The government’s planning reforms would lead to a 45 per cent increase in housebuilding under Tory councils outside London whereas the number of new homes in Labour areas would fall.

[Note for East Devon that will be 74 per cent. Owl would like to know what Simon Jupp and Neil Parish are doing about it]

Conservative MPs have warned Boris Johnson that a “mutant” algorithm at the heart of the planning reforms would lead to overbuilding in the southeast and “permanently disadvantage” the North and the Midlands.

Under the changes, local discretion over the rate of building would be removed and central government would “distribute” an annual target, at present 337,000 a year, among councils using an algorithm. An analysis of data provided by Lichfields, a planning consultancy, shows that much of the new housing would be concentrated in Conservative local authority areas in the suburbs and shires, rather than in town centres.

Nearly 100,000 homes would be built in Conservative local authorities outside London, a rise of 45 per cent. In Labour-held local authorities the number of new homes would fall by 3 per cent, from 57,148 to 55,500.

The analysis was released as Tory MPs criticised the plans during a Commons debate late on Monday. Andrew Griffith, Tory MP for Arundel & South Downs, said that the algorithm was “blind to geography” and called for exemptions for green corridors. He said: “By piling on even more growth in the southeast, the algorithm is locking the North and Midlands into permanent disadvantage. Despite the government’s stated intent, the new formula is levelling down, not levelling up.”

James Sunderland, the Tory MP for Bracknell, said that the government had to apply “some form of judgment” on the science behind the algorithm.

“Many of my constituents are very sensitive about unsustainable house building,” he said.

Tory MPs in the Greater London area were also critical of the algorithm. The prime minister held a Zoom conference last month with 17 MPs, who warned him that the reforms risked “creating the slums of the future”.

The MPs, who included four ministers, said that the proposal to treble the number of homes built in London to 93,532 a year would do “real harm to the Conservative vote”.

A Ministry of Housing spokesman said: “The Planning for the Future white paper sets out longer term reforms which will bring forward a simpler, more transparent planning system. In addition, the consultation on changes to the current planning system sets out the elements we want to balance when determining local housing need, including meeting our target of delivering 300,000 homes, tackling affordability challenges in the places people most want to live and renewing and levelling up our towns and cities.”

From a correspondent:

The destruction of the Jill Dando memorial tree at the former BBC studios has just come to my attention through the news, though it actually happened in August.

There is always a sadness when trees are cut down. It does seem that trees are common casualties, along with other wildlife, in planning developments. This case does seem extraordinary as the new building was designed around this tree.

But what caught my eye was that this is yet more student accommodation in the city. Why has the city approved:

“Luxury boutique student accommodation in Exeter”?

“Is an elegant private studio or a luxury en-suite serviced apartment your choice? With a friendly team available 24/7, and a cinema, games room and gym on hand, there is no need to look elsewhere, we have it all!!”

Exeter City has a current local plan requirement of 3058 houses per year and a proposed new standard requirement of 5116 and any brownfield land is needed for the people of the city, not for the university. After all the university has a large campus where it can build for its own students.

But the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP) would have picked up the pieces/land for the city. The neighbouring districts were going to help solve their land requirement problem with East Devon taking the lion’s share. Thank heavens the council had the courage to pull out.

Here is the article referred to:

Jill Dando memorial tree cut down by housing developer in ‘tragic’ mistake 

www.newsbreak.com 

Bungling developers building posh student homes have caused fury after cutting down a memorial tree for murdered television presenter Jill Dando by mistake.

The former BBC studios, where the tragic Crimewatch star started her career, are being replaced by a new student complex.

The scheme was only approved after the developers agreed to keep the beautiful Acer tree that had become a spot where her friends and former colleagues went to remember her.

But it has now emerged the developers preserved the wrong tree at Walnut Gardens in Exeter, Devon – and cut down Jill’s memorial last month.

It is understood a planning report identified the wrong tree to developers, leaving former colleagues and friends “devastated” by the “tragic” mistake.

Blundering student housing developers mistakenly cut down the memorial while preserving the wrong one (Image: GOOGLE/APEX)

The developers StudyInn have now apologised and pledged to plant a fresh memorial tree and commission a sculpture of her on the site instead.

Exeter City Council said the memorial Acer tree was “not clearly marked” and a walnut tree that was more than 100-years old was instead identified as the one that needed saving.

Ms Dando’s former colleague at BBC Radio Devon Sarah Harris was among the friends who decided to plant the memorial tree where Ms Dando first worked for the corporation.

Sarah told the BBC she felt “upset and very, very let down”.

She said she had been communicating with the council and developers since February 2019 to ensure the tree was saved and was given several assurances it would be.

She added: “I’m devastated, but to think the walnut tree was the memorial – I mean she died in 1999, not 1899.

“You can’t have an old tree as a memorial tree – you plant a tree for somebody. I cannot believe it happened.”

Ms Harris added she did not blame the new developers who were given the wrong information.

Journalist and presenter Jill, who was murdered in 1999 outside her home, started her career working for the BBC in Devon.

She became a newsreader for BBC Radio Devon in 1985 and that year, she transferred to BBC South West, where she presented a regional news magazine programme, Spotlight South West.

In 1987, she worked for Television South West, then BBC Spotlight before being transferred to London the following year where she went on to achieve national fame.

The tree was cut down in August and was noticed by another former colleague, Charles Eden, who went to look at the site to find “bare earth”.

He said it was “tragic” but he hoped the new tree and statue will be “something Exeter can be proud of.”

Developer StudyInn confirmed the wrong tree was marked on a planning report.

A spokesperson said the company had been aware a memorial tree was on site which had to be preserved and relocated.

“There was a tree survey commissioned by the applicant and it identified some important tress for retention in their current position and one tree for relocation,” the spokesperson said.

“The only reference we had to go on as to the identification of the Jill Dando Memorial tree was in the Planning Inspectors approval notice condition 7, which identifies the Jill Dando Memorial tree as T98 in the tree report which accompanied the Planning Application.

“The tree report itself does not mention the Jill Dando Memorial Tree and T98 is a Walnut Tree. So we protected the trees identified for retention and used a tree specialist to remove the Walnut tree (T98) and keep it safe and preserved for re-planting in the re-developed site.

“Unfortunately the actual Jill Dando Memorial tree was a small tree which because of its size was not marked to be retained on the tree survey and it was removed before we knew its identity.

“We are very sorry that this has happened and appreciate that this has caused distress, particularly to those people who were close to Jill Dando and had planted the original tree.

“We can only look forward from this point and do what we can to facilitate the new memorial.”

The company that owns the Exmouth Journal, Sidmouth Herald and Midweek Herald has announced it is to come under new ownership.

Beth Sharp www.sidmouthherald.co.uk

Norwich-based Archant has been acquired by Rcapital. It takes a controlling share, with a minority holding for the Pension Protection Fund, into which Archant’s long-defunct company pension has been transferred.

Chris Campbell, partner at Rcapital, said: “We are incredibly pleased to have worked alongside Archant’s management team and KPMG to put forward a plan that will restructure finances and inject fresh capital into one of Britain’s oldest local newspaper brands. We are hopeful, that with the support of its creditors, Archant will emerge from this challenging period as a stronger business that continues to provide a vital service to its clients and readership.”

There is no interruption to publishing in the business, which continues to trade as before.

Keir Starmer has warned the coronavirus test-and-trace system is “on the verge of collapse”, as ministers conceded that a lack of laboratory capacity which has prevented many people getting a test could take a fortnight to be resolved.

More than 160 places in England have seen a rise in the number of coronavirus cases in seven days – with some places seeing the infection rate more than treble.

New infections of coronavirus in the UK are now growing as fast as they were at the beginning of April, according to Telegraph analysis.

By Alex Clark 8 September 2020 www.telegraph.co.uk 

Data on the last five days of new Covid-19 cases announced by Public Health England shows that new infections are now doubling every nine days, up from every 20 days just under a week ago.

That matches the daily rate seen between 6 and 7 April, where new coronavirus cases were doubling every eight to ten days, with a government scientific adviser today warning that the disease is again growing “exponentially” in the UK. 

After a spate of continuous decline in May and June, new cases of coronavirus began to tick up again in July – around when pubs and restaurants re-opened on so-called ‘Super Saturday’ on the 4th. 

At that point there were on average 700 new cases of coronavirus announced each day, down from a daily peak of over 5,000 in mid-April. 

By the beginning of September this daily rate had climbed to over 2,000 a day, however, up from around 1,000 towards the end of August – more than double.

This morning Professor John Edmunds, who is part of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE),  warned that cases are “increasing exponentially”, a phenomenon that can be seen when a logarithmic scale is applied to infections data, where straight lines represent such growth. 

Professor Edmunds went on to say that the UK has entered “a risky period” with the reproduction number potentially above the crucial figure of one.

“I didn’t want us to relax measures so much that we couldn’t open the schools safely without it tipping the reproduction number significantly above one,” he told ITV news.

“And we are already above one and we’ve opened schools.”

What’s different this time?

Unlike April, however, the UK now has a far more extensive testing regime – something that might over emphasise the number of fresh infections relative to the beginning of the pandemic.

In the past week alone there have been over 1.3m coronavirus tests, as opposed to just 95,188 in the first week of April. 

As of 2 September over 17m tests have been conducted in the UK, and around half of these have taken place since mid-July. 

Not only are there more tests now. Those actually returning positive results are a markedly different demographic to the pandemic’s first victims.

The largest share of positive results are coming from the 20 to 29 age group – in the week to 28 August, 29 per cent of new coronavirus infections in women and 28 per cent of men were in that bracket, the biggest shares of any group. 

That contrasts with most of the pandemic in the UK, when older age groups, particularly those above the age of 80, were the predominant demographic affected by the disease. 

On Sunday, after it was announced the UK had seen nearly 3,000 new coronavirus infections, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned young people not to “infect their grandparents”.

“The cases are predominantly among younger people, but we’ve seen in other countries across the world and in Europe, this sort of rise in the cases amongst younger people leading to a rise across the population as a whole,” said Mr Hancock.

“It’s so important that people don’t allow this illness to infect their grandparents, and to lead to the sorts of problems that we saw earlier in the year.”

On the other hand, Dr Neil Stone, an infectious disease specialist at University College Hospital in London, said: “I don’t believe the Covid-19 epidemic in the UK, US and elsewhere has ‘shifted’ to younger, healthier people.”

“They just weren’t being tested before.”

British democracy used to feel rock steady, unassailable: one could argue about the constitution, the voting system, the Lords, the monarchy, but about not the fundamental tenets.

Otterton referendum to be held next year for residents and businesses to have their say and Membury neighbourhood plan reaches final stage of adoption.

4 September 2020 eastdevon.gov.uk

A referendum will be held next year for the residents and businesses of Otterton so that they can have their say on the parish’s neighbourhood plan.

The Otterton poll follows the successful referendum for the Membury neighbourhood plan which was held in March and was approved by 81% of those who voted.

Both plans have been developed over a number of years through the hard work and dedication of their respective parish councils’ neighbourhood plan steering groups. The plans sets out policies for the future of these areas to help inform decisions about land use and planning applications.

East Devon District Council has approved the Otterton plan as a robust and positive document and has recommended it to go forward for a referendum. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the referendum asking the parish to adopt the plan cannot be held until next year (2021). However, as the district council has recommended the plan and it has been the subject of significant public consultation and an independent examination, the proposals now have significant weight in any decisions about development in the parish.

The leader of the Otterton Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, Ian Birch, said:

“The fact that our village’s plan has reached this stage is very gratifying, and we’d like to thank everyone who contributed to its development over the last few years.

The plan will help protect the village against inappropriate development, whilst encouraging activity which supports and enhances the wonderful natural environment of the area. We look forward to the referendum taking place in due course – although it’s disappointing that this may not be until next year, depending on the course of recovery from the current pandemic.”

Membury neighbourhood plan is the latest to reach the final stage of the plan making process and was formally adopted by the East Devon District Council in April.

Cllr Dan Ledger, the district council’s portfolio holder for strategic planning said:

“I have to commend the steering groups of both Otterton and Membury for achieving these feats. A neighbourhood plan is a long and arduous process but one that has long lasting benefits to the community it serves.

It gives weight to the voice of the community within planning policy and allows them to set out a positive vision of how they wish to see the community develop. With the fantastic news of Membury’s neighbourhood plan being made in April, I will now eagerly await the results of the Otterton referendum in 2021.”

East Devon currently has 18 adopted neighbourhood plans and a further 20 plans at various stages of development. Once adopted, neighbourhood plans form part of the suite of statutory development plan documents, together with the East Devon Local Plan.

The Otterton and Membury plans are available to view on the district council’s website, together with further information about neighbourhood planning across the district. The website link is https://eastdevon.gov.uk/planning/planning-policy/neighbourhood-and-community-plans/

The district council is keen to continue supporting the progression of neighbourhood planning work as far as is possible in the current circumstances. Parishes and groups needing help with neighbourhood plans can contact the council’s new neighbourhood planning officer Angela King through email at aking@eastdevon.gov.uk or by calling 01395 571740.

INTO THE MOUNTAINS WITH YOU : THE HEALTH SECRETARY of an industrialised nation currently mismanaging Covid-19 has made a plea for assistance from the nation’s young.

www.lcdviews.com 

“Some would think we’re still pursuing herd immunity as our strategy with Covid-19,” he began, “but just at a slower, more political manageable pace. Rather than the mass pit burial velocity we had to pull back from before the summer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your leaders are famous for adjusting their positions based on public opposition. We U turn all the time. You can trust us to U turn on you. And you can trust me when I say that, because I’m from your government.”

So far, so good.

“And don’t listen to any unpatriotic types who suggest that urging everyone back into offices, after reopening pubs, at the same time as refilling schools is not a sensible public health strategy. Teenagers, and drunks are famous for their self control and adherence to rules. Drunk teenagers especially! It’ll not be our fault if they catch Covid. It’s just nature taking its course.”

All perfectly sensible.

“But there is one area where I need the youth of this nation to help me out. It’s not just wearing face masks while shoplifting, or whatever past time you scallywags get up to these days, that I need your help with.”

Alright. Get on with it.

“It’s with your grandparents. You maybe aware we have a social care crisis in this country. For too long governments pursued a shortsighted agenda of helping people live longer. Long past their ability to work in the gig economy. This is a now a serious problem. Of course the funds that could be spent solving it are currently in tax havens. That is where money belongs. So what to do about all these old people hanging about the place, and between you and me, not doing much that’s useful except grandparenting?”

What indeed. Someone has to give them Covid?

“You don’t want giving them Covid that on your conscience. So let it happen as a result of other people crisscrossing the UK in search of Covid tests. World beating navigation will see us through. And if you really want to help out, take a drive to Barnard Castle and sneeze. We’re taking the right steps, at the right time. This is why you need to protect your grandparents so a rogue algorithm can take care of them, just like it did for A level tests.”

Don’t kill your granny. That’s the government’s job.

Public transport in Devon faces an uncertain future unless people get back on buses and trains.

By Daniel Clark, local democracy reporter  www.radioexe.co.uk

An organisation called the Peninsula Transport Shadow Sub National Transport Body, on which local councillors sit, has been told the number of people using buses ris less than half what it used to be across Devon and Cornwall.  Train use is 35 per cent of pre-lockdown levels, but gradually increasing.

Although transport operators receive government support to ensure they continue to run loss-making services, it is uncertain about how long it will last and concerns about the impact it could have if routes stop running. Significant numbers of people are still under the impression that public transport should only be used if essential. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously said people should avoid public transport if possible, although messaging has since changed to allow  bus and train use for any purpose.

But Cllr Mark Coker said: “We have a huge rural area and if bus patronage does not return to usual soon, there will be financial implications for the bus companies and the local authorities. Are we going to actively encourage people to get back on buses, and will the DFT change their message?”

Cllr Geoff Brown added: “The original message to only use public transport if essential nosedived the passenger numbers when we didn’t have an issue with capacity in the first place. For those using the buses it was essential. We have done a lot of work to make people safe, but the messaging isn’t helpful, so can we promote public transport in the near future?”

Dave Gilnos from the Department for Transport said a huge package of funding has been established to support the continued operation of bus services and he didn’t expect any services to fall aside while the funding is in place. He said: “There will come a time when government say they cannot keep supporting the industry forever more, and the question is when that funding will cease. Social distancing is limiting capacity to 50 per cent of what it was previously, and some buses are full, but full is 50 per cent so isn’t generating the revenue it was once. Work is on under way on a bus recovery strategy that will come out in the autumn.”

Daniel Round, from GWR, added that the message was changing to ‘travel with confidence’ and to try and entice people can onto the railway. He said: “We are seeing a uplift in numbers in the westward routes. We are now up to 30 to 35 per cent, when at the height of the pandemic, it was down at two to three per cent. We have extended the agreement with the DFT until June until next year so a sign of stability, and we will change out timetable to 95 per cent of pre-pandemic services.”

A group of 40 Conservative MPs have formed a new group to keep up the pressure on Boris Johnson to fulfil his pledge to “level up” the more deprived areas of the country.

[Leader is Neil O’Brien MP for Harborough of: “The next algorithm disaster – coming to a Conservative constituency near you. This time, it’s housing growth” fame. Owl wonders whether Simon Jupp or Neil Parish are members to put the case for the us in the far South West. Or is this just for “Red Wall” MPs?]

The UK has recorded almost 3,000 cases of Covid-19 for a second consecutive day, raising fears of a resurgence in the virus, as Matt Hancock urged young people in particular to stick to physical distancing rules.

Plans to build 19 new homes in the heart of Exmouth’s town centre have been opposed by the town council.

In Owl’s opinion cost benefit analysis, where a monetary value is used to measure costs and benefits on a common scale, is as contentious as the use of obscure algorithms.

This article discusses some of the tricky ethical issues that arise when trying to evaluate the costs versus the benefits of lockdown. It doesn’t make for comfortable reading.

Larry Elliott www.theguardian.com

Cancer treatments cancelled. Children deprived of schooling. More cases of domestic abuse. Continued restrictions on personal freedom. Over and above the direct damage caused to the economy, the collateral damage from the Covid-19 pandemic has been colossal.

And the crisis is not over by any means. Travel restrictions come and go with mind-boggling frequency. Local quarantining has replaced national lockdowns. Every leading policymaker in the UK, from the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, downwards, knows that the job losses to come threaten to leave permanent scars.

An obvious question, therefore, is was it worth it? Have the costs of shutting down a great chunk of Britain for three months and leaving many restrictions in place after six months been outweighed by the benefits?

An obvious answer is that this is the wrong question to ask, because you can’t measure the value of a human life in terms of gross domestic product, the unemployment rate or the size of the national debt. The tough action taken by the government at the end of March saved lives, end of story.

By the same token, though, it is impossible to put a price on the fact that the number of cancer referrals fell by 70% in April, that there were hardly any follow-up appointments for people with long-term conditions and elective admissions dropped by 75%.

What’s more, the government does put a monetary value on a life when it comes to deciding on resource decisions when it comes to medical care.

It does this by estimating the number of years of life that will be saved adjusted for quality of life. A quality-adjusted life year is valued at £30,000.

Using this figure and estimates for the direct hit to the economy caused by the pandemic, a team of researchers including David Miles, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, have had a go at assessing the benefits of the lockdown against the costs.

This is by no means a simple process. Firstly, it is unclear how big the loss of output will be from the Covid-19 recession, and estimates of the length and the depth of the slump are changing all the time. Secondly, nobody is sure how many lives were saved as a result of the lockdown. Finally, the £30,000 figure for a quality-adjusted life year might be too low, even leaving to one side all of the ethical considerations in making such a calculation.

To allow for these difficulties, Miles and his colleagues use a range of estimates both for the number of lives that might have been lost in the absence of a lockdown, and for the drop in GDP caused by the Covid-19 recession. The trigger for the imposition of the lockdown was the prediction from Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London that 500,000 lives would be lost unless tough restrictions were imposed. In their paper, using data from the summer, Miles et al say the number of excess deaths in the UK caused by the pandemic was 60,000. Subtracting that number from Ferguson’s 500,000 leaves an estimate of 440,000 saved lives.

Based on the ages of those who died from Covid-19, the Miles study assumes the loss of 10 quality-adjusted life years on average, each valued at £30,000. That generates a value for potential years of life saved at £132bn. The figure falls to £30bn if 100,000 lives were saved by the lockdown, and to £6bn if 20,000 lives were saved.

Early estimates that Britain was heading for a slump unparalleled since the first decade of the 18th century have proved too pessimistic. Instead of a 14% drop in national output, the latest forecast from the Bank of England is for a 9.5% contraction, making it merely the worst recession since the one after the end of the first world war.

The value of Britain’s annual output is roughly £2tn , so a 9.5% drop in GDP is worth £190bn. Obviously there would have been a drop in GDP even without a formal lockdown because people would have taken their own precautions. Miles and his colleagues assume that the lockdown was responsible for two-thirds of the damage, leaving a monetary cost of just under £130bn. That figure doesn’t take into account any further setbacks to the economy or the health and education costs.

This is all very well, but did the government have a choice? Wouldn’t going down the Swedish route, a country where far less stringent measures were imposed by the government, have led to Ferguson’s predictions coming true?

This is explored in another study, by Rickard Nyman and Paul Ormerod, in which they look at the difference between Covid-19 cases and deaths in Sweden and England and Wales.

Deaths in both Sweden and England and Wales peaked on the same day – 8 April – and by early August they were again similar. In between, however, the number of deaths in England and Wales was initially higher than in Sweden but then fell more quickly. In the early stages of the pandemic, there were estimates that Sweden would have 80,000 deaths as a result of not having a lockdown. In the event, the total currently stands at just under 6,000. Nyman and Ormerod estimate that the UK lockdown saved 17,700 lives in England and Wales, which they scale up to 20,000 for the UK as a whole.

If that estimate is anywhere near right, there are some obvious conclusions: namely that Britain has paid a very high price for tackling Covid-19; and the government needs to think long and hard before ever resorting to a blanket shutdown during this pandemic or any that may follow.

Dozens of schools across England and Wales have reported coronavirus outbreaks, prompting some to shut their doors while others have sent staff and pupils home to self-isolate.

Amy Walker www.theguardian.com 

A week after children began returning to classrooms for the first time since lockdown in March, a number of schools across parts of the UK have been battling outbreaks.

In Liverpool, an estimated 200 pupils and 21 staff are self-isolating following positive cases at five schools in the city. In Suffolk five teachers tested positive for coronavirus, leading the school to close, and in the Midlands a school which was visited by the prime minister less than two weeks ago has had one teacher test positive.

In areas including Bradford, Leeds, Lancashire, Manchester, Nottingham and Leicester, small handfuls of pupils and staff who tested positive for the virus have led to schools asking some pupils to self-isolate.

Five members of the teaching staff at Samuel Ward academy in Haverhill, Suffolk, tested positive, with the school shut on Monday following advice from Public Health England. Two other members of staff are awaiting results. The school said the closure was a “precautionary measure” and it hoped to reopen on Tuesday. A deep clean is to take place.

Stuart Keeble, the director of public health at Suffolk county council, said: “Understandably, this news may worry parents across Suffolk, but it is important to remember that the risk of children contracting Covid-19 is still very small. Evidence suggests that children are more likely to contract Covid-19 at home.”

Anyone who had been in close contact with the infected staff had been contacted and asked to self-isolate for 14 days, the school said. Further contact tracing will continue and other pupils and staff may be asked to self-isolate.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, “bubbles” of pupils and 21 teachers at Liverpool college, Sudley junior school, West Derby school, Hunts Cross primary school and Our Lady Immaculate primary school have been asked to self-isolate after positive tests.

At Castle Rock school in Coalville, Leicestershire – which was visited by Boris Johnson on 26 August – one member of staff tested positive. In a letter written by the head of the school, Michael Gamble, he told parents the school had “sought immediate advice” from Public Health England and was “continuing to closely follow … government guidance”.

In Cardiff, 30 pupils in year 7 at Ysgol Bro Edern have been asked to self-isolate for 14 days after a student tested positive. Iwan Pritchard, the headteacher, said: “Due to the procedures we have in place, restricting contact between different classes and logging seating plans of all lessons, we have been able to limit the numbers of pupils needing to self-isolate and there is no need for parents or pupils that have not been contacted to self-isolate or be unduly concerned.

“Having kept to the 2-metre social distancing rule, or worn a face covering if this hasn’t been possible, no school staff need to self-isolate.”

On Friday, 100 pupils were also asked to self-isolate for 14 days at the JCB academy in Rocester, Staffordshire, after a pupil tested positive.

Coronavirus cases have also been confirmed at six schools in the area around Middlesbrough, although they will not be closing. On Monday, close contacts of a year 8 pupil at Ian Ramsey Church of England academy who contracted the virus have been asked to self-isolate, while two primary schools – understood to be Marton Manor and Hemlington Hall academy – have notified parents of cases within the schools.

Redcar and Cleveland borough council said on Sunday that a positive case had also been recorded at St Benedict’s Catholic primary school. St Aidan’s CE primary school in Hartlepool said in a Facebook post to parents it also had a confirmed Covid-19 case, while Outwood academy Ormesby in Middlesbrough said in a short statement that a confirmed case had been found “within the school community”.

The National Education Union said that though the disruption caused by pupils and staff having to self-isolate was “inevitable”, there needed to be more planning in place for schools to cope with outbreaks.

Kevin Courtney, the NEU’s joint general secretary, said: “This should include employing more teachers and looking for additional space to seek to minimise disruption as well as ensuring IT access for children and young people who need it when they have to be at home.

“Dozens more elected mayors and the abolition of many councils are being planned under a shake-up of local government due to be unveiled next month………However, a fight looms over plans to abolish significant numbers of district councils, many of them Tory-controlled, as part of plans for a slimmed-down local government system.”

Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor www.thetimes.co.uk 

Dozens more elected mayors and the abolition of many councils are being planned under a shake-up of local government due to be unveiled next month.

Ministers want to devolve more power to areas that agree to new elected mayors, who they argue are more accountable and better at boosting local economies.

Conservatives have also proved more successful in winning mayoralties in “red wall” areas than they have in winning Labour-controlled councils.

However, a fight looms over plans to abolish significant numbers of district councils, many of them Tory-controlled, as part of plans for a slimmed-down local government system.

Downing Street denied that they wanted to abolish two thirds of authorities by replacing district councils with unitary authorities, and insisted change would happen only with local consent.

However, ministers do want to move towards more single-tier council areas, which the County Councils Network estimates would save £3 billion a year.

District councils oppose the move, saying it would create unwieldy mega-authorities responsible for more than a million people each, far larger than local government units in other countries.

A cap of about 600,000 people in any unitary authority is being considered as one way of avoiding this.

A spokesman for the local government ministry said: “We want to devolve and decentralise to give more power to local communities, providing opportunities for all areas to enjoy devolution. But there will be no blanket abolition of district councils and no top-down restructuring of local government.”

Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, will publish a white paper on devolution next month, which the spokesman said “will set out our detailed plans and we continue to work closely with local areas to establish solutions to local government reform”.

About four in ten residents in England will be represented by city mayors once West Yorkshire elects its first next year and ministers say directly elected leaders “stimulate job creation, build homes, improve transport and reduce local carbon emissions”.

Despite the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic, government sources say that “now is the time to finish what we’ve started” by allowing more mayors.

Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, is seen as the prototype for winning Tory control of local government in the north and Midlands. A government source told The Sunday Times: “This is all about red wall empowerment. It’s about giving a stronger voice to the regions and levelling up by handing more power down to the people and breaking Labour’s traditional stranglehold over local authorities, especially in the north.”

The UK has recorded a massive rise in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus, amid concerns the government has lost control of the epidemic just as people are returning to work and universities prepare to reopen.

Caroline Bannock www.theguardian.com

Labour has demanded the health secretary, Matt Hancock, give an urgent statement to the House of Commons to explain the increase and why some people are still being told to drive hundreds of miles to have a test.

On Sunday almost 3,000 people in the UK tested positive for Covid-19, a 50% increase in a single day and the highest daily total since May.

“They’ve lost control of the virus,” said Prof Gabriel Scally, a former NHS regional director of public health for the south-west. “It’s no longer small outbreaks they can stamp on. It’s become endemic in our poorest communities and this is the result. It’s extraordinarily worrying when schools are opening and universities are going to be going back.”

As seen in other countries opening up after lockdown, the majority of new cases appear to be in younger people who typically have milder infections than the over-50s. The number of people needing hospital treatment has remained steady, but these lag behind new cases by about two weeks.

Public Health England reported 2,576 new cases on Sunday and 2,988 for the UK overall. “It’s a massive jump,” said Christina Pagel, a professor of operational research at University College London. “There is no way you can look at these figures and feel confident that things are going in the right direction.”

The rise came amid concerns that testing centres were struggling to cope with demand. Many people who sought tests in recent days were advised to take round trips of more than 100 miles because their local centres did not have capacity.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said many people had contacted him in recent days saying they had been offered tests in Leicester and Scotland.

“The fact people are being directed to bizarre locations is yet another example of national test and trace not working. That’s why it needs to be under local control. The danger is someone who is symptomatic in Greater Manchester, where many areas are still classed as high risk, tries to book a test, gets directed to Leicester and thinks ‘sod that’ and then potentially passes on the virus. It is so obvious that the system should always offer you a test at your local centre, it should keep you within your geography.”

A government source said there was significant concern that the UK was “six weeks behind France”, where the trajectory showed more young people being infected, leading to increased hospitalisations of vulnerable groups.

Hancock said the rise was “concerning” but said workplaces should still be operating safely.

“The cases are predominantly among younger people but we have seen in other countries across the world and in Europe this sort of rise in the cases among younger people leading to a rise across the population as a whole, so it is so important that people don’t allow this illness to infect their grandparents and to lead to the sort of problems that we saw earlier in the year,” he told Sky News.

Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said while some of the new cases may be because of catch-up from delayed tests over the past few days, it was still “a marked increase”. He said reports of people making long journeys to get tested did not bode well for the autumn and winter when cases are expected to rise. Having people driving around the country with coronavirus would help spread the disease, while focusing testing on hotspots risked missing fresh outbreaks that could be brought under control, he said.

“It’s got to be a better managed and better put together system than the one we have now. If we’re not coping now, it’s going to be awful in two months’ time when case numbers have doubled or quadrupled,” he said.

Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said his son travelled 80 miles from St Albans to Gatwick to get a test. “It’s ridiculous. If you want to get people back to work, you’ve got to get the testing system to work, or people won’t go if they are being responsible.”

It took 59-year-old Jackie Cawkwell, who works as an administrator in Nottingham, three days to be offered a coronavirus test close to home. She started feeling unwell on Thursday with Covid symptoms including nausea, diarrhoea and temperature. “When I tried to get a test on the Friday, it only gave me the option of going to Oldham, that’s 57 miles away,” she said. “I tried three times and I was only given Oldham and when you are feeling that poorly, it’s just not feasible to do a 100-plus round trip. I was despairing.”

Labour is likely to ask the Speaker for an urgent question in the House of Commons on Monday to force Hancock to explain the issues. The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, said ministers urgently needed to get a grip on the system’s failings.

Ashworth said the increase in coronavirus cases was “deeply concerning” and a stark reminder that there is no room for complacency in tackling the spread of the virus. “This increase, combined with the ongoing testing fiasco and the poor performance of the contact tracing system, needs an explanation from ministers,” he said.

“Last week Matt Hancock was boasting of his ‘moonshot’ plan to test millions of the population every day but he can’t even get basic testing delivered for people who are experiencing symptoms,” he said.

“What’s more, ministers still aren’t testing care homes staff and residents routinely despite promising to do so. They claim test rationing is to help hotspots but on Friday a Leicester constituent tried to book a local test at a drive-through and was told to travel 55 miles to Sheffield instead. This simply isn’t the ‘world beating’ system we were promised by September. Matt Hancock should come to the Commons today and explain what has gone wrong and how he will fix it.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said there was a “high demand” for tests, but that capacity was being targeted at outbreak hotspots. They claimed testing capacity would reach 500,000 per day by the end of October, and that new technologies would process tests faster.