December 2016

Host of knitted angels descend on Wellingborough

As its Christmas I thought Id start with a second heart warming “And Finally” all about the power of festive knitting. This story tells us:

Hundreds of knitted angels have been distributed around Wellingborough by members of the Great Park Street methodist church.

One thousand, five hundred of the six-inch tall woollen figures have been placed around the town for people to find and take home.BBC

Wendy Sturgess, from the church, said the idea was taken from the north-east, where her mother was involved in a similar project inspired by the Angel of the North statue.

“I thought it would be a rather nice project for our church to have a go at,” she said.

“The idea is when people find them it will perhaps enable them to stop for a moment or two in the business and rush up to Christmas and think about what Christmas is really about.

“They will hopefully bring some nice thoughts of Christmas to people.”

Government misled public with 99% success rate claim on troubled families, say MPs

I find this a really interesting story. We do a lot of evaluation and I am always suspicious when hype challenges facts – which it often does in our post truth world. A number of rural councils were involved in this scheme, which the stats now tell us didn’t deliver all that was ascribed to it. The story tells us:

Claims that a flagship intervention project had turned around the lives of 99% of England’s most troubled families were misleading, a Commons committee has said.

The government also overstated the financial benefits of the scheme when it claimed it had saved taxpayers £1.2bn, MPs found.

They attacked the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) for “unacceptable” delays and “obfuscation” in publishing an evaluation of the troubled families programme.

Rewarding local authorities that carried out the programme encouraged “perverse” behaviour, with some families pushed through the scheme too quickly, the public accounts committee (PAC) also found.

MPs called for the government to review the payment-by-results system for the programme to stop councils trying to speed families through the system. Local authorities claimed reward payments for 116,654 families out of the maximum 117,910 for which they could claim in the first phase, the report said.

MPs said the government had failed to prove the effectiveness of the initiative, which was launched by David Cameron in the wake of the 2011 riots to turn around the lives of 120,000 families in England by 2015 and later extended to help an additional 400,000 families.

It follows the release of research in October by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), which had been commissioned to carry out an official national study, that found the scheme had “no significant impact”.

 

Social housing lettings cut by 22,000 in past two years

More evidence of the challenges facing those seeing social housing. This story tells us:

Councils and housing associations are letting nearly 22,000 fewer homes for social rent each year than they were two years ago, the latest Government figures show.

A statistical release put out by the Department for Communities and Local Government shows there were 261,163 social lettings by housing associations and 113,449 by councils in 2015/16 compared to 270,659 and 125,812 respectively in 2013/14.

The cut in genuinely affordable homes comes after a period of sustained cut in funding for building such dwellings, with grant funding for social rents all but abolished. The Government has also beefed up its Right To Buy scheme which has seen a sell-off of council housing to the private sector across the country.

Ministers have been directing house building funding towards building so-called “affordable” homes, which in fact cost tenants as much as 80 per cent of market rent; as well as discounted “starter” and shared ownership homes for people to buy

Christmas strike chaos: Pressure grows on Theresa May as 1,000 Royal Mail workers threaten wildcat action as Post Office workers walk out

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Does this represent “Christmas contagion” or is it just a flash in the pan. One of the interesting things it represents in my thinking is the discontent of those with very low wages in work as opposed to the 1980s scourge of unemployment. Interestingly there are a higher proportion of people suffering in work poverty in rural than urban England. Any action around postal deliveries will also hit vulnerable rural dwellers disproportionately. This article tells us:

Strikes that spell misery for hundreds of thousands of people this week are set to worsen as Royal Mail staff threaten new wildcat stoppages which could delay millions of Christmas cards and presents.

A further 1,000 Royal Mail delivery staff could take unofficial industrial action as a separate five-day strike by 3,000 Crown post office workers starts on Monday, The Telegraph can reveal, at a time when the service is  creaking under the weight of festive demand.

It comes at the start of a week of strike chaos with conductors on rail network Southern set to stop trains south of London on Monday and Tuesday, and more stoppages by British Airways baggage handlers and cabin crew over the weekend frustrating many attempting to get home for Christmas.

Pressure is growing on Theresa May to bring forward Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting to discuss how to ease the crisis.

Senior Tory figures are calling on the Prime Minister to consider legislation to end the misery after Sir Patrick McLoughlin, a former transport secretary, described the action as “politically motivated”.

UK house price growth will slow to 3% in 2017, say surveyors

Does this mean rural housing will get relatively more affordable, or will it be harder to raise the money to get a first foot on the rural housing ladder?

UK house price growth will slow in 2017 but the legacy of insufficient housebuilding will mean that demand will outstrip supply and lead to a 3% rise over the year, surveyors have predicted.

Although the most bullish housing market forecast for the new year released so far, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said it expected growth to be about half that in 2016. A year ago, it predicted price rises of 6% and official figures are on track to meet that, with October’s annual growth rate at 6.9%.

Rics said it expected supply issues to continue to drive prices upwards over the next 12 months. “Following on from the 2016 forecast, the supply pipeline or lack of it is at the forefront of the analysis and dominates the residential market,” it said. “While there is an improvement, the legacy of building on an insufficient scale has left the average inventory on estate agents’ books close to a historic low.”

Since June’s referendum, Rics members around the UK have reported a fall in the number of homes coming on to the market, while would-be buyers have continued to register their interest. This has been backed up by figures from mortgage lenders, which showed a 20% fall in the number of loans to home movers in October.

Rics said the number of sales was set to fall slightly from 2016’s figure, from about 1.25m to between 1.15m and 1.2m, reflecting a downwards trend over recent months.

Glastonbury festival to move from Worthy Farm in 2019, says founder

In the Hinterland sent out during the shortest daylight week of the year – here is a story from the region of Stonehenge and Glastonbury to reflect on how everything needs to be done in moderation! It tells us:

The Glastonbury festival will be moved from its home at Worthy Farm in 2019 to protect the site, under plans outlined by its founder, Michael Eavis. He said the move to a site about 100 miles away was likely to take place every five years.

Eavis revealed that he had identified a site in the Midlands, though he did not specify where it was. “I am arranging for one year off, say every fifth year or so, to try and move the show to a site that’s more suitable, I have to say. But it would be a huge loss to Somerset if it went there forever, would it not?” he said.

Eavis, who started hosting the festival at Worthy Farm in 1970, told the BBC: “We’ve got a wonderful product, what we do, and we can do it almost anywhere. I love my own farm … I might have to move it eventually.

“Most people are on side now and it’s a wonderful, wonderful boost for the whole of Somerset and beyond as well.” He insisted the move away from the county would not be permanent, saying: “I don’t want to lose it for ever, no way.”

The festival has a regular fallow year to give local people – and the land itself – a rest from the annual disruption. The next fallow year is due in 2018.

Thousands of schools stand to lose out under new funding formula

Oops has something gone awry here- this seems in part to involve a positive redistribution to rural areas. I am sure the picture is less than straightforward but the article tells us:

Thousands of cash-strapped schools are set to lose further money from their budgets as a result of the government’s new funding formula unveiled by the education secretary, Justine Greening.

Under the proposals announced on Wednesday, more than 9,000 schools in England will lose funding, with money moving from London and other urban centres that have been well funded in the past to schools in areas that receive less money.

Almost 11,000 schools will gain from the redrafted formula, of which 3,400 will see increases of 5% to their funding. However, unions warned that even the so-called winners in the funding shakeup were likely to see their gains outweighed by real-terms cuts to their funding over the next three years.

The long-awaited new funding formula was announced on the same day that Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, warned that schools in England were facing an 8% real-terms cut in funding per pupil by 2019-20 as a result of £3bn worth of cuts. The changes outlined in the new funding formula will mean further cuts on top of this for some schools.

Full details of which areas will win and lose were revealed in the Department for Education’s second consultation on its national funding formula, which aims to address historic gaps in funding between different areas that can amount to thousands of pounds per pupil.

More than 100 local authorities will see gains under the new formula – with the 10 lowest-funded local authorities gaining on average 3.6% – while almost 50 will see cuts to their funding. In 2018-19, the first year of the revised funding, Derby, York and Plymouth are among the winners, while the top five losers are London boroughs.

Theresa May pledges to seek long-term solution to social care squeeze

I tend to agree with Norman Lamb that the measures announced here amount to both a postcode lottery (based on those areas with the biggest tax base benefitting most) and that it really represents a sticking plaster on an issue which differentially assails rural authorities. The article tells us:

Theresa May has pledged to seek a “long-term solution” to the challenge of funding social care for older people, as she confirmed that local authorities would be allowed to bring forward increases in council tax to ease the pressures on the creaking system.

Challenged by Jeremy Corbyn on what he called the crisis in social care, May said her government would give councils more flexibility to raise more money in the short term – but would also seek a sustainable funding model.

“You cannot look at this question as simply being about money in the short term. If we’re going to give people the reassurance they need in the long term, it’s about finding a way forward that will give a sustainable solution for the future,” she said.

Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, is expected to announce on Thursday that local authorities will be allowed to increase council tax by up to 3% next year and the year after, with the money ringfenced to pay for social care.

The maximum increase had been 2% over each of the next three years, but councils will now be able to make upfront rises of 3% in each of the next two years.

Government sources were keen to stress that no further rises would be permitted – so the total increase in council tax over the three-year period would remain the same, at 6%.

Pressure has been mounting on Downing Street to tackle the demands on social care, since the chancellor, Philip Hammond, triggered a Tory revolt by failing to make more funding available at his autumn statement last month.

NHS chief: bus passes and pensions must be up for discussion to tackle social care crisis

I’m all up for a debate about joining up the splits between primary and acute care which lies at the heart of the issues profiled in this article. It tells us:

Free bus passes and pension protections for older people should be reconsidered if Britain has any hope of solving the crisis facing social care, the head of the NHS has suggested.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, told MPs that there is “no point” giving people free bus transport if there is no one to provide the basic care they need to enable them to leave their home in the first place.

He signalled that far more radical action may be needed to help older people than plans, expected to be unveiled by Theresa May, to channel extra council tax money into funding care.

Monster-wheat grown by Oxford could revolutionise farming

With the implications of Brexit for food self-sufficiency this is a thought provoking article:

A crop spray which can boost farmer’s wheat yields by one fifth, without the need for genetic modification, has been developed by scientists at Oxford University.

Researchers have found a molecule which helps plants make the best use of the sugary fuel that they generate during photosynthesis. And with more fuel, the plants can produce bigger grains.

Other scientists in Britain have developed ways to genetically modify crops to increase yields, and the Department of Environment is currently deciding whether to allow a field trial for GM wheat in Hertfordshire.

But genetic modification has proved controversial with campaigners warning it could disrupt nature or be toxic to humans, while critics point out that GM has never been proven to increase yields, despite 20 years of trials.

In contrast, the new technique which is described in the journal Nature, would be far less controversial, and could be administered simply by farmers using a crop-sprayer. The results were seen after just one application.

 

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