Category Archives: England

NHS staff shortages in England could exceed 570,000 by 2036, leaked document warns

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Exclusive: workplace plan sent to ministers says deficit will rise rapidly from current 154,000 if current trends continue

The NHS in England needs a massive injection of homegrown doctors, nurses, GPs and dentists to avert a recruitment crisis that could leave it short of 571,000 staff, according to an internal document seen by the Guardian.

A long-awaited workforce plan produced by NHS England says the health service is already operating with 154,000 fewer full-time staff than it needs, and that number could balloon to 571,000 staff by 2036 on current trends.

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Schools in England seeing more pupil absences on Fridays

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Change in parents’ work patterns since Covid may have led to pupils staying home

Schools in England are seeing “a huge amount” of pupil absence on Fridays with children staying at home with their parents following a shift in attitudes post-Covid, MPs have been told.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, told the education committee that persistent absence from schools is “one of the issues of our age” and called for a “razor sharp focus” on the problem.

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UK weather: Tuesday night could be coldest of year so far, Met Office warns

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Temperatures could plummet to -15c in some sheltered Scottish areas with snow cutting off some rural areas

Tuesday night could be the coldest this year so far, the Met Office has warned, with fears that Arctic air could cut off some rural communities and cause power and transport chaos.

Temperatures could fall as low as -15c in some sheltered Scottish areas, with locations that have seen snowfall especially vulnerable.

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Nearly half of English neighbourhoods ‘have less than 10% tree cover’

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Analysis for Friends of the Earth also finds lower-income areas have far fewer trees than wealthier ones

Nearly half of English neighbourhoods have less than 10% tree cover, with lower-income areas having far fewer trees than wealthier ones, analysis has found.

England’s tree cover is just 12.8%, according to the research by Friends of the Earth, with only 10% made up by woodland – paling in comparison with the EU, where woodland cover stands at 38%.

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Services in England for children with special needs to be ‘transformed’

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Government’s long-awaited plan promises thousands more specialist school places and new national standards

Services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in England are to be “transformed”, with the introduction of new national standards and thousands more specialist school places, ministers have announced.

The long-awaited changes are being introduced to end the postcode lottery that families currently face and ensure that children and young people with Send get “high-quality, early support” wherever they live, the government says.

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Thousands of pupils in England lose out on first-choice secondary school place

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Of 33 councils polled, 18 reported a decline in the proportion of families getting their first preference

Thousands of 10 and 11-year-olds have failed to get into their first choice of secondary school as offers were made across England, but the expected increase in demand for year 7 places in some big cities once again failed to materialise.

There were predictions that the proportion of children awarded a place at their top choice could hit a record low nationally this year as a result of a baby boom 11 years ago, but in London and Birmingham the number of applications and success rates were similar to last year.

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Labour challenges Hunt to adopt NHS training policy he wanted to ‘nick’

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Rachel Reeves tasks chancellor with finding money to double England’s doctor and nurse training places

Rachel Reeves has challenged Jeremy Hunt to find the money for Labour’s plan to double training places for doctors and nurses – pointing out he said he wanted to “nick” the opposition’s policy just two weeks before becoming chancellor.

The shadow chancellor said NHS shortages were causing 1.5 million people in need of medical treatment to say their work was suffering, with new analysis showing it was costing the economy about £700m a year.

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England’s poorer pupils face ‘geographic exclusion’ from top state schools – study

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Offering places by proximity results in selection of pupils from more affluent households, say researchers

Disadvantaged children are suffering “geographic exclusion” from England’s best state schools because they cannot afford to live near those with the best exam results, according to new research published by the University of Bristol.

The research found that very few state secondary schools give priority to pupils who qualify for free school meals, despite the government’s admissions rules being redesigned more than eight years ago allowing them to do so.

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Tens of thousands of teachers prepare to strike in England and Wales

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Teachers in north of England to strike on Tuesday followed by members in other regions over course of three days

Tens of thousands of teachers will strike this week resulting in the closure of some schools as members of the National Education Union (NEU) take part in three days of industrial action.

With little sign of a solution to the dispute on the horizon, teachers in the north of England will strike on Tuesday, followed by members in the Midlands and eastern regions on Wednesday.

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Ambulance call handlers in England tell of anguish over death risk to patients

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Dispatchers tell investigation it is common to worry: ‘How many people are we going to kill today?’

Ambulance call handlers suffer anxiety about how many people will die before they can get help to them each day, researchers looking into the welfare of NHS staff have found.

Officials from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) in England asked staff working in urgent and emergency care, including in A&E, NHS 111 call handling centres and ambulance services, for their experiences as part of wider research into NHS care.

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England’s new housing supply likely to fall to lowest level in decades, study says

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Home Builders Federation warns planning policy changes will result in government meeting less than half its annual target

Housebuilding in England is due to fall to its lowest level since the second world war, according to an analysis by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), owing to a range of government policies that threaten to dramatically slow development.

The study says the supply of new housing is likely to fall below 120,000 homes annually over the coming years, less than half of the government’s target, as a result of changes to planning policy and what developers say is over-strict enforcement of environmental regulations.

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Rugby player paralysed after ‘reckless’ tackle wins case against opposing player

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Judge finds Natasha King liable for unintentional injuries suffered by Dani Czernuszka in amateur game

A rugby player who was paralysed from the waist down after a “reckless” tackle has won her high court claim against the opposing player who made the “red mist” challenge.

In October 2017, Dani Czernuszka suffered a spinal fracture during an amateur league rugby match that has since left her having to use a wheelchair.

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Register of tutor-student relations proposed for England campuses

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Academics may face dismissal if relations involving romance, sex or financial dependency are not reported

Universities in England could face sanctions if intimate relationships between staff and the students they have academic responsibilities for are not disclosed, under plans by the higher education watchdog.

Academics who refuse to report relationships with their students that involve sexual activity, romantic intimacy or financial dependency, should be dismissed, the Office for Students (OfS) has proposed.

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At least 39 schools closed in last three years in England due to unsafe buildings

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Some state schools had to close down permanently due to extensive safety concerns

At least 39 state schools in England have been forced to close either partially or entirely in the last three years because one or more buildings have been deemed unsafe, the government has confirmed.

In three cases, concerns about building safety were so extensive that the entire school site had to be closed down permanently, with pupils moved off-site to alternative accommodation.

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Junior doctors in England to strike for 72 hours in March

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Ten of thousands to take part in industrial action in escalation of row between NHS staff and government

Hundreds of thousands of operations and medical appointments will be cancelled in England next month and progress in tackling the huge care backlog will be derailed as the NHS prepares to face the most widespread industrial action in its history.

Junior doctors are poised to join nurses and ambulance workers in mass continuous walkouts in March after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action.

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Texting parents may help schools tackle ‘truancy crisis’ in England, say experts

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Call for more personalised approach on back of broader efforts to build deeper relationships with families

Personalised text messages to parents could be used to help improve school attendance rates, as teachers struggle to re-engage children and their families after the disruption of Covid, according to experts.

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said there was a “national persistent truancy crisis” in England, with significantly more children now missing lessons compared with before the pandemic.

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Revealed: NHS England chair fixed meeting for client of bank he advised

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David Prior helped arrange a meeting between NHSX and the private care company Teladoc, said to be keen to expand in the UK

The former Tory minister who chaired NHS England helped arrange a meeting for an American private health firm that paid millions of pounds to the investment bank that employed him.

David Prior emailed Matthew Gould, a senior NHS executive, in February 2021 asking him to “have a conversation” with Jason Gorevic, chief executive of Teladoc, a multibillion-pound virtual medicine firm.

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Police release of Nicola Bulley’s personal details ‘as sexist as it comes’

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Former victims’ commissioner Vera Baird says revelations likely to hamper future missing person cases

The release of sensitive details about the missing woman Nicola Bulley was “as sexist as it comes”, the former victims’ commissioner has said, as Lancashire police come under further pressure over their handling of the case.

Dame Vera Baird condemned the force’s “dreadful” decision to divulge medical information about Bulley, saying it was “the biggest error that I have seen for quite a long time”.

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Lancashire police maintain ‘no evidence’ of crime in Nicola Bulley case

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Force says it has been ‘inundated’ with false information about missing 45-year-old

Police have said there is still no evidence of crime in the case of Nicola Bulley, who went missing near her home in Lancashire nearly three weeks ago, but they are being inundated with false information, accusations and rumours.

Bulley was last seen in St Michael’s on Wyre, not far from her home in Inskip, Lancashire, on the morning of 27 January.

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