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By ROB PARSONS - August 16 2022
It's a tragedy that's hard to comprehend in a community where many feel like they've been forgotten. Awaab Ishak had just turned two when he died - his young lungs exposed to the rancid damp and mould of a 'sweatbox' flat in Rochdale .
His family had been complaining about the state of their upstairs flat on the Freehold Estate for years - and a review heard how Awaab's death in 2020 was linked to the conditions he was living in.
Now, a Manchester Evening News investigation has learned of six other households who describe repeated problems with damp and mould on the same estate, including three families who claim their children have been hospitalised with breathing difficulties.
But as Stephen Topping writes in a harrowing expose for the M.E.N. , there has been no uproar despite so many others complaining of the same problems. The tenants have been suffering in silence, feeling like forgotten people, trapped in homes which they are convinced are threatening their health.
Vilma Lavres and Amanyllo Alfonso have just spent £50 on anti-mould paint. Their youngest child, two-year-old Gabriel, had to stay in hospital for a week when he was just four months old.
Anacleto and Marlene Cassandra are worried about how the situation is affecting their children's health. "It's not OK when you have a little one and they can't breathe properly," says Marlene.
Social housing tenants across the country have reported difficulty in getting damp and mould issues resolved, and the problem is far from unique to tenants of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) on the Freehold Estate.
Stephen Lund of Manchester-based Antony Hodari solicitors says all too often landlords and housing associations will simply blame tenants for mould with 'little or no investigation'. And he believes the problem could be even worse this winter, as the soaring cost of living is expected to see more vulnerable people making the desperate choice not to heat their homes.
For its part RBH says: "Historic under investment in housing by successive Governments, coupled with the age and type of much of the UK’s housing, has contributed to the multi-faceted housing crisis the UK faces today.
"Housing associations and councils across the UK face specific challenges around the type and quality of their homes, their ability to meet current and future housing needs, the need to rise to the climate emergency as well as building much needed affordable new homes."
Newcastle urged to axe its 'unfair' levy on late night bars and clubs
Along with Liverpool, Newcastle is the only city in the North to charge a levy on late-night pubs, bars and clubs which serve alcohol after midnight.
The fee is set at between £299 and £4,400 per year depending on the size of a venue, with the income split between the council and the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner to spend on cutting crime and reducing the negative impact of the night-time economy.
But council leaders on Tyneside have now been urged to follow Nottingham’s lead in scrapping the “unfair” charges, writes Local Democracy Reporter Dan Holland . The East Midlands city axed its scheme in order to reduce the financial burden on businesses trying to recover from the devastation of the pandemic.
Ollie Vaulkhard, whose Vaulkhard Group runs popular sites including Barluga and the Bridge Tavern, complained that he “can’t see any benefit” from the tax, which Newcastle was the first place in the country to impose.
In Newcastle city centre, venues also pay towards the NE1 Business Improvement District (BID). While Mr Vaulkhard says that the BID is “visibly giving something back to the city” through clean-up and regeneration projects, he claims the late-night levy “just disappears into a mismanaged swamp”.
Sunak wants to send civil servants North to learn how to level up
Currently less than 8% of the UK’s half a million civil servants work in Yorkshire , compared to a fifth which work in London.
And as Rishi Sunak bids to revive his flagging Tory leadership bid by promising a “shake up” of the “bloated post-Covid state”, he says civil servants will be ordered to spend a year in Yorkshire or outside London to learn how to level up the UK if he becomes Prime Minister.
He told The Yorkshire Post's Mason Boycott-Owen that the move will mean that those in Whitehall will better understand the issues facing businesses across the country when drawing up policies.
Mr Sunak’s policy will look at changing the hiring policy of the civil service by creating assessment centres in every region of the country, rather than just in London and Newcastle.
But one Whitehall source tells Mason “almost everything” announced by Mr Sunak is being delivered by the Government already. “It is odd to see Team Sunak sell the policies of the PM he ousted as a new blueprint for reform,” they said.
Giant hydrogen furnace makes its way down M53 in Cheshire
As previewed in The Northern Agenda, a huge module for a new hydrogen furnace has made its painstaking way down the M53 to take its place at the Essar Oil UK site at Stanlow Refinery in Cheshire .
Part of the motorway was closed all night this weekend as the structure nearly five times as high as a double decker bus completed its 6,000 mile journey from Thailand.
As Angela Ferguson reports for CheshireLive , it was such a monumental operation that National Highways had to remove and restore a number of lighting columns and matrix signs from the central reservation.
The structure arrived in the country at the Port of Liverpool earlier this year, but similar operations might be difficult in future as 500 dockworkers voted yesterday to strike after rejecting a 7% pay hike.
As Reuters reports, workers at Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, which is part of Peel Ports, the second largest port group in the country, voted 99% in favour of the strike.
The industrial action would mean the port would be "grinding to a halt", the Unite trade union said, though it didn't provide details on the start or duration of the strike.
Call to spend Yorkshire Water bosses' bonuses on fixing leaks
It's become the latest utility firm to announce a hosepipe ban to conserve the region's dwindling water supplies after the prolonged dry spring and summer.
And Yorkshire Water is now getting some political splash-back after it was revealed senior executives were awarded nearly £3.3m in bonuses, benefits and incentives in 2020/21. Chief executive Liz Barber received £1,316,000 in pay and bonuses that year - 13% more than in the previous 12 months.
As Angus Young reports for HullLive , last month the company was given a two-star rating by the Environment Agency for its environmental performance in 2021, meaning that it requires significant improvement.
Now Hull City Council leader Mike Ross says bonuses for bosses should instead be used to fix leaking pipes. He said: "It is outrageous that while thousands of people in Hull suffer from hosepipe bans, water company bosses reward themselves with these bonuses despite not even bothering to fix leaks."
In response, a Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “Yorkshire Water’s shareholders have received no dividends in the last five years and none are forecast for the coming years. In that time over £300m, which could have gone to shareholders, has been reinvested in renewable energy generation at waste water treatment works, reductions in pollution and cutting leakage."
'We've had so many false dawns but our gigafactory will go ahead'
Britishvolt’s huge electric car battery 'gigafactory' under construction in Northumberland has been heralded as a game changer for the area, with thousands of new jobs set to be provided.
Construction has begun on the 95-hectare site at Cambois near Blyth that will eventually become one of the biggest buildings in the world. But locals are worried after the Guardian reported the scheme has been put on “life support” to cut spending and that work will be severely limited until February.
This week though, Northumberland councillors said they were confident about the scheme, as Local Democracy Reporter James Robinson writes . The area’s Labour councillor Alex Wallace assured residents that the work will get done and reiterated the importance of the scheme to his area.
He said: “People want to see the piling and steelwork going up, but that’s not going to happen until February. It is so important to this area.
“We’ve had so many false dawns so you can understand people’s misgivings – but you can see the levelling up that’s happened there with JDR cables going up there as well. My message would be don’t worry. I’m absolutely still confident. I know Boris (Johnson) is going but levelling up is a party policy."
North hit hardest as midwives leave the NHS
Times are tough in the NHS, with a poll of staff in June finding that one in five were either looking for a new job or were already set to leave for better-paid positions.
And new figures out toda y reveal the number of midwives has fallen in every English region in the past year. Numbers dropped by around 600 on top of a longstanding shortage of more than 2,000 midwives, according to analysis of NHS Digital data by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).
Yorkshire and the North East had the biggest losses in the year to April while the East of England had the lowest. The number of midwives in Yorkshire and the North East dropped by 194 to 3,990, while in the North West it fell by 122 to 3,579.
The RCM said more investment is needed in maternity services to ensure the safety and quality of care, as “even the smallest falls are putting increasing pressures on services already struggling with shortages, worsened by the pandemic”.
Dr Suzanne Tyler of the RCM said midwife numbers had “fallen significantly over the past year on top of already serious shortages”, at a time when a rising birth rate is “adding to the already significant demands on services”.
She said: “These figures must shock this moribund Government into action for the sake of women, babies, their families and staff.”
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Northern Stories
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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to visit Manchester next month for their first UK trip since returning for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee . Harry and Meghan will head to the city for the One Young World Summit, an event which brings together young leaders from more than 190 countries, on September 5. Meghan, a counsellor for the organisation, will give the keynote address and the couple will also meet a group of summit delegates doing “outstanding work on gender equality”.
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Tyne and Wear Metro passengers now have just four weeks to prepare for a major shutdown that will take a big chunk of the network out of action for three months. The line between Pelaw and South Shields will be completely closed for 12 weeks from mid-September, the biggest closure in the Metro’s 42-year history, for the £103m ‘Metro Flow’ upgrade works that it is hoped will deliver a substantial long-term boost to the region. Engineers will be dualling three single-track sections to allow more trains to run, improve reliability, and boost the system’s capacity by up to 24,000 extra journeys every day.
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The conversion of one of Bradford ’s grandest buildings will create the “most luxurious on-campus accommodation anywhere in the world” – say its developers . The Grade II listed Old Building on Great Horton Road dates back to the 1830s and last year a planning application to convert the building into 190 apartments was approved by the council. Although the development will not be student only accommodation, the developers behind the scheme believe the location means it will be popular with foreign students – a sizeable chunk of the University of Bradford’s intake.
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The listed grave of a former war horse which was once named as one of the “most intriguing” historical sites in England is to be temporarily moved from its home in Halewood, Merseyside . The grave of Blackie, the horse of wartime poet Leonard Comer Wall, who saw action on the battlefields of Ypres, Arras, Somme and Cambrai, has been listed since 2017. Plans have been submitted to allow the temporary removal of the grade II listed gravestone in order to reposition it at the same plot.
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The future of Hull ’s biggest homeless hostel is in major doubt after the Salvation Army decided not to tender for a major Hull City Council contract . William Booth House has offered housing for some of the city’s most vulnerable people for 40 years but it could now close. The Salvation Army's decision has put around 40 jobs at risk while residents face the possibility of spending the winter on the streets.
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A Sheffield family have won their appeal to the city council to protect a tree planted by their grandad. A tree preservation order was granted by Sheffield City Council for a dawn redwood tree growing in a back garden in Sandygate Park, Crosspool. The tree was planted in the 1980s by the late grandfather of the applicants, who had an interest in rare plants and trees. The order means that it is an offence to lop, damage or cut down the tree and anyone doing so could be fined.
