Female colleague says she was forced out shortly after incident with Luke Campbell, Hull and East Yorkshire mayor
A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing “naked and sexualised” images of himself to a female member of staff.
Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion and the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police earlier this month.
Continue reading...Council car parks have switched away from ticket machines to cut costs, leading to extra fees for users
Drivers are unwittingly paying up to 40% more to park as more councils switch to app-only payments and force customers to pick up the tab.
Many councils across England have removed pay and display machines and replaced them with app payments, including a number in London. Most local authorities encourage drivers to pay by app to beat queues, while apps are often the only way to pay when ticket machines are out of order. However, many car park signs fail to mention that app payments may incur an additional service fee.
Continue reading...Unison refuses to ballot members on offer that would see thousands of council employees worse off
Thousands of Glasgow council workers face being sacked and reappointed under less favourable terms in one of the UK’s biggest ever “fire-and-rehire” exercises, after union negotiations broke down once again this week.
About 23,000 workers – all of the council’s non-teaching staff – first heard they were affected last week when talks between the SNP-led council and the GMB, Unison and Unite unions fell apart. Those negotiations concerned a new pay and grading system designed to resolve historical pay equality issues. Unison refused to ballot its members on an offer that would see pay cuts for 11% of council employees, prompting the council to begin issuing fire-and-rehire letters.
Continue reading...PM has praised Abu Dhabi group as ‘huge partner’ in reshaping Manchester, but critics say this ignores public cost of city’s transformation
In July 2016, the Manchester City player Yaya Touré ambled into a small bar near Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium and offered a bemused smile as dozens of Chinese fans rushed towards him.
Manchester City had just won their sixth trophy under the big-spending ownership of Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group and the blues were international megastars. They were also magnets for investment.
Continue reading...PM, in first speech to party conference as leader, insists his plans are a ‘good deal’ for older people
Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has apparently confirmed that Andy Burnham will float the prospect of getting rid of the pensions triple lock to help fund the creation of an NHS-style care service.
Asked about the prospect on Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Rayner said that Burnham was “absolutely right to start the conversation” and that he was being “brave”.
The high principle on this is that people have paid in all their lives. They are willing, I think, to look at that.
What they don’t want is what they consider to be, quite frankly, incompetent politicians that are going to take something from us to fill a black hole.
When we met with Andy [Burnham] this week, it certainly wasn’t mentioned.
But I do think that it’s important that Labour make sure that working-class people know that they’re on their side, and this would be a direction of travel that would say the opposite to that.
What I understood the national care service to be was a universal benefit: everybody paid in and everybody gets out, and that is what actually the principle of that is.
Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year in order to pay for it to take away their security is wrong.
Continue reading...It comes after the Green leader, who is standing as a candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, recorded a campaign video in Urdu
Andrew Griffith has delivered his speech, and he is now taking questions.
Q: You want the government to pause the making tax digital programme. Is that an admission that the last government got this wrong when it introduced it?
It is an admission that despite [good] intentions, the execution of that has left a lot to be desired.
In fact, coming to parliament from business, I can confess the law that we pass the most often is the law of unintended consequences. And I think making tax digital is a good example of that.
The truth is that Burnham and Miliband ignored the advice they were given – which was that if they were determined to sanction Israel, they should not do so before the Israeli election on 27 October.
It may not be surprising that this was the message from the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, when Miliband called him on 11 August to warn sanctions were imminent. ‘He said postpone it until after the elections,’ a diplomatic source confirms. It was also the message the Israeli embassy in London – and its new chargé d’affaires Chris Cantor – was relaying to the Foreign Office. ‘Their message was clear: why do it now? Wait until after the elections, because something might change,’ a senior Labour figure says.
Continue reading...Angela Rayner to announce review into local government shake-up as decisions on four areas withdrawn and 16 paused
Plans for a major reorganisation of local government have been put on hold after the government received new legal advice that suggested they might not comply with the law.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said the review is to ensure the process is robust and aligns with the new government’s aim to “rewire the state”, and follows “updated and privileged legal advice”.
Continue reading...Hamza Chowdhury says he will challenge party leader and has received nominations from other Green councillors
Healey says Andy Burnham set out in his statement to MPs last week what he thought had gone wrong
The fundamentals of our economy [were] hollowed out through a series of past policy decisions, political power was centralised, weakening the relationships between the people, the businesses and the institutions who can make things happen beyond Whitehall. The economic enablers were privatised and outsourced, leaving accountability to a thicket of arm’s length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy. And our country was deindustrialised as the cost to make anything, to build anything here soared, and our dependence on unreliable sources grew, including in areas critical to our national security and sovereignty.
Let me be clear, I recognise that the costs of business, its energy bills, regulation, burdens, planning constraints, labour costs, have grown since Covid and I want to draw the line.
And whether it is the cost of business or the cost of living, the only way we deal with these in the long term is growth.
Continue reading...Schools and councils express financial concerns as EHCP applications surge before potential change in provision
Schools and councils across England are expecting the proportion of children with special needs plans to double to one in 10, with families rushing to secure support before ministers bring in changes.
Headteachers have reported an “unreal” surge in applications for education, health and care plans (EHCPs) mandating support for needs or disabilities such as speech and learning difficulties, autism or ADHD. In 2025, just one in 20 school-age children had EHCPs.
Continue reading...Shadow minister for housing, communities and local government to resign with immediate effect
James Cleverly has resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for mayor of London.
The Tory heavyweight, who was once home and foreign secretary and is shadow minister for housing, communities and local government, told the Sunday Times he will resign with immediate effect.
Continue reading...Move would allow mayors to greenlight large-scale developments and have more say on national housing funding
Andy Burnham is expected to give mayors new powers to take control of local planning decisions and greenlight large-scale developments in proposals to be presented next week.
The move would allow mayors to “call in” the decisions and direct councils to take them forward or refuse them.
Continue reading...Westminster council has recommended banning ‘vertical drinking’ or ordering at the bar in new draft licensing policy
No 10 has vowed to confiscate powers from local councils which try to restrict customers from standing up while drinking in pubs or ordering at the bar.
It comes after the Guardian revealed on Thursday that Westminster council in central London recommended not allowing “vertical drinking” or ordering at the bar in its new draft licensing policy.
Continue reading...Half of county’s planning infringement notices target caravans in fields, fuelling eviction fears for vulnerable people
People living in caravans and horseboxes on farms in Cornwall because they can’t afford or find a house to rent are facing homelessness after a crackdown by the council.
Cornwall council recently announced that it was one of the top five authorities in England for enforcing infringements of planning regulations. Half of those notices, it said, were served on caravans in agricultural fields.
Continue reading...Party had justified plan to hang flags in Nottinghamshire on basis that local businesses would foot £75,000 bill
A £75,000 scheme by a Reform-led council to hang union flags at sites across the county, which the party said would “not cost the taxpayer a single penny” as it would be sponsored by local businesses, has failed to attract a single sponsor, it has emerged.
The plan to attach the flags to brackets on about 180 lamp-posts and other places was agreed in the autumn by Nottinghamshire’s council, won by Nigel Farage’s party in last year’s May elections.
Continue reading...Go Cornish Celebration engages younger generation as council finalises strategy to boost everyday use of Kernewek
Seven-year-old Albie, a pupil at Trewirgie infants’ school in Redruth, did not hesitate when asked why he liked learning Kernewek, the Cornish language.
“We used to talk this way in the old days,” he said. “And I like speaking now. I enjoy the songs we sing, the Cornish books we read, all the words. It’s fun.”
Continue reading...Restaurant chain took chainsaw to ancient oak tree in Enfield without permission
The restaurant chain Toby Carvery has settled a legal dispute after taking a chainsaw to an ancient oak tree without permission by agreeing to pay for the restoration of a lost orchard.
The unauthorised partial felling of the 500-year-old oak next to a Toby Carvery car park in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, in April last year, prompted widespread public outrage and questions in parliament.
Continue reading...Official assessing formal complaint into Green party leader’s potential ‘breach of conduct’ as assembly member
London assembly officials are weighing up whether to launch an investigation into Zack Polanski after he admitted he may have failed to pay the correct council tax while living on a houseboat in the capital.
The Green party leader has faced questions over whether the houseboat, moored in east London, was his primary residence. A spokesperson for his party had described the situation as an “unintentional mistake” and said Polanski had “immediately taken steps” to pay any tax owed.
Continue reading...Stuart Prior quits as scrutiny grows of new councillors accused of racist, antisemitic or anti-Muslim remarks
A Reform UK councillor has resigned days after being elected, after he allegedly celebrated on social media the rape of a Sikh woman in the Midlands, declared white people the “master race” and called Muslim people “rats”.
Stuart Prior was elected as a councillor for Essex county council last Thursday, winning 2,404 votes, the highest total of any candidate in the ward.
Continue reading...Councillor announces plan to withdraw from government-funded programme in run-up to May elections
The Reform-led Lancashire county council will withdraw from the government’s refugee resettlement scheme, one of its cabinet members has said.
Councillor Joshua Roberts announced plans for Lancashire to leave the scheme, which would make it the first local authority to do so.
Continue reading...Party leader says vote for Labour or Greens in closely run seats will result in Reform victory at local elections
Voters in the home counties will “regret it for a long time” if they do not back the Liberal Democrats and wake up to a Reform-led council, Ed Davey has said.
The Lib Dems leader has identified five councils – East Surrey, West Surrey, Hampshire, West Sussex and Huntingdonshire – where his party could win overall control, as well as swathes of the former “blue wall” where Davey said it was a “straight fight” between his party and Reform at the English local elections.
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