Initial £15.5m will go to schemes such as launch of large regional park to improving green spaces along canals
A coalition of environmental and heritage bodies has launched a billion-pound mission to bring nature into the heart of urban areas in the UK.
The first phase of the Nature Towns and Cities initiative will involve £15.5m being invested in 40 towns and cities across the four nations.
Continue reading...ONS data shows jobless rate climbing to highest rate since June 2021 with growth in average earnings slowing to 5%.
Unemployment climbed and wage growth slowed in the three months to May, according to official figures that will pressure the Bank of England to cut interest rates next month.
Data from the Office for National Statistics, released on Thursday, showed that Britain’s official unemployment rate rose to 4.7% in the three months to May, up 0.1% from April to reach the highest level since June 2021.
Continue reading...The country, beset by war, has the world’s lowest rates of vaccination, says the World Health Organization, as global immunisation drive also stalls
Children in Sudan, caught up in what aid organisations have called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and threatened by rising levels of violence, are increasingly vulnerable to deadly infectious diseases as vaccinations in the country plummet.
In 2022, more than 90% of young children in Sudan received their routine vaccinations. But that figure has nearly halved to 48%, the lowest in the world, according to the World Health Organization.
Continue reading...Resolution Foundation says unpaid carers on low incomes pay ‘very heavy price’ for looking after loved ones
The carer’s allowance benefit should be overhauled and the basic rate of payment increased to lift more unpaid carers and disabled people out of financial hardship, according to a living standards thinktank.
The Resolution Foundation said unpaid carers on low incomes were paying a “very heavy price” – a typical penalty of 10% or as much as £7,000 a year compared with non-carers – for looking after loved ones full-time.
Continue reading...Children can buy pouches legally as they are not regulated as a specific tobacco or nicotine product
Nicotine pouches are being legally sold to children and are being made appealing to them with special flavours and packaging mimicking sweets, a trading standards body has said.
In June, it became illegal for single-use vapes to be sold in England to tackle their widespread use by children. However, there is currently no legislation that restricts the age at which you can buy nicotine pouches.
Continue reading...Agreement between government and voluntary sector aims to reset relations after erosion of trust under Tories
The right to engage in political activity and protest peacefully is to be enshrined in a new agreement between the government and UK charities and campaigners aimed in part at ending years of damaging “culture wars”.
The agreement is intended to reset relations between government and the voluntary sector after years of mutual distrust during which Conservative ministers limited public rights to protest, froze out campaigners, and targeted “woke” charities.
Continue reading...Updated RSHE guidance says curriculum should be ‘age appropriate’ and lifts strict age limits around teaching gender
Pupils in England should be taught what the law is on biological sex and gender reassignment, but schools must be “careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”, according to new government guidance.
The updated relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance, published on Tuesday, says schools “should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity” and must avoid any suggestion that social transitioning offers a “simple solution” to feelings of distress or discomfort.
Continue reading...Clive Foster aims to ‘confront uncomfortable realities’ and expand his remit to help those faced with discrimination
The newly appointed Windrush commissioner has promised to expand his remit to fight for marginalised communities who have experienced discrimination in housing, education, employment and policing.
At a launch event on Wednesday, Clive Foster will tell the immigration minister, Seema Malhotra, that he does not intend to perform a public relations role for the government.
Continue reading...Children from lower-income families also remain significantly behind their peers as impact of pandemic continues to be felt
Five-year-olds with special educational needs in England are lagging a record 20 months behind their peers, according to a report that says the country’s youngest learners face a “deepening crisis”, five years after the pandemic.
Since Covid closed schools, disrupting learning and triggering falls in attendance, there has been widespread concern about the growing attainment gap that leaves disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs significantly behind their peers.
Continue reading...Government says new guidance will challenge ‘manosphere’ myths as DfE reports epidemic-scale misogyny
Secondary school pupils in England are to be taught about “incel” culture and the links between pornography and misogyny as part of long-awaited statutory government guidance due to be published on Tuesday.
It will include a new focus on positive role models for boys and challenge “myths about women and relationships that are spread online in the ‘manosphere’”, but will warn schools against “stigmatising boys for being boys”.
Continue reading...Scheme aims to stop cables trailing across pavements and encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles
Local councils in England will be encouraged to install pavement gullies that link houses to the kerbside so that electric cars owners can charge their cars from home if they do not have a driveway.
The new government scheme hopes to stop cables trailing across pavements, as EV owners in built up areas where off-street parking is scarce, try to charge their cars. The Department for Transport has said it will put £25m towards “cross-pavement” charging – essentially a narrow cable channel with a cover on top.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Latest poll comes as Wes Streeting urges medics to call off ‘unnecessary and unfair strikes’
Public support for strikes by resident doctors has collapsed, with barely one in four voters now backing their campaign of industrial action, according to the latest polling, which reveals the deepening unpopularity of further NHS strikes.
Previously strong approval by voters for strikes by junior doctors – as resident doctors were known until last year – has halved from 52% a year ago to just 26%.
Continue reading...Resident doctors have voted to strike over pay but how much has their real-terms earnings changed since 2008?
Resident doctors in England have voted to strike for five days from 25 July, reigniting one of the NHS’s most bitter industrial disputes.
At the heart of the row is pay: the British Medical Association (BMA) says resident (formerly known as junior) doctors have seen their real earnings fall by more than a quarter since 2008. The government says the union’s demands are unaffordable, and they’ve already received generous rises in recent years.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Young people deterred from politics, Rushanara Ali warns, as government plans stricter punishments
MPs and political candidates are facing “industrial” levels of intimidation and harassment, a minister has warned, as the government outlines plans for stricter punishments for those found guilty of abuse.
Rushanara Ali, the minister for democracy, said her colleagues were suffering worse harassment than ever before and warned this was deterring many young people from becoming politically active.
Continue reading...Stephen Cottrell tells General Synod assisted dying means assuming ‘authority over death that belongs to God alone’
Members of the Church of England should work to “withstand and even turn back” the forces of public opinion “that risk making … assisted dying a reality in our national life”, the archbishop of York has said.
Speaking to the church’s General Synod on Friday, Stephen Cottrell said permitting assisted dying would change “forever the contract between doctor and patient, pressurising the vulnerable and assuming an authority over death that belongs to God alone”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Tom Dolphin says rise needed to redress real-terms earnings loss since 2008 and strikes could last years
Resident doctors’ 29% pay claim is non-negotiable, reasonable and easily affordable for the NHS, the new leader of the medical profession has said.
Strikes to ensure resident – formerly junior – doctors in England get the full 29% could drag on for years, according to Dr Tom Dolphin, the British Medical Association’s new council chair.
Continue reading...Study shows such young people have higher risk of arriving at paediatric ICU severely ill and have worse outcomes
Minority ethnic children and children from deprived backgrounds across the UK are more likely to die following admission to intensive care than their white and more affluent counterparts, a study has found.
These children consistently had worse outcomes following their stay in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the research by academics at Imperial College London discovered.
Continue reading...Curbs on LGBTQ+ rights and a halt to US funding may reverse decades of progress in fight to end Aids epidemic, warns UNAids
People at higher risk of HIV, such as gay men and people who inject drugs, are facing record levels of criminalisation worldwide, according to UNAids.
For the first time since the joint UN programme on HIV/Aids began reporting on punitive laws a decade ago, the number of countries criminalising same-sex sexual activity and gender expression has increased.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: As a new Guardian project begins, we hear from the teenagers navigating deprivation, isolation and a sense of being forgotten
Good morning. A few weeks ago, 18-year-old Tamsin Jarman-Smith, born and raised in a small town just outside Blackpool, sat on a battered sofa at House of Wingz, a community youth organisation tucked down an alleyway a few streets from the beach, and explained what it felt like to be a young person growing up in a coastal town.
“I’m lucky because I found this passion for dancing and I come to this place, which has saved me I think, especially my creativity and hope for opportunities for myself, but lots of people my age feel like there is nothing here for them,” she said.
Europe | Talks over a British and French migration deal remained deadlocked on Wednesday night, as negotiators haggled over how much Britain will pay towards the cost of policing small boat crossings.
UK news | Campaigners have decried as “dangerously naive” the UK government’s sweeping deal with Google to provide free technology to the public sector.
Europe | Police have raided the headquarters of France’s far-right National Rally and seized documents as part of an investigation into alleged illegal campaign financing.
UK news | Thames Water has refused to claw back almost £2.5m paid to senior managers from an emergency loan that was meant to keep the failing utilities company afloat.
Housing | The Bank of England has rolled out looser mortgage rules that policymakers hope will help 36,000 more first-time buyers on to the housing ladder each year.
Continue reading...Watchdog releases nine new rulings setting clear precedents for online selling
Online pharmacies are no longer allowed to run adverts for weight loss injections, the advertising watchdog has ruled, as part of a crackdown on what has been described as a “wild west” culture of online selling.
In the UK, advertising prescription-only medications (POMs) – which includes all weight loss jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro – to the public is illegal. However, a Guardian investigation previously found some online pharmacies either breaking these rules outright, or exploiting grey areas to peddle the medications to the public.
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