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By ROB PARSONS - July 20 2022
'Today was a game changer', reflected West Yorkshire Fire Service's deputy chief fire officer Dave Walton after returning home from a shift that had tested him and other Northern colleagues to the limit.
As temperatures climbed above 40C for the first time ever in the UK yesterday, giving rise to tinder-dry conditions, major fire incidents were declared in South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire as well as Lincolnshire, London and elsewhere.
In South Yorkshire, a row of houses in the Moorland Avenue area of Barnsley was consumed by flames, with crews continuing to battle fires elsewhere in the area. Doncaster Council said a major blaze in Clayton also spread to three residential properties and there were reports of houses on fire in the Kiveton Park and Maltby areas of Rotherham.
On Twitter last night, Mr Walton wrote: "'What the hell just happened?’ - My partner (a 999 Fire Control supervisor) and I both used exactly the same phrase as we got home from work today."
Paying tribute to the "awe inspiring work of firefighters, fire control staff, officers and support staff", he said 999 calls were "stacked and bouncing around the various fire Controls around the country".
He added: "Fire crews were going from one incident to the next, to the next…it has been brutal. I’ve never known so many major incidents declared at a whole Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) level at once. I lost count at one point.
"This is not a post about the effects of austerity on the FRS, or how hot it was in 1976, or the fact that it was just a ‘hot day’ - it’s about a peek into the future. It’s about demand for fire engines and firefighters far, far outstripping the numbers that any reasonable person would expect to be available at any one time.
"It’s about a completely and fundamentally different operating environment where fires burn with such ferocity, and spread with such speed in suburban areas that you can't stop them."
Heatwaves like this week's are being made more intense, frequent and longer by climate change, and scientists said it would be “virtually impossible” for the UK to have experienced temperatures reaching 40C without human-driven global warming.
Scientists also warn that climate change is increasing fire danger across the UK – and people need to be prepared for it. Simon Clarke, a Teesside MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News this morning that the fires were a “warning sign” about the impact of climate change.
Gove: Some people don't like it but we must stick with levelling up
He was unceremoniously sacked from his job leading the Government's levelling up agenda as Boris Johnson tried desperately to hang onto his own position earlier this month.
But Michael Gove has urged his Tory colleagues to reaffirm their commitment to the Prime Minister's flagship domestic agenda amid reports the project could be shelved when Mr Johnson leaves Downing Street.
The phrase has barely featured in the Tory leadership race, with the debate instead focusing on tax cuts and defence spending. Former Levelling Up Secretary Mr Gove told a think-tank event that whoever replaced the Prime Minister needed to continue with his plan, as our Westminster Editor Dan O'Donoghue reports .
He said: "Forgive me for using this phrase, because I know that many people didn't like it, you have to be committed to levelling up. One of the fundamental structural problems in the United Kingdom is geographical inequality.
"It's a social mission, because there are so many people in this country in poor schools without the skills they need, without the opportunities to succeed. But it's also an economic mission, because if different parts of the United Kingdom are all performing as effectively as the South East and London, then we would be the strongest economy in Europe."
Later this afternoon the three remaining Tory leadership hopefuls will be whittled down to two before they face party members to decide who will be the next Prime Minister.
The first regional hustings will reportedly be in the North next Thursday. And in a last-ditch bid for support Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss took part in a behind-closed-doors hustings with the Northern Research Group of Conservative MPs and Onward think tank last night.
Jake Berry, the chairman of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs said all three remaining candidates performed “exceptionally well”. The Lancashire MP said both Mr Sunak and Ms Truss were playing on “home turf”, noting that the Foreign Secretary is a “Yorkshire lass”, while Ms Mordaunt had “really interesting ideas about how we reform the machinery of government to focus on delivery”.
He added that Ms Truss was “name-checking individual mills” in colleagues’ constituencies, “if you came from Yorkshire”."
Tax cuts and promises to bring down inflation are likely to feature heavily in the coming leadership contest and the months afterwards.
But according to Simon French , the chief economist of UK investment bank Panmure Gordon, these measures "represent sticking plasters to cover up the damaging wounds of the pandemic, the frictions generated by the Brexit transition and a steady loss of the UK’s energy independence".
Writing for The Northern Agenda today he explains why to sustainably lower the cost of living, the UK economy needs to rediscover productivity growth. Read the full piece at the bottom of this email.
There's nothing we can do, says union chief as bus workers go on strike
After industrial action hit rail services nationwide and bus services across Yorkshire, the North West is now set for prolonged public transport misery as Arriva bus workers went on strike.
From 2am today there will be no planned Arriva bus services operating within Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire or Cheshire, prompting fears of "absolute chaos" .
The indefinite action comes after talks between Arriva and the Unite and GMB unions failed to reach an agreement over pay. They are pushing for the inflation rate of 11.7%.
Howard Farrall of Arriva UK Bus said: "Despite the significant pressures on the bus sector with increasing costs and passenger numbers still at below pre-pandemic levels, we have offered our people a generous pay rise of 8.5% - an increase far higher than most workers are receiving from their employers at a time of considerable economic pressure."
But Dave Roberts, regional officer for Unite, told Charlotte Cox of the Manchester Evening News that his members "are starting to feel the pinch and a good pay rise is vital for them to be able to survive."
He added: "We do know it's going to impact passengers but unfortunately this is a last resort. There's nothing we can do, this is the way we put pressure on Arriva to come back to the table and make an improved offer. We do apologise to the public for causing any disruption.
As this newsletter reported this week, passengers will feel the first benefits of the TransPennine Route Upgrade worth up to £11.5bn between Leeds, Manchester and York as soon as 2024.
But the parliamentary spending watchdog reveals today that tinkering by successive transport Ministers wasted almost a fifth of the £1bn spent so far on the country’s biggest rail upgrade and delayed the scheme by more than a decade.
As Jen Williams writes for the Financial Times , in 2011, the Tory-led coalition government promised to help boost the economy of the North with a significant upgrade to one of the UK’s most unreliable and outdated rail routes.
But the National Audit Office found that since 2017, the Department for Transport had “repeatedly” altered its plans “to meet differing ministerial priorities and budget constraints”, despite the “fundamental need” for the original plan to remain unchanged.
A Department for Transport spokesman said in response: “The extra funding will enable more tracks to be built, digital signalling, and for the route to be fully electrified. So far, we have electrified more than 1200 miles, compared with just 63 miles under the previous Government.
'Sorry Boris, this is why we can't have commercial flights at our airport'
There are big queues at Manchester airport, but what's the future for smaller regional bases with Doncaster Sheffield at risk of closing due to lack of passengers and publicly-owned Teesside still making a loss?
During a visit to Blackpool Airport in June , Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged the local council, which owns the airport, to look again at the possibility of bringing commercial passenger flights back.
But council leader Lynn Williams has insisted the airport will continue to focus on the private jet market and helicopter services – with the return of flights to the Isle of Man also being explored, as Local Democracy Reporter Shelagh Parkinson writes.
In her blog the Labour council leader wrote that "flying in and out of Blackpool to European destinations was a great experience with no queues and rapid arrival and departure in an uncrowded terminal", but added: "It is the fact that there were no queues that is the problem."
She wrote: “At our peak in 2007, the airport lost £2m and during Balfour Beattie’s 10-year ownership, it lost around £27m.
“Airports do lose money and that is offset by parking and retail income. The reality is that we have never had the numbers to enable our airport to get anywhere close to break even.”
The Cheshire council which wants to buy a solar farm in Doncaster
It's fair to say that some of the investment decisions made by Warrington council in the past - such as energy firm Together Energy, which was 50% owned by the authority before ceasing trading in January - have had mixed success.
So it's perhaps not a surprise that Tory councillors on the Labour-run authority have 'called in' for extra scrutiny the decision to spend £63.5 million to buy and fund a new solar farm some 80 miles away at a site near Doncaster.
The council has already developed and acquired two large solar farms near York and Hull, meaning it now owns renewable assets that generate more power than they use.
Nigel Balding, leader of Warrington's Conservatives, says the decision by the ruling cabinet should be further examined to consider ‘the financial implications and any risk involved’, as Local Democracy Reporter Aran Dhillon writes.
He said: “Local authorities are expected to invest in their own economies and these can be lumpy, which is understandable, but the majority of WBC’s money is invested outside Warrington. It seems unwise to increase the exposure to any existing investment classes such as solar energy which are already overweight because if it goes wrong then we are in trouble.
“Some cabinet decisions made in the past have been big mistakes, like the decisions to invest in Together Energy and Redwood Bank, so it is important for an opposition group to carefully scrutinise these investments."
Kerbside glass collections causing injuries to binmen
It’s just over a year since Kirklees council in West Yorkshire announced: “Glass collections are coming back.” Like many town halls in the North it hasn't collected glass bottles and jars for several years.
But kerbside glass collections in Kirklees are likely not to return anytime soon as nervous council chiefs wrestle with making the right choice so as to ensure the borough gets government funding for the expensive service, as Local Democracy Reporter Tony Earnshaw writes .
After asking the public to decide on how glass might be collected – such as via a “caddy” inside a green bin – a senior manager said there had been no solid preference. The council is now investigating options.
Will Acornley, the council’s head of operational services, said the decision was not an easy one to make, and a mistake would potentially be costly. He said: “We’re going to be spending significant amounts of money and we want to get it right because we won’t be able to afford to do it a second time.”
Speaking at a meeting yesterday he warned that monthly glass collections, which ceased in 2013, had caused “huge operational issues” for the authority as well as injuries to binmen, who suffered from muscular skeletal issues with 25% absence rates that made it “unsustainable”.
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Northern Stories
Councillors in Wakefield will today be asked to reconsider the council's “unfair” taxi driver suitability policy as the city’s cabbies plan to stage a Town Hall protest. Taxi drivers who rack up more than six points on their licence in three years face lengthy bans from the trade under the local authority’s current policy. Wakefield Driving Association members plan a new protest today, the same day a full council meeting will be asked to consider a motion to make policy changes, including scrapping the six point ban.
A multi-million pound revamp of Newcastle ’s closed O2 Academy looks set to clear a crucial hurdle , after its new owners dropped heavily-criticised plans to keep the refurbished venue open later into the night. The beloved former music venue in the city centre, is due to reopen this autumn as NX Newcastle. But doubt had been cast over the plans after city authorities and nearby residents opposed the Electric Group’s attempt to extend the site’s opening hours to 4.30am Monday to Saturday, ahead of a licensing hearing this week.
York ’s transport chief has insisted the council is committed to boosting walking and cycling as he battled to salvage elements of two active travel schemes. Councillor Andy D’Agorne said he shared the frustrations of campaigners after a council report recommended a cycling and walking route between Wheldrake and Heslington and improvements to the A1237 were scrapped. Rob Ainsley, from York Cycle Campaign, said York had been given £1.2m in the last three rounds of government funding. “The record of delivering these schemes is terrible,” he added.
The scale of Knowsley ’s drug problem has been revealed in a new report. In the Merseyside borough, twice as many young people have drug related hospital admissions than the national average. And over the most recent three year period, there were 35 drug related deaths in Knowsley. Speaking at a meeting of Knowsley’s health and wellbeing scrutiny committee last night, public health programme manager Robert Begg outlined a £2.6m programme to further tackle drug related issues in the borough.
A 'puffin crossing' is to be installed in a County Durham village to make crossing safer on a road described as an 'accident waiting to happen' by local Tory MP Richard Holden. Politicians, residents and campaigners have been lobbying for improvements to the crossing at the A692 in Dipton, which separates the local school from the village centre. Durham County Council said a puffin crossing "includes signals which only operate for as long as is required to allow a pedestrian to cross".
Opinion
by Simon French
Why productivity is key to tackling North's cost-of-living crisis
As prospective Conservative leaders battle it out to be the UK’s next Prime Minister, the eventual victor will find the cost-of-living crisis will be at the top of their inbox on day one, and all the way to the next General Election.
Tax cuts will be promised and perhaps even delivered. Further spending will be pledged - beyond the £37bn already committed in February and May. Strong rhetoric will be used to signal an institutional commitment by the Bank of England to bring down inflation.
These interventions are all well and good but for businesses and households across the country, including the North of England, these will be seen for what they are. They represent sticking plasters to cover up the damaging wounds of the pandemic, the frictions generated by the Brexit transition and a steady loss of the UK’s energy independence.
To sustainably lower the cost of living the UK economy needs to rediscover productivity growth. This feature of the economy has been dreadful for fifteen years. Output per hour has grown at just 0.7% a year since 2008. This compares to an average of 1.8% in the four decades preceding the Global Financial Crisis.
This is particularly acute in the North of England where the value of output is around 50% lower per hour than in London, and 20% lower than the South-East of England. This gap has widened considerably since the mid-1990s.
Producing more goods and services with the same quantity of inputs is the only long-term way to improve UK living standards. Research-led innovation, continuous improvement in day-to-day processes and management capability all contribute - as does the infrastructure that enables businesses to prosper and workers to live healthy lives.
For North of England voters, perhaps becoming sceptical of a Conservative government promising “levelling up” but now facing unrest in its Southern constituency heartlands, this focus on productivity - in all its settings - is key.
Sales growth begets profits, which in turn begets the ability of firms to offer higher wages to their workers. For businesses looking to grow sales in the current climate there are a whole range of initiatives that, with or without government support, can drive company-level productivity. Four stand out.
Embracing remote working is key. With well-known transport pinch points across the North of England unlikely to be resolved quickly, post-pandemic working patterns now represent a chance to do things differently.
This will not be easy given the challenges of maintaining a strong workforce culture and shared learning, but effectively marshalled by management teams this could be a shot in the arm for labour productivity.
Secondly the pandemic has, often out of necessity, forced companies to be more data-led and more digitally engaged. We knew ahead of the pandemic that this was a considerable barrier to productivity with a long tail of analogue companies.
Harnessing this new information and new ways of transacting can help companies be more efficient in sourcing supply and targeting new and existing customers.
Thirdly, there have been considerable behaviour changes amongst workers and consumers that used the time offered by the pandemic pause button to reconsider their life choices.
Whilst this has been challenging for many firms as experienced workers have resigned and consumers have changed consumption patterns, this flux generates opportunities for new entrants to disrupt and innovate. This creative destruction is central to any long-term increase in living standards.
Finally, there is finance. In contrast to the Global Financial Crisis, capital markets kept lending through the pandemic through a combination of state-backed loans and channelling investor finance to growth companies.
At Panmure Gordon we were involved in raising billions of pounds in new capital during 2020 and 2021, enabling growth companies to scale and innovate.
We have recently opened a Leeds office to serve the growing number of companies across the North of England. Capital markets have of course become more difficult in 2022, but there remains strong institutional demand to back UK companies with a great expansion story to tell investors.
There is no getting away from the fact that the current cost of living squeeze will be one of the most painful economic events of recent times. Supporting green shoots on the UK’s productivity performance is the best way to mitigate how long this squeeze endures.
Simon French is chief economist at Panmure Gordon
