Continuation of war has left more refugees unsettled, with councils stepping in to to relieve most cases of homelessness
Councils have called for urgent review of funding for Ukrainian refugees amid alarm that 9,000 have reported as homeless and many more are needing longer-term support – with no sign of the war ending after two years.
The government announced on Sunday that it would extend by another 18 months the three-year visas of Ukrainians who escaped the war.
Continue reading...Despite victory in two Conservative safe seats, a Labour government is not a foregone conclusion, say party hawks
For the past few months, with Labour enjoying a stubbornly large double-digit lead in the polls, close allies of Keir Starmer remained obsessed with the notion that complacency will slip into the mindsets of MPs, advisers and activists.
In a breathless week that saw Labour veer from having to abandon one byelection before scooping previously safe Tory seats in two others, the obsessives were given three opportunities to drive their point home.
Continue reading...Prime minister’s comments ‘remarkable’ given government cuts to town hall funding in England, say LGA bosses
Council leaders in England have criticised Rishi Sunak for demanding that local authorities show “restraint” in putting up council tax bills, saying the government is to blame for underfunding.
The prime minister on Friday called for authorities to be “restrained in the council tax rises they put in place”, saying it was “incumbent on local councils to be respectful of the demands on people’s family budgets”.
Continue reading...Michael Gove approves exceptional rise for UK’s biggest local authority, affecting 1m people, and three other bankrupt councils
Council tax in Birmingham is likely to increase by up to 10% after the government allowed the local authority to bypass the national cap without the need for a local referendum.
The increase will affect more than 1 million people in the UK’s largest local authority, which declared itself effectively bankrupt last year due to a £300m budget gap.
Continue reading...London boroughs among hardest hit due to falling birth rate and family struggles with Covid and rising costs
Primary schools are being closed, merged and shrunk as councils across England respond to falling numbers of pupils due to the falling birth rate as well as family upheaval triggered by rising costs, Brexit and Covid.
London boroughs are among the hardest hit, with thousands of school places being lost, but the closures and cuts extend to other cities and areas as they adjust to fewer children being born or moving into their catchment areas.
Continue reading...Local authority covering some of richest areas in England says it spent £11m preparing for rail line
A council in one of the wealthiest parts of the UK has warned it faces potential bankruptcy due to the “devastating” impact of cancelling the northern leg of HS2.
Leaders of Cheshire East council in north-west England said the authority had spent £11m preparing for the high-speed rail link, and this would now have to be written off. Most of this money – £8.6m – had been funded by borrowing and would now have to be funded from the council’s already stretched revenue budget.
Continue reading...Social workers scrambling to find places for children after net loss of 1,000 foster families in past year
Child protection experts have called for an urgent nationwide hunt for thousands of new foster carers after a net loss of 1,000 families in the past year and a record number of children being placed far from home.
Social workers have described scrambling to find friends and family to take children in urgent need of safety, and reported that children are sometimes placed in hotels.
Continue reading...Government push to clear asylum backlog is not giving people granted refugee status enough time to find new home, say councils
Tens of thousands of refugees are at risk of sleeping rough this Christmas after a Home Office drive to hit Rishi Sunak’s asylum case target, the umbrella body for local councils has said.
The Local Government Association said councils across England and Wales were facing a “perfect storm” as the government worked to clear 92,327 asylum cases by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Aysen Dennis, who accused Southwark council of ‘social cleansing’, continues court challenge over Aylesbury estate plans
The bulldozers will soon be out for the south London council flat that was Aysen Dennis’s home for 30 years. After leading a fierce battle against the council and developers, claiming their plans to fill much of her estate with private homes amounted to “social cleansing”, she has finally moved.
Dennis, 65, has been relocated to a swanky new flat in a development bought back by Southwark council. She claims it paid £690,000 for her ninth-floor flat with panoramic views of the park – and is convinced it was an attempt to shut her up before a legal challenge.
Continue reading...Planning committee votes unanimously against All England Club’s proposals to triple size on to listed park
A London council has rejected plans to build a new 8,000-seat stadium and 38 further tennis courts on a Grade II*-listed park in Wimbledon.
Wandsworth council’s planning committee on Tuesday night voted unanimously to reject the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s plans to almost triple the size of the tennis championship grounds from 17 hectares (42 acres) to 46 hectares.
Continue reading...Local authorities fear service cuts or even bankruptcy as costs jump from £400m to £700m in five years
Soaring costs of school transport for children with special educational needs is causing councils in England to warn of service cuts and potential insolvency, according to local authority leaders.
The County Council Network (CCN), which represents mainly rural local authorities in England, says its 37 members are spending more than £700m a year on school transport for 85,000 children with special education needs and disabilities (Send), compared with less than £400m five years ago.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he ‘will do whatever it takes’ as senior Tory criticises former home secretary’s hardline proposals
Downing Street has not ruled out asking MPs to spend some of what is meant to be their Christmas break dealing with the PM’s “emergency legislation” on Rwanda.
This is one proposal made by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, in her Telegraph article this morning. (See 10.01am.)
I think we are prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure that we can get this in place and get flights off the ground.
I wouldn’t speculate on parliamentary process but I cannot impress [enough] the importance that the prime minister places on this necessary legislation to deliver for the public on the important priority of stopping the boats.
Sunak suggested he would blame Labour if the Lords refuses to pass his “emergency legislation” on Rwanda (see 11.40am) quickly. Asked if he would call an early election if the Lords block the law, he replied:
It doesn’t have to take a long time to get legislation through – and that is a question for the Labour party.
We’re determined to get this through as quickly as possible. So the real question is: is the Labour party going to stand in the way and stop this from happening, or are they going to work with us and support this bill so we can get it through as quickly as possible?
Sunak declined to say whether favoured holding an early election on the issue of Rwanda deportations if his bill got held up. Earlier today Sir Simon Clarke suggested this. (See 10.56am.) But, for obvious reasons, the prospect might not appeal.
Sunak claimed he was making “real progress” on stopping small boats. He said:
I think people just want the problem fixed. That’s what I’m here to do, and this year, we’ve already got the numbers down by a third.
That’s because I’ve got new deals with the French, a new deal with Albania. We’re working with Turkey and Bulgaria, multiple other countries. We’re tackling the criminal gangs, we’re cutting through the backlog.
Sunak said he would “take on” people trying to stop Rwanda flights taking over, whether it was Labour or the House of Lords. He said:
We can pass these laws in parliament that will give us the powers and the tools we need. Then we can get the flights off and whether it’s the House of Lords or the Labour party standing in our way I will take them on because I want to get this thing done and I want to stop the boats.
He said his patience was “wearing thin” with this issue. He said:
People are sick of this merry-go-round. I want to end it – my patience is wearing thin like everyone else’s.
Continue reading...After the building was evacuated, leaving hundreds temporarily homeless, we look at what happens next for residents and the council
What has happened at Barton House tower block in Bristol?
Barton House, a 65-year-old 15-storey tower block, was built in the late 1950s using reinforced concrete cross walls, pre-cast concrete floors and reinforced concrete external walls.
Continue reading...Planning Inspectorate says ‘Captain Tom Building’ harms Grade II-listed home where Moore’s daughter and her family live
The family of Captain Sir Tom Moore have lost a planning application appeal for a spa complex in their garden and have been given three months to demolish the structure.
Moore’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore, 53, and her husband, Colin, 66, appealed against a demolition order by Central Bedfordshire council for what they have called the Captain Tom Foundation Building in the grounds of their Bedfordshire home.
Continue reading...Afrasiab Anwar, one of 11 councillors to resign, was among those who earlier asked party leader to step down
The leader of Burnley borough council has resigned along with 10 other councillors in protest at Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Afrasiab Anwar, who has been a member of the party for a decade, was among those who called for the Labour leader to step down last week.
Continue reading...Judge accuses local authority of a ‘lackadaisical’ attitude to the 16-year-old’s care after regulated providers refused to give him a place
A teenage boy who has been accused of multiple rapes was housed in Airbnbs by a local authority after regulated accommodation providers said it would be too risky for them to house him.
Airbnbs and other temporary accommodation have been deployed because no secure placement can be found anywhere in England that is prepared to accommodate the child, who self-harms, makes weapons, assaults staff members, damages property and has been taken to hospital after expressing suicidal thoughts. He has been arrested on numerous occasions.
Continue reading...County Councils Network says local bodies facing insolvency after increase in children being taken into care and ‘out of control’ costs
“Out of control” increases in child protection spending since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic have put one in 10 of England’s biggest councils at risk of effective bankruptcy in the next few months, a survey has revealed.
Many county councils and unitary authorities are “running out of road” to avoid insolvency as they grapple with high inflation, increases in children being taken into care, and massive bills for children’s homes, the County Councils Network (CCN) said.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser denies contributing to an atmosphere of misogyny at No 10, saying he was ‘much ruder about men’
Heather Hallett, the chair, intervenes at this point. She asks Cain if he is defending the 10-day gap. She says she finds that curious if he is.
Cain says locking down the country is a huge, huge undertaking. In government terms, that is government acting at speed. But it was “longer than you would hope”, he says.
Do I understand from what you said earlier that you would defend the 10-day gap between the decision taken that there had to be a national lockdown and actually implementing that decision? Because I find that curious.
As I said, I think it is longer than you would like, but I think it’s important just to emphasise the amount of things that had to be done and the amount of people we had to take with us to deliver a nationwide lockdown.
It’s a huge, huge undertaking and to be honest, from my understanding of government, that is government moving at a tremendous speed – which maybe says more about government than other things.
Continue reading...Home Office has imposed a 15 December deadline to eject people who worked for UK in Afghanistan from hotels, say councils
More than 1,000 Afghans in the UK face being made homeless days before Christmas after the Home Office imposed a fresh deadline to eject them from hotels.
The Local Government Association (LGA) revealed the number of at-risk Afghans, which includes families, after the Home Office last week imposed the new deadline of 15 December.
Continue reading...Fee income for 20 largest operators – many private equity-owned – soars as councils struggle to meet costs
The biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year, as concern mounts over the conditions some children are being placed in and the spiralling costs for councils.
Fee income for the 20 largest operators of independent children’s homes totalled £1.63bn last year, a 6.5% increase on the previous year. And 19% of that – £310m – was recorded as profit, according to an independent analysis. Half of the top 20 providers have some private equity or sovereign wealth fund ownership.
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