in pain’.
Mr Dechan was contacted through his company Platform-14 for comment but did not respond to DevonLive and CornwallLive’s enquiries.
A ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to redevelop the 86-acre estate and stately home at Winslade Park to create a destination in the region with 2,000 new jobs has been given the green light.
East Devon District Council’s planning committee on Wednesday backed Burrington Estates’ plans for the Clyst St Mary site which will convert the estate into a modern mixed-use campus of office and employment facilities in a parkland setting with associated residential development and on-site recreational facilities.
The £80m vision includes outline permission for up to 94 residential units split over two parts of the site, improved sport pitches for football and cricket, tennis courts and provision of parkland recreation routes.
Full permission for the conversion of the existing buildings into high quality, multi-let office space at Winslade Manor and Winslade House, an extension to Brook House for employment use and an extension to the leisure facilities to create improved facilities including a new gym, spa facilities and beauty salons, and a restaurant/café and high end business club was also granted.
Despite opposition from some local residents and parish councils and that the scheme would be a departure from the Local Plan, councillors backed the officer recommendation to approve the plans almost unanimously, with two abstentions.
CGI site plan for the Winslade Park redevelopment (Image: Burrington Estates -)
Development Manager Chris Rose told the committee that this was a balanced decision, as the scheme was contrary to the Local Plan, provided lower levels of affordable housing than policy requires, part of the car park is in the flood zone, and some housing will be built on agricultural land.
But he added: “That needs to be balanced between employment benefits of this, as will be highly skilled office jobs and not one you often see in East Devon, a high standard of refurbishment to the listed buildings, community access to the parkland and sports pitches that are being brought back into use and access to swimming pool for the school. The view of officers is the benefits outweigh the harm.”
How the redevelopment of Winslade Park could look like (Image: Burrington Estates)
However, Gaeron Kayley, chairman of the Save Clyst St Mary Residents’ Association, called for the committee to reject the plans. He said: “We believe the developers bought the site to manipulate the planning system to get housing and offices on the site that is well outside the Local Plan.
“They have ignored the Neighbourhood Plan and the Local Plan and this all about how much profit they can get out of the site, and the community isn’t getting enough out of the site. This undermines the integrity of the Local Plan that we fought so hard for and the 200 plus objections.”
Linda Trim added that approval would result in harm to the asset you are trying to protect, while Carole Spearman said that to add a significant extra levels of traffic to the area was misguided and not sustainable.
But Andrew Clancy said it was a once in a generational opportunity to create something outstanding for the community, while Clyst St Mary School said that they were in favour of the plans.
Matthew Bennett, from Burrington Estates, called for the scheme to be approved, saying: “We pride ourselves in quality, style, design and customer service, and will provide this approach to provide beautiful homes for many Clyst St Mary residents, new and old.
“The overriding principle to bring back the building into commercial use and we want to create a vibrant new business hub for East Devon which deserves the stunning manor. This will help create 2,000 new jobs, ensure the 94 dwellings are low density, and we have offered £2m for social housing despite not having to.
“It is providing 80 acres back into the Clyst St Mary community, the leisure club will be refurbished to exceptional standards, and cricket and football pitches for local use, and picnics and kite flying will be welcome.
“We have done this to create a destination that the region can be proud of, generating over £100m of economic activity and community activity. It is the most significant opportunity for the district in recent years and warrants the strongest possible support, as it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to redevelop Winslade Park properly, so please let us fulfil it.”
Cllr Mike Howe, who represents the Clyst St Mary ward, said that the application had both positives and negatives attached to it.
He said: “There are positives and it will bring the listed buildings into sustainable use, it brings jobs back to the local economy, and it brings back the sports provision, but it is balanced against the downsides.”
Cllr Howe said that there was concerns about what may happen to the fragile transport infrastructure around the village and at the roundabout if 2,000 more cars were added to the road and the queues of traffic trying to get on the A376 will reoccur, but that can happen today anyway as per the current planning permission for the site.
Stock image of traffic build-up (Image: Save Clyst St Mary Residents’ Association)
Cllr Philip Skinner, recommending the scheme be approved, said: “There are many benefits that come with the application. This site has changed between different owners and they have found it hard to wade through the treacle to find something that works for the community and to make a profit and for it to stand up. There are pros and cons for this and it’s not the perfect application but we need to move forward.”
Cllr Tony Woodward said that the economic benefits should not be underestimated, and while he was concerned about the transport, it didn’t prevent a reason for refusal, while Cllr Geoff Pook added that a site with this many benefits will have some problems, but the trade-off was acceptable.
Backing the plans, Cllr Ollie Davey said: “Overall I think that the scheme is just about acceptable as it stands,” while Cllr Bruce de Saram described it as a ‘mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly’, but that there were lots of benefits.
Councillors voted by 10 votes to none, with two abstentions, to approve the plans, after more than two and a half hours of debate, with work set to begin of the office redevelopments early in 2021.
A separate reserved matters application will still need to be submitted and approval for the housing element of the scheme.
After the meeting, Burrington Estates Group Managing Director, Mark Edworthy said: “We are excited to move ahead with this unique proposition which we believe will be a project for the region to be proud of.
Winslade Park Redevelopment – Pictured (left to right): Paul Scantlebury, Co-Founder, Mark Edworthy, Co-Founder and Group Managing Director and Peter Quincey, Development Director
“Winslade Park will deliver lasting benefits not only for businesses and the local economy through the creation of much-needed employment opportunities, but for the neighbouring community too. The South West has always had an edge for those wanting a better work/life balance, and Winslade Park provides the perfect lifestyle choice. I would like to thank EDDC and local councillors for their support.”
Co-Founder Paul Scantlebury added: “The development of Winslade Park is being handled with great sensitivity and respect for its heritage.
“It has been dubbed a ‘hidden gem’ concealed from view for far too long. We are pleased to breathe new life into this superb asset for the region and deliver on its potential as an idyllic location for office workers, homeowners and the wider community.”
The property has sat empty for six years since Friends Life’s departure, but the site has a chequered history with development proposals, with campaign group Save Clyst St Mary from Inappropriate Development concerned against previous housing plans for the site.
The Civil Aviation Authority has received an operating licence application from Thyme Opco, which bought the company in October.
Flybe was the largest independent regional airline in Europe before collapsing in early 2020 due to financial difficulties.
The news of the operating application is the first concrete step towards aircraft flying once again.
However, there is no word yet on where Flybe will be based.
East Devon MP Simon Jupp, the Exeter Chamber of Commerce and the South West Business Council have all urged the new investors to make Exeter the centre of Flybe operations once again.
Responding to the latest news the MP said: “It’s another step in the right direction to get Flybe back in our skies.
“I’ve urged the airlines new owners to bring Flybe home to Exeter Airport which will now benefit from up to £8m additional support from government to protect jobs and connectivity in our region. I fought hard for government support for our airport and I’ll continue to push for Flybe to come home.”
The airline employed 2,000 people and flew over nine million passengers a year, according to Statista.
A deal to buy what was left of the company was struck with hedge fund firm Cyrus Capital, a company associated with Thyme Opco.
A spokesperson for Thyme Opco said in October: “We are extremely excited about the opportunity to relaunch Flybe.
“The airline is not only a well-known UK brand, it was also the largest regional air carrier in the EU, so while we plan to start off smaller than before, we expect to create valuable airline industry jobs, restore essential regional connectivity in the UK, and contribute to the recovery of a vital part of the country’s economy.”
The health secretary has volunteered to be vaccinated live on television to prove that the coronavirus jab is safe.
Matt Hancock made his offer as YouGov polling found that a fifth of Britons were not confident at all or not very confident that the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine was safe and antivaxers took aim at the newly approved drug.
Last night Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, told Britons that they needed to take the vaccination to get rid of restrictions. He said: “Everyone wants social distancing to come to an end, we’re fed up with it. Nobody wants to see the damage they do. But if you want that dream to come true as quickly as it can come true, then you have to take the vaccine when it’s offered to you. Low uptake will almost certainly make restrictions last longer.”
Earlier, during a television appearance, it was suggested that Mr Hancock could lead the way with an injection broadcast to the nation.
Piers Morgan, the presenter of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, said: “I’ll come to where you are any time next week if we can do this. Let’s do it together, live on air. It would be powerful, it would send the right message.”
Mr Hancock said: “Well, we’d have to get that approved because, of course, there is a prioritisation according to clinical need and, thankfully, as a healthy, middle-aged man, you’re not at the top of the prioritisation. But if we can get that approved and if people think that’s reasonable then I’m up for doing that because once the MHRA has approved a vaccine — they only do that if it is safe. And so, if that can help anybody else, persuade anybody else that they should take the vaccine then I think it’s worth it.”
A snap YouGov poll found that the public overwhelmingly supported the idea, with 66 per cent in favour against only 12 per cent who opposed it.
Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s press secretary, suggested the prime minister might also be prepared to be vaccinated against coronavirus live on television — but only if it did not prevent someone more in need of a jab from receiving one. Ms Stratton told reporters: “We all know the character of the prime minister. I don’t think it would be something that he would rule out but what we also know is that he wouldn’t want to take a jab that should be for somebody who is extremely vulnerable and who should be getting it before him.”
In the Commons on Tuesday Sir Desmond Swayne, a former international development minister, said: “The way to persuade people to have a vaccine is to line up the entire government and its ministers and their loved ones and let them take it first, and then get all the luvvies, the icons of popular culture out on the airwaves singing its praises.”
The YouGov poll also found 27 per cent of Brits were very confident the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine was safe and 43 per cent fairly confident. However, 11 per cent were not very confident, 9 per cent said they were not confident at all, and 44 per cent opposed making the vaccination compulsory in law.
By midday Thalidomide was trending on Twitter as antivax activists sought to discredit the newly approved vaccine. Among those arguing against its use was Gerard Batten, a former Ukip leader, who claimed it could cause infertility, something for which there is no evidence.
The claim appears to stem from a petition submitted to the European Medicines Agency by two doctors and campaigners against lockdown who have both previously claimed the pandemic either does not exist or is already over. Their claims about the vaccine were described as lacking in evidence, “hard to follow and tenuous” by Professor Danny Altmann, head of an immunology lab at Imperial College London.
Testing times
1796
Edward Jenner, left, gave the first vaccine to James Phipps, aged eight, on May 14, 1796 using matter from a smallpox sore on Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid. His paper was rejected by the Royal Society but within a few years he had won over enough doctors and by 1800 his smallpox vaccination was popular in Britain and spreading into Europe.
1879
Louis Pasteur created a laboratory-developed vaccine for chicken cholera — in error. His assistant forgot to inject the chickens with fresh bacterial cultures before a holiday. When he returned a month later, he carried out the injections with the old culture, and the chickens survived fatal disease. Pasteur gave them fresh bacteria and they did not become ill.
1955
The Salk polio virus vaccine was deemed successful a little over a year after a huge trial began. It was licensed in the US on the same day, and by 1960 polio rates across the country had dropped by 90 per cent.
1956
One of Elvis Presley’s lesser-known live performances came in October 1956, when he received a polio shot on television. Rates of polio vaccination were slumping among teenagers, who were vulnerable to the disease, so celebrities were enlisted to get the message out.
1977
Ali Maalin, a Somalian cook, became the last person to contract smallpox in the wild. He survived and became an advocate for vaccination. A British woman contracted it from a lab studying the disease a year later, but smallpox was declared eradicated globally in 1980.
1984
After the HIV virus was isolated Ronald Reagan’s secretary of health announced that a vaccine would be found within two years. Decades later, however, no vaccine yet exists and numerous studies have failed. One trial was stopped after it appeared the vaccine raised people’s chances of contracting HIV.
1988
Andrew Wakefield published a study, later discredited, claiming a link between the MMR — measles, mumps and rubella — vaccine and autism. The paper was retracted and he was subsequently banned from practising medicine but his claims have resulted in a significant reduction in vaccination rates.
2008
The HPV vaccine was introduced for girls in the UK age 12 and 13. Boys started receiving the jab too last year. The World Health Organisation has said that cervical cancer, caused by the HPV virus, could be eliminated and Australia aims to wipe it out by 2035.
2019
The WHO reported 140,000 deaths from measles with outbreaks across all regions of the world. Four European countries, including the UK, lost their measles-free status, with the drop in vaccination rates blamed.
So much has gone wrong since the Tories won their general election victory a year ago next week that it is easy to take their majority of 80 for granted.
A new report, No Turning Back, published today by the think tank Onward, serves as a reminder that the victory was hard-won, even against Jeremy Corbyn, because it involved the construction of a remarkable new electoral coalition of interests. Quite deliberately, the Tory leadership set out, Disraeli-style, to reposition the party, appealing to patriotic, working-class voters.
This was smart politics that worked. Boris Johnson duly smashed through the “red wall” to turn parts of the north of England blue for the first time in generations. Two in five Tory voters are working class. The Tories hold 57 per cent of the seats in the north and Midlands, their highest share since the mid-1930s.
To retain those seats and to maintain a winning coalition at the next election in 2024 or earlier, the Onward report suggests the Tories must now deliver on “levelling up” in the north, while not neglecting southern Conservative voters. Obviously, this balancing requires a high degree of political dexterity and focus.
At Westminster, where the Balkanisation of the party continues apace, the need for unity has not yet got through to many Conservative MPs. So widespread is the fashion for factionalism that new groupings are continually springing up, with Tory MPs forming ever more interest groups to apply pressure to the prime minister.
The CRG, the Covid Recovery Group, was formed last month and has organised resistance to the virus restrictions. The other CRG is the China Research Group, pushing for a tougher policy against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Then there is the Northern Research Group, the NRG. And the grandaddy of contemporary Conservative internal warfare is the ERG, the European Research Group, which organised resistance to Theresa May. Its members are still on guard against any backsliding on Brexit by their former hero Johnson.
With rebellions rolling, the steady corrosion of the government’s whipping operation has started to produce serious fractures. On Tuesday evening, 55 Tory MPs voted against the new coronavirus restrictions. The prime minister’s hide was saved only by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ordering his MPs to abstain. In the Westminster game, this is a significant moment. The opposition knows that the prime minister cannot rely on his majority. It can now bait and switch its position, saying it will abstain on a controversial matter before perhaps changing suddenly, closer to the vote, leaving the Tory whips scrambling.
A senior Conservative MP, a veteran of the whipping war during the doomed attempts to pass a Brexit deal during the May premiership, blames backbenchers for bad habits: “Many Tory MPs are still to be weaned off the Brexit years rebellion adrenaline fix.” Rebels respond that it is the fault of a high-handed No 10, which until his departure recently was built around Dominic Cummings, a revolutionary who actively dislikes the party. A noxious atmosphere was created and trust in Johnson’s judgment is low. Among the discontented are former cabinet ministers. Says one: “No 10 has behaved with such hubris in the last nine months during the Covid crisis that colleagues have concluded the government has no monopoly of wisdom.”
Tory factionalism is not a new phenomenon. In the 1840s the party split over the Corn Laws, with the free-trading leadership peeling away. In the aftermath of the First World War there was internal warfare. In the early 1980s, much of Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet was opposed to the prime minister’s approach. From the late 1980s until 2019, the party was bedevilled by divisions on Europe.
But what should worry the prime minister now is that today’s divisions don’t appear to be particularly ideological — yet. The situation is more perilous than an arcane row about policy because it rests on that most subjective of qualities, personality. The doubts are about his ability to function effectively in government, to process the flow of paper and decisions and make good use of patronage.
The squabbling is displacement activity while the party works out what to do with him. Johnson was selected as a winner by MPs and Tory members to get two things done: to win an election and to deliver Brexit. The first was achieved and the second will happen, one way or the other, next month.
After that, and mass vaccination against Covid-19, it is fair to ask: what is this government for? Where are the public sector reforms to power improvement? Where are the policies to capitalise on what should be a boom next year unless the government screws it up?
The prime minister may object, with some justification, that he has had a hell of a year and everyone in government looks whacked. He can complain about unjustness and ingratitude all he likes but this is a tough old world and the Tory tribe are a ruthless bunch. So are the voters. There are always alternative prime ministers available.
That Onward report does contain some encouragement for the prime minister. Its authors say that the 2019 election marked a big realignment, making the Tories as much a party of the working class as of the provincial middle class. If so, Johnson has a special connection with those voters who will look to see whether or not he delivers.
If he is to succeed he’ll need an agenda and to implement it he will require the solid support of his party. That means he must learn the art of party management, and quick.
Parliament’s Whitehall watchdog has accused the government of putting its head in the sand over no-deal Brexit as it becomes increasingly clear ministers have failed to prepare in time.
The cross-party Public Accounts Committee warned in a new report that the government was still “taking limited responsibility” for Brexit readiness despite there being just four weeks left until Britain leaves the single market.
In a grim report published on Wednesday the MPs warned that they were “extremely concerned about the risk of serious disruption and delay” because of government inaction at ports like Dover.
The MPs noted that it was the twelfth time they had warned the government about the issue since the Brexit vote, but that it was still “not doing enough to ensure businesses and citizens will be ready for the end of the transition period”.
Brexit preparations have involved more than 22,000 civil servants at their peak and have cost at least £4.4 billion, the spending watchdog said – and yet there are still “critical gaps in the civil service’s approach to planning, particularly for unexpected events or undesired outcome”.
This costly approach is compounded by the fact that the Treasury “still does not have a good grip on how much taxpayers’ money is being spent on cross-government priorities”, with excess spending on consultants and little investment in the civil service itself.
“Pretending that things you don’t want to happen are not going to happen is not a recipe for government, it is a recipe for disaster,” said Meg Hillier, the MP who chairs the committee.
“We’re paying for that approach in the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and can only hope that we are not now facing another catastrophe, at the border in 4 weeks’ time.
“But after 12 PAC reports full of warnings since the Brexit vote, the evidence suggests that come January 1st we face serious disruption and delay at the short Channel crossings that deliver a majority of our fresh food supplies.
“The lack of definite next steps and inability to secure a deal adds to the challenge. A year after the oven ready deal, we have more of a cold turkey and businesses and consumers do not know what to be prepared for.”
Trade talks with the EU to sign a deal have now continued in December, but there is little sign of a deal on the horizon.
Trade experts however warn that the hard nature of the Brexit chosen by Boris Johnson makes disruption inevitable, even if an agreement is forthcoming.
A UK Government Spokesperson said: “We are making significant preparations to prepare for the guaranteed changes at the end of the transition period including investing £705 million in jobs, technology and infrastructure at the border and providing £84 million in grants to boost the customs intermediaries sector. This is alongside implementing border controls in stages so traders have more time to prepare”
“With less than one month to go, it’s vital that businesses and citizens make their final preparations too. That’s why we’re intensifying our engagement with businesses through the Brexit Business Taskforce and running a major public information campaign so they know exactly what they need to do to get ready.”
An investigation into the free school meal voucher fiasco, which left many families without food during lockdown, has found the government signed contracts worth up to £425m with a company for which there was “limited evidence” of its capacity to deliver.
The troubled scheme was set up in just 18 days and awarded to the French-owned company Edenred, despite the government’s own assessment that the company’s UK arm did not have the financial standing that would normally be required for the scale of contract, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO).
The public spending watchdog said Edenred was appointed to run the scheme using an existing government framework contract, as it was already a supplier to a number of government departments, which meant there was no need for a lengthy tendering process.
Within weeks, however, problems began to emerge, with schools across England complaining of problems in registering for the £15-per-child weekly vouchers. School staff worked into the night to try to log on to Edenred’s website and parents waited up to five days for their vouchers.
At one point in April, the Edenred helpline was receiving almost 4,000 calls and nearly 9,000 emails a day from frustrated school staff and parents. At the height of the crisis, ministers were forced to intervene directly and Department for Education officials held daily calls with Edenred to monitor progress.
One of the key problems identified in the NAO report was Edenred’s IT capacity, which was inadequate to meet the challenge of supplying vouchers to up to 1.4 million children who were eligible for free school meals.
The report says performance improved following DfE intervention, with processing times for orders dropping from an average of five days in April to just hours in July, and waiting times to access the website falling from 42 minutes to virtually no wait over the same period.
According to the report, Edenred issued 10.1m vouchers in total at a final cost to the DfE of £384m, significantly less than the original cost estimated at the start of the scheme. The report says the DfE “does not know whether Edenred made a profit” on the scheme, but while the government paid them the face value of the supermarket vouchers, Edenred was able to generate revenue by buying vouchers at a discount on their face value.
Meg Hillier, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “DfE chose an adapted off-the-shelf system to save time. But when it launched, families typically had to wait five days to get the vouchers they needed to buy food.
“Edenred’s systems buckled under the pressure, and schools and families found it much too difficult to get in touch when things went wrong. DfE and Edenred eventually managed to turn things around – but too many parents had to wait too long to get the support they needed.”
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “Problems at the start of the scheme led to a frustrating experience for many schools and families, but DfE and Edenred worked hard to get on top of these issues. Performance steadily improved as the scheme progressed.”
Edenred said it had delivered a scheme of unique scale for the DfE, which the majority of parents said worked well and translated every pound of public money into vouchers.
“The report is fair in its reflection of the challenges faced in the first four weeks,” a spokesperson said. “We welcome the recognition of the hard work and investment we put into solving those problems, resulting in improvements to a scheme which delivered for parents and schools in the final four months of the programme, when it saw the greatest demand.”
The children and families minister, Vicky Ford, said: “The NAO has recognised the swift action we took so that eligible children could access this important provision while schools were partially closed, with £380m-worth of voucher codes having been redeemed into supermarket gift cards by the time the scheme ended.”
It was only a matter of time before the UK’s twin preoccupations of 2020 – Covid and Brexit – really collided. Within minutes of the 7am announcement that British regulators had approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, business secretary Alok Sharma and health secretary Matt Hancock tried to stick a Union Jack on the news.
While Sharma boasted that “we will remember this moment as the day the UK led humanity’s charge against this disease, Hancock said that the UK was able to achieve a faster approval than the EU “because of Brexit”. Yet within a few hours, the MHRA regulator June Raine pointed out she had in fact operated under European law, which runs out in the UK at the end of the year.
The PM’s spokesman refused several times to endorse the Hancock line, and got into a muddle about Sharma’s (read the Lobby exchanges in all their painful glory in my Twitter thread HERE). Even Boris Johnson himself, never knowingly unavailable for a bit of Brussels bashing, refused to hit the “Brexit Bonus” softballs fed him by the Sun and Express in the later press conference.
In fact, it was deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam who most ridiculed the suggestion of Little Englander triumphalism, pointing not only to the German-American teams who developed the vaccine but also the wider global cooperation to combat Covid-19.
And what was most notable in the No.10 briefing, and earlier in PMQs, was how unusually cautious Johnson was in hailing the vaccine progress. Acutely aware of the danger that the public may see it as an excuse to drop their guard, he said people should “not get their hopes up too soon” about being rapidly vaccinated.
Van-Tam underlined the point by warning the public that “you have to take the vaccine…low uptake will almost certainly make restrictions last longer”. That wasn’t a direct threat to link an area’s vaccine rates to lifting tiers, more a home truth that vaccinations can get the R number right down.
But the whole press briefing ended on a truly awkward note when the PM and Van-Tam differed over the longer-term impacts of the virus on public behaviour. In the first explicit reprimand of one of his scientists, Johnson asserted himself after Van-Tam suggested long-term mask-wearing and hand-sanitising “maybe a good thing”.
The PM’s line – “on the other hand, we may want to get back to life as pretty much as close to normal” – was quite the public slapdown. And when the deputy medical officer later explained he meant some individuals would stick with mask-wearing, Johnson sounded incredulous at the suggestion that the UK could copy Japan or South Korea. “As in the Far East? Well, who knows?”
Many of Johnson’s allies will say he was well within his rights to avoid the long-term downer, not least as he knows the promise of a brighter 2021 is crucial to getting people to stick to more lockdown-style curbs this winter. Others will say he sounded like he was putting politics ahead of Van-Tam’s honest judgement.
Van-Tam tends to be plain speaking, and that’s his main asset. He famously made clear Dominic Cummings should not have broken Covid rules earlier this year, and was not seen for months thereafter. Given his importance on the vaccines front, a new sin-binning is unlikely, but the awkward moment with the PM can’t help.
There was another “Far East” lesson today, from former chief medical officer Sally Davies. She told MPs on the science and tech committee that the UK’s advisers failed to spot that Covid was not like flu. “We did not – our infectious disease experts – really believe that another Sars would get to us, and I think it’s a form of British exceptionalism.” That was a reminder to some Johnson supporters that his own scientists were themselves fallible early in this pandemic.
It is perhaps precisely because Johnson has gone along with the scientists’ advice on “tough tiers” that he chafed when pushed further today. But further tensions still beckon, not least as his plans for “community testing”, as a way out of tough restrictions, lack concrete data.
And one of the most pressing tensions will come in a fortnight, when that “meaningful review” (will it be as meaningful as Theresa May’s “meaningful votes”?) arrives on October 16. The PM told MPs yesterday he wanted “granular” assessments of “human geography”. In tonight’s briefing he said: “We are going to make sure we are as local and as sensitive as we can possibly be to local achievement and local incidence of the disease.”
That contrasts with his own words only six days ago, when he said smaller tiered areas would lead to “loads of very complicated sub-divisions” that would cost clarity. He also made plain on Friday that contagion was unavoidable, warning “unless you beat the problem in the high-incidence area, the low-incidence area I’m afraid starts to catch up.” Has he ditched those concerns just to avoid another Tory rebellion?
No one has yet asked Chris Whitty or Patrick Vallance, let alone Sage, whether a shift to tiers based on individual boroughs would simply mean the virus again running out of control. If the PM shifts back to his hyperlocal “whackamole” approach, it may be Van-Tam and the awkward squad of scientists he ends up whacking hardest – as well as his own hopes of a sunlit spring.
Matt Hancock kicked off the debate, suggesting that “because of Brexit” the UK has been able approve the vaccine more quickly than if it was an EU member.
“We do all the same safety checks and the same processes, but we have been able to speed up how they’re done because of Brexit,” the health secretary said on Wednesday morning.
But his claim was quickly shot down by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), which actually granted the temporary authorisation of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for use in the UK.
“We have been able to authorise the supply of this vaccine using provisions under European law which exist until January 1,” June Raine, chief executive of MHRA, told a Downing Street briefing.
Later, No.10 repeatedly refused to endorse Hancock’s claim.
“I think the important point is that we are clearly the first (western) country in the world to approve a vaccine, it’s obviously a very positive move forward,” a spokesperson told reporters.
And yet – of course – the row continues online, with Leaver talking head Darren Grimes claiming “Brexit is vindicated” and arch-Remainer Lord Adonis accusing Hancock of being “utterly juvenile”.
So who is right?
The clue is in a consultation document put out by Hancock’s own Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) earlier this year, which makes clear that Brexit has nothing to do with it.
The department stated that until the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31, during which the UK follows Brussels rules, “EU legislation requires biotechnological medicines (which would include candidate Covid-19 vaccines) to be authorised via the European Medicines Agency”.
But it also stressed an exemption in EU law which allows the MHRA to issue a temporary authorisation “if there is a compelling case, on public health grounds, for using a vaccine before it is given a product licence”.
This is backed up in the UK’s own Human Medicines Regulations 2012, which allows the domestic regulator to permit a “temporary authorisation for the supply of an unlicensed medicinal product for use in response to certain specific types of public health threat”.
The law then copies language from directly from Article 5(2) of the EU Medicines Directive 2001/83, which states that “member states may temporarily authorise the distribution of an unauthorised medicinal product in response to the suspected or confirmed spread of pathogenic agents, toxins, chemical agents or nuclear radiation.”
In October, the UK then went on to amend this law.
Health minister Jo Churchill explained in a written ministerial statement these were simply “technical” changes to “make sure that any unlicensed products that the government recommends for deployment in response to certain public health threats must meet required safety and quality standards”.
When Pfizer reported on November 18 that its vaccine had 95% efficacy, the MHRA put out a statement making clear that if “strong supporting evidence of safety, quality and effectiveness from clinical trials becomes available before the end of the transition period, EU legislation allows for temporary authorisation of supply in the UK, based on the public health need”.
Mark Dayan, head of public affairs at the healthcare think-tank Nuffield Trust, told HuffPost UK: “I don’t really see any grounds on which you can say Brexit has facilitated this.
“We’re in this transition period at the moment where legally speaking for things like medicines there’s absolutely no change to what the situation was in 2012 or before the referendum or when we were full members.
“So I don’t really understand the mechanism by which Brexit could have accelerated this.”
The total is higher than the government’s official figure of 59,051, which counts only those who die within 28 days of a positive test. The latest data from the ONS, which records any death with Covid-19 on the death certificate, regardless of whether they tested positive for the virus, showed 2,697 such deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending November 20.
That took the combined death toll recorded by Britain’s three statistical agencies to 71,719.
Adding the 3,384 deaths recorded on the government’s list since the agencies’ latest figures takes the number of Covid-19 deaths to 75,103.
The ONS figures show that deaths from Covid-19 are still rising in England and Wales, despite the number of infections starting to fall in recent weeks.
Although hospital admissions are beginning to follow suit, deaths will be the last indicator to decline. The 2,697 deaths were 231 more than the week before and the highest number since the week ending May 15.
They represent more than a fifth of the 12,535 deaths from any cause registered that week, which were 21 per cent, or 2,155 deaths, above the five-year average. That means the number of deaths not caused by Covid-19 was slightly below the five-year average.
The rate of deaths above what would normally be expected for the time of year, or excess deaths, is considered one of the best ways to track the pandemic because it captures coronavirus deaths that have not been recognised as such and any caused by a lack of access to usual healthcare, for example.
Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, said that the total deaths figure was “substantially larger than the peak for this week over the past ten years, which was 10,882 in 2019” and “far greater than could be explained by an ageing population”.
He added: “It is encouraging that deaths that were not caused by Covid were slightly below the five-year average. We might expect some deaths that would normally occur now to have been brought forward by the first wave. But this still suggests that the collateral damage of the measures against the pandemic have not yet had an impact on overall mortality.”
Of deaths with Covid-19 mentioned on the certificate, 88 per cent (2,361) mentioned it as the underlying cause.
Professor Spiegelhalter said: “Between September 5 and November 20, 12,907 deaths involving Covid were registered in the UK and there have been roughly 3,000 since then, making 16,000 altogether in the second wave. Sadly, the prediction that the second wave would involve tens of thousands of Covid deaths looks like it will be fulfilled. We can expect this second-wave total to rise to over 20,000 by Christmas.”
Out of desperation more than anything else, Boris Johnson has taken to calling Keir Starmer “Captain Hindsight”. Even when the Labour leader is making predictions about what will happen next. But in the Commons debate on the new coronavirus tiers, the prime minister revealed a new persona for himself: Major Sulk.
You could tell Johnson wasn’t a happy bunny from the off, because he arrived looking a total mess. More often than not, Boris’s appearance is less art than artifice. He hopes that appearing shambolic will make people think he’s not too bothered. That he’s the Mister Good Time Guy on whom you can rely for a joke. Except no one is laughing any more. Least of all Boris. His bedraggled, slumped demeanour was not a sign that he wasn’t bothered. Rather it was the opposite. He couldn’t bear for his public to see just how much he did care. Not for the country, obviously. But for himself.
Up till now, the Great Narcissistic Sulk has never really given a toss about his rank-and-file backbenchers. He didn’t even know the names of three-quarters of them. But this was the day he came to realise the one-way love affair was over and the magic had worn off for a significant number of the Conservative parliamentary party. MPs willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because he had managed to win an 80-seat majority now realised they had bought a dud. A prime minister who at a time of crisis could be relied on to let you down.
Johnson’s opening speech was a lazy, badly argued ramble through the familiar arguments he had been making over the past week. He began by listing the positives of the new regime – hairdressers, gyms and round-the-clock shopping – insisting that the evidence for reopening them had been taken with granular thoroughness. Despite the fact that his economic impact assessments, released at the last minute the previous day, bore a closer resemblance to something knocked up on the back of cigarette packet.
He then went on to say that no one should take Christmas for granted. Only that was precisely what he was doing by granting a five-day Christmas amnesty that could turn into a New Year killing zone. He also promised an extra £1,000 to every pub that didn’t serve scotch eggs as a sop to the Tory malcontents. Or beer money, as Keir Starmer scathingly described it. The longer Boris spoke the emptier his words became. By the end he was running on fumes.
In reply, the Labour leader merely voiced what was on everyone’s mind. We’d all been here before on several occasions with Johnson, but every time he had let the country down. He had been too late to lock down initially; he had ignored Sage’s advice for a circuit breaker in September; he had introduced a tiering system that was soon proved to be hopelessly inadequate; Typhoid Dido’s track and trace had been a joke. He had promised the pandemic would be over by the summer. And then by Christmas.
Now we were clinging on for dear life waiting for the vaccines to save us. So why should anyone believe a word the prime minister said when it looked as though the new tiers were guided by what Boris could smuggle past enough of his backbenchers rather than by the science. A third national lockdown in January was all but an inevitability. And in the meantime, where was the financial help for the hospitality sector and the self-employed? As so often, Johnson had over-promised and under-delivered.
Even so, something had to be better than nothing. So Labour would be abstaining to make sure everyone’s main focus was on the number of Tory rebels. Yet again then, Starmer would be giving Johnson the benefit of the doubt and putting the government on notice. It’s been on notice for a while now. There would come a time when Keir would have to say enough was enough and vote against the government on its handling of the coronavirus. But now was not the right time.
The rest of the debate was dominated by unhappy Tories, either promising to rebel or to vote reluctantly for the government. Bernard Jenkin, after listing all the many faults in the new tiering system, sadly concluded that he would vote for Boris. Out of pity as much as anything else. Others were less forgiving, demanding more localised banding of tiers and proof that the hospitality industry was the root of all Covid evils. Steve Baker even went so far as to demand expert evidence. This from the MP who happily ignored both experts and evidence during numerous Brexit debates. Better a sinner who repenteth, I suppose.
It was Chris Grayling who delivered the real coup de grace by saying that he was “very concerned”. When you’ve lost the trust of Failing Grayling, who has cost the taxpayer more than £3bn in a ministerial career of unrivalled uselessness, then you’ve lost the soul of the Tory party.
With Labour abstaining, the vote itself was a formality, the motion passing with a majority of 213. But with 56 Tories voting against him and more abstaining, this was Boris’s darkest hour. One from which he may never recover. Many of us saw through Johnson long ago. An opportunist chancer only interested in self-glorification. Now it looks as if the mist has lifted from the eyes of many of his own benches. Enough for him never to take a vote again for granted. What goes around, comes around.
Boris Johnson has vowed to take back control of the UK’s “spectacular maritime wealth” but at 6am on Monday in Brixham, England’s biggest fishing port by value, there is nervousness that the prime minister’s efforts to defend the industry in post-Brexit EU trade talks could end in disaster.
[Extracts of this FT article are included in today’s Western Morning News]
George Parker in Brixham and Jim Brunsden in Brussels yesterday www.ft.com
Ian Perkes is sitting at his computer screen by the harbour buying sole in an online auction to sell to markets across Europe. He fears that if Mr Johnson allows EU trade talks to collapse in a dispute about fisheries, the industry will face crippling tariffs in its main market on January 1 when the UK’s Brexit transition period ends.
“If the tariff was only 5 per cent we would be killed,” said Mr Perkes, the founder of a £5m-a-year fish exporting company. In fact, if trade talks collapse, the EU will soon be levying tariffs of 20 per cent on key catches like scallops.
The scene on Brixham quayside tells a story of Britain’s emotional but ultimately detached relationship with its fishing industry, which contributes about 0.1 per cent to the UK’s GDP, if processing is included.
Workers hose down boats, gut fish and pack boxes as the sun rises over the south Devon port, on England’s south-west coast — but the fish landed here are not, generally, heading for the dining tables and restaurants of Britain.
According to Mr Perkes, 80 per cent of the scallops, squid, sole, ray, langoustines and other delicacies landed here will be loaded on to trucks and sent straight to Calais and on to markets in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Similarly, the herring and mackerel caught by Scottish boats are not staples on a UK shopping list.
The problem, rarely acknowledged by ministers, is that Britons do not much like the fish caught in the UK’s rich fishing waters. To the extent the country eats fish, it is mainly the “big five” of cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns — most of which are imported.
So as trade talks with Brussels enter a decisive phase, Mr Johnson might secure more fish for UK boats but — without a trade deal — will they be able to sell them?
Leaving aside processing, fishing and aquaculture, output slumped to just £75m in the third quarter, due mainly to the effects of Covid-19. By contrast, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility reported last week that a “no trade deal” Brexit would cost the economy 2 per cent of GDP next year.
But Mr Johnson recognises that fishing is not just about numbers. Even if Britons are not big fish eaters, the industry has a place in the nation’s psyche; some like to fall asleep listening to the BBC shipping forecast, evoking trawlers working distant storm-tossed waters.
A reminder of that visceral connection with the sea can be seen at the venerable “Man and Boy” statue on Brixham waterfront, now transformed into a shrine to Adam Harper, a young local who died when the scallop boat Joanna C overturned on November 21. Another crew member, Robert Morley, is still missing.
Mr Johnson’s fight for the restoration of fishing rights to UK fishermen after Britain leaves the EU’s common fisheries policy on January 1 is thus highly popular, especially in Scotland, which represents the biggest part of the UK industry.
EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has suggested that the EU fishing fleet should accept a 15-18 per cent cut in its share of rights in UK waters; David Frost, the UK’s negotiator, wants to seize 80 per cent of the €650m worth of fishing rights.
Jim Portus, chief executive of the South West Fish Producers’ Organisation, said the boat owners he represented believed Brexit was a chance to redress historic wrongs; he said that France, for example, had 84 per cent of the cod quota in the English Channel.
Mr Portus claims new boats — or second-hand boats — could be acquired in months to take up the extra quota and he insisted that EU consumers would still buy the fish even with high tariffs after the transition period expired. He added: “For the catching sector, no deal is better than a bad deal that sacrifices the industry.”
But Mr Portus’s optimism is not shared by Mitch Tonks, a restaurateur behind the Rockfish chain and the upmarket Seahorse in Dartmouth, who said British consumers would not take up the slack if tariffs were imposed and reduced exports to the EU.
“The sale of the fish is as important as the fishing,” he said, on a regular early-morning tour of Brixham fish market. “You could end up with fish rotting on the docks.”
He said diners at his Rockfish outlets were gradually moving from traditional (imported) cod and chips to locally caught fish, but the transition would not make up for the loss of EU markets.
Mr Perkes, who set up his fish export business in 1976, is grappling with the paperwork required to sell into the EU single market after January 1 — paperwork that will be needed regardless of whether there is a trade deal.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said, noting that he will soon have to complete catch certificates and health certificates for each consignment to the EU, covering perhaps 30 different boats catching different species.
He has also been warned that each truck, carrying maybe £150,000 of fish supplied by a number of different exporting firms, could be turned back at Calais if all of the paperwork is not in order.
Sean Perkes, his brother, looks up from his trading screen and said that if there is no trade deal there will be trouble at the border. “If the French are losing their fishing quota, they will make life extremely difficult,” he added.
Ian Perkes, like most of the south-west fishing community, voted for Brexit as a means of taking back control of UK waters. “I wish I hadn’t,” he said. “I never looked at the implications of the paperwork. I was brainwashed.”
Tariffs on exports would — he fears — be a catastrophe for his business and the fishing boats that supply it. Barring a radical change in the dietary habits of Britain, he said the sector would be “stuffed”, adding: “If there’s no deal and there are tariffs, we are out of the game.”
East Devon Watch 