Questions about potential conflict of interest as council’s cabinet member for social care owns private care company
Lancashire’s Reform-run council has been accused of “selling off the family silver” through its plans to save £4m a year by closing five council-run care homes and five day centres and moving residents into the private sector.
One of the care home residents, a 92-year-old woman, said she would leave only by “being forcibly removed or in a box”.
Continue reading...British newlyweds feared worst when transportation of rescue cats from Greece to Paris went awry
A newlywed couple who married in Greece have said they feared the worst when three kittens they rescued from Crete went missing after being left in the hold of an aeroplane.
They first travelled to the island in September 2023 and found the mother cat, who “had a very distinctive bulging eye that needed to be removed”, Bethany Mulcahy-Stephenson, a veterinary nurse, said.
Continue reading...Ferrari and property owned by Arif Patel, tax fraudster who has been on the run since 2011, will be sold at auction
A self-styled clothing tycoon who sold counterfeit socks and pants while operating an extensive fraud ring will have all his UK assets seized after the Crown Prosecution Service won a court order to confiscate up to £90m worth of property and luxury cars.
Arif Patel, 57, from Preston, Lancashire, who has been on the run since 2011, will have homes and business premises he owned taken from him after a confiscation order granted by a judge at Chester crown court on Thursday.
Continue reading...Caleb Followill says shattered heel needed ‘significant emergency surgery’, which would stop him performing
The Kings of Leon frontman, Caleb Followill, has announced that the band have cancelled their UK and European shows this summer after he injured his foot in a “freak accident”.
The singer, who is part of the US rock group with his brothers Nathan and Jared Followill and cousin Matthew Followill, was scheduled to perform at Blackweir Fields, Cardiff and Lancashire’s Lytham festival over the next two months.
Continue reading...A ‘wetter farming’ project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissions
“I really don’t like the word ‘paludiculture’ – most people have no idea what it means,” Sarah Johnson says. “I prefer the term ‘wetter farming’.”
The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs.
Continue reading...Kerri Pegg, 42, of HMP Kirkham guilty of misconduct after inmate Anthony Saunderson gave her a Mercedes car
A prison governor has been found guilty of misconduct in a public office, after she started a relationship with a Liverpool drug gang boss nicknamed “Jesse Pinkman” after a character in the TV show Breaking Bad.
Kerri Pegg, 42, has been told she faces jail after she accepted a gift of a £12,000 Mercedes C-Class car, which Anthony Saunderson paid for with 34kg of amphetamines.
Continue reading...Stone memorial at church in Withnell tells story of Pte James Miller who was killed at Battle of Somme in 1916
A granite stone cross in the boundary wall of an otherwise ordinary English churchyard has been given listed status because of the “extraordinary” story it reveals of first world war heroism.
Most war memorials are dedicated to numbers of people, but the memorial at St Paul’s church in Withnell, Lancashire, is dedicated to just one.
Continue reading...Seized dog, named Bruno, euthanised while owners were applying for exemption to keep him
Lancashire police has apologised after putting down an XL bully dog while the owners were in the process of applying for an exemption to keep him.
The seized dog, named Bruno, was euthanised due to an “administration error”.
Continue reading...Officers called to house in Accrington on Tuesday after 53-year-old dog owner found dead
Police have launched an investigation after a man was killed by his own XL bully dog in Lancashire.
Officers were called to reports of a canine attacking someone inside a house in Accrington shortly before 9.30pm on Tuesday, Lancashire police said.
Continue reading...Hundreds of people attend service for 19-year-old who died after going missing in Tenerife mountains
The family and friends of Jay Slater have paid tribute to the teenager who died while on holiday in Tenerife at a funeral service attended by about 500 people.
Mourners packed into the chapel at the Accrington crematorium for the funeral of the 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, who is believed to have fallen to his death after getting lost in a mountainous area of the Spanish island on 17 June.
Continue reading...Attempt to find British teenager now in its second week as groundless theories circulate about his disappearance
As the search for Jay Slater, the British teenager who went missing while on holiday in Tenerife, enters its second week Spanish rescuers continue to comb the rugged mountain terrain where he was last seen for clues.
Staff and volunteers from the local police, fire brigade and civil defence force have been using dogs, drones and helicopters to hunt for the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire.
Continue reading...Debbie Duncan, mother of Jay Slater, says it is right that search should be intensified for 19-year-old
The mother of Jay Slater, the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer who is missing from Tenerife, has said she believes that Spanish police have intensified their search for him, as the hunt enters its sixth day.
Debbie Duncan told the Guardian she spent eight hours in a police station on Friday, as police outlined their detailed plans to search for the missing teenager from Lancashire. “I think it’s been stepped up,” she said, which she described as “too right”.
Continue reading...Whalley residents say drunken crowds and antisocial behaviour at weekends is making life unbearable
Whalley, in Lancashire’s verdant Ribble Valley, is famed for its 14th-century Cistercian abbey and historic churches, as well as the spectacular views from Whalley Nab, the wooded hill that overlooks this seeming picture-postcard idyll.
But while the village still draws in family day-trippers and history buffs, it is also attracting an altogether different type of tourist, after earning perhaps an unlikely reputation as Lancashire’s premier drinking destination.
Continue reading...Spanish police say they have the resources it needs for hunt for 19-year-old who was last heard from on Monday
Spanish police have rejected an offer of support from Lancashire constabulary as the hunt for the missing British teenager Jay Slater in Tenerife continues.
Lancashire police said it had made “an offer of support to the Guardia Civil to see if they need any additional resources” in their efforts. The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle was last heard from between 8am and 9am on Monday morning when he contacted a friend.
Continue reading...Jay Slater, 19, reported missing on Monday morning after phoning friend while walking in vast nature reserve
Friends of a British teenager who disappeared in Tenerife have urged British and Spanish police to send reinforcements to aid the search as they have resorted to hunting for evidence and interviewing potential witnesses themselves.
Police on the island have been looking for Jay Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire, since Monday morning with the help of drones and a helicopter.
Continue reading...Jay Slater, 19, from Lancashire, last made contact on Monday morning from a mountainous area
The mother of a British teenager who has gone missing during a holiday in Tenerife has said she has “not slept at all” as the search continues.
Jay Slater, 19, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was last heard from on Monday morning when he told a friend he planned to walk back to his accommodation after missing a bus, a journey that would take about 11 hours on foot.
Continue reading...Nine-month-old Harlow Collinge died after ‘forceful shaking’ by Karen Foster, court told
A Lancashire childminder has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of a baby boy in her care.
Karen Foster, 62, was due to stand trial at Preston crown court for the murder of nine-month-old Harlow Collinge in March 2022. But before a jury being sworn in on Friday, she pleaded guilty to his manslaughter.
Continue reading...Emergency services corden off large area of Darwen while army bomb disposal unit removes and destroys grenade
A town centre in Lancashire was placed in lockdown on Saturday, with British army bomb disposal experts forced to remove and destroy a grenade.
It is understood that a member of the public had donated items to a heritage centre in Darwen which included the grenade.
Continue reading...Force reviewing available information after claims that Menzies used political donations to pay off ‘bad people’
Allegations that the MP Mark Menzies misused campaign funds have been referred to Lancashire police. The force said it was reviewing the available information after receiving a letter “detailing concerns around this matter”.
The PA news agency understands that the Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, wrote to Lancashire police calling for an investigation into the allegations about Menzies.
Continue reading...Withdrawal of backing for Graham Jones, candidate for Hyndburn, follows Starmer’s action against Azhar Ali in Rochdale
Labour has suspended a second parliamentary candidate over their remarks about Israel, as Keir Starmer struggles to contain the fallout from the leak of a private meeting of party activists in Lancashire last year.
Party sources said on Tuesday that Labour had suspended Graham Jones, the candidate for Hyndburn, less than 24 hours after the party withdrew its support from Azhar Ali, its candidate for the Rochdale byelection later this month.
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