PM touts ban on disposable barbecues as areas hit by wildfires – but some Labour MPs will be hoping for more ambitious ideas to tackle crisis
Andy Burnham will chair an emergency Cobra meeting in response to extreme heat, which has caused wildfires and plunged many parts of Britain into drought.
The prime minister will meet ministers, officials and agencies as high temperatures continue across the UK, with temperatures of 33C forecast on Wednesday and up to 38C on Thursday.
Continue reading...Calls for speed limiters or mandated helmet use after research into injuries at three paediatric trauma centres
The number of children involved in crashes on e-scooters has soared in recent years, with some as young as nine involved in collisions, research has found.
Researchers carried out a review of injuries among the under-16s at three specialist paediatric trauma centres – Alder Hey in Liverpool, and Sheffield and Royal Manchester children’s hospitals – between January 2019 and December 2024.
Continue reading...Exclusive: England ‘desperately unprepared’ for effects of crisis including water shortages and heatwaves
Just 20 staff are working on climate adaptation within a key government department tasked with protecting the environment and maintaining food security, a freedom of information request has revealed.
The officials make up 0.3% of staff within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Continue reading...Verdant thinktank says cost could top £25bn a year by 2030 and calls for maximum temperature for working and urban redesign to cool down cities
Repeated debilitating heatwaves this summer are likely to have cost the UK economy more than £4bn in lost economic output by the end of July, new analysis shows.
Green thinktank Verdant had suggested June’s unseasonally hot weather had an economic cost of £2.36bn. Updating its assessment to include last month’s high temperatures, it finds a £4.4bn hit to output.
Continue reading...British driver Andy Green reached 406.320 mph in car powered by two hydrogen internal combustion engines
The only person to break the sound barrier in a car earned another world record Tuesday in a show of force for hydrogen power.
British driver Andy Green reached 406.320 mph (653.908 kph) in a car powered by two hydrogen internal combustion engines with a combined 1,600 horsepower, setting the record for that vehicle category, according to the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the international governing body of motor sports.
Continue reading...The prime minister’s money-saving policies are popular but they are yet to convince voters he can take on the big things
It was last year that Martin Lewis, the money-saving guru, advised the government to find “100 small things that piss people off” and set about sorting them out.
That approach has been adopted almost immediately by Andy Burnham since entering office, as he began his programme of “everyday fixes” to tackle problems that can be dealt with through minor policy tweaks.
Continue reading...Clifford Wilby, 63, started talking to Walthamstow MP about knife crime and her ‘failings as a member of parliament’
A 63-year-old man has been found guilty of harassing the Labour MP Stella Creasy after he was “abusive and aggressive” to her on a tube train.
Clifford Wilby, of east London, saw the MP for Walthamstow in July 2025 on a Victoria Line train, Westminster magistrates’ court heard.
Continue reading...Rooms in Icelandic capital Reykjavík cost double usual rate and Spain also enjoying strong bookings
Hotel prices have surged in key European cities as hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to see the first total eclipse visible from the continent this century.
Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, has seen one of the biggest jumps in hotel room prices, being one of the few accessible locations to see the full eclipse before evening on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Air transport hub in west London reports 7.86m passengers in July, compared with 8.15m for Istanbul’s new airport away from the city
Istanbul airport has overtaken Heathrow as Europe’s busiest airport by passenger numbers, leading the London hub to say its “case for expansion has never been clearer”.
Figures published on Tuesday showed 7.9 million passengers passed through Heathrow’s terminals in July, compared with Istanbul’s 8.15 million.
Continue reading...Police looking into whether Joshua Kerry linked to alleged attempted burglary last year at Reform leader’s then home
Police are investigating whether Joshua Kerry, the man charged with the murder of the former Reform UK and Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe, had any role in an attempted burglary last year at the then London home of Nigel Farage.
Kerry, 28, from Rotherham, was charged with the murder of Widdecombe, 78, who was killed at her Devon home in July, after an investigation by counter-terrorism police.
Continue reading...Badenoch adviser Joshua Bonehill-Paine was found guilty in 2016 of racially aggravated harassment of then MP Luciana Berger
The Labour peer Luciana Berger has urged Kemi Badenoch to “listen to victims” and reverse her decision to give a national advisory role to a former neo-Nazi.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally. In 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at Berger, an MP at the time. He was also the founder and leader of the National British Resistance, a far-right group.
Continue reading...Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders
With parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis.
In a statement, he said:
We are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions.
This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the second world war and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything is under control is gross negligence, blatantly untrue and misses the severity of the crisis.
Continue reading...Woman had gone to London hotel for ‘night away from the fear’ in latest incident of chain giving keys to men without checking
Travelodge staff gave a room key to the domestic abuser of a woman, who then physically attacked her.
The woman, who is remaining anonymous, told the BBC she was staying in a branch of the hotel in London to escape the man, but he followed her and was given a key by the reception staff.
Continue reading...Campaign group says firm is ‘taking the mickey’ by paying fee and Andy Burnham should nationalise it
Thames Water has paid its chief financial officer, Steve Buck, a £1m signing fee despite intense scrutiny of Britain’s biggest water company’s finances as it tries to avoid being taken into public control.
The utility revealed that it made the payment last month, in a letter sent last week by Sir Adrian Montague, its chair, to MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs select committee, Sky News first reported.
Continue reading...Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach
Harry Potter fans have forced a new multimillion-pound power cable between the UK and Ireland to be relocated after complaining it would desecrate the “grave” of Dobby, a fictional elf.
The character was laid to rest on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
Continue reading...Met Office considers amber or red warning as forecasters say Thursday is likely to be hottest day of the week
Temperatures could reach 36C (97F) or higher this week, forecasters have said, with possible disruption to railway lines and power networks as the Met Office considers issuing rare amber or red extreme heat warnings.
Parts of the UK are forecast to experience the fifth heatwave of the summer as the country continues to bake in an unprecedented period of dry, hot weather.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sadiq Khan urges Westminster council to adopt ‘positive vision of economic growth’ of nightlife
Sadiq Khan has ordered Westminster council to scrap a policy that would ban new pubs and bars from opening in Soho and the West End of London.
This comes after the Guardian revealed the council’s new licensing policy asks pubs to stop customers from standing up while consuming beverages, which it calls “vertical drinking”. The policy is under consultation and also asks pubs to have table service rather than allowing orders at the bar.
Continue reading...Costs of security and removal efforts have reignited debate over whether work is vandalism or valuable public art
Three Banksy artworks have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 in removal efforts, security and other costs, with the bill expected to rise.
The largest bill relates to a mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice in London in September 2025, where efforts to remove it and provide security have so far cost more than £85,000, according to the BBC.
Continue reading...Katie and John Meehan say responses to campaign they launched after death of daughter Genevieve must be ‘wake-up call’
The parents of a nine-month-old girl who died after being placed in an unsafe sleeping position at nursery said they feared poor practice may be “rife” across England.
Genevieve Meehan suffocated when she was strapped face down to a beanbag for an hour and 37 minutes at a nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, in May 2022.
Continue reading...Missing payments suggest employment laws may have been breached by recruitment agencies used by courier company
Low-paid temporary workers at one of the UK’s top courier businesses have missed out on entitlements to sick pay and pension contributions, internal documents suggest.
The payments – typically included in the “charge rate” that large brands pay recruitment companies to supply them with temporary workers – are missing from internal spreadsheets calculating the cost of employing thousands of transient staff working at DPD.
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