Author Archives: HM Government

The newly designated Northumberland Marine Special Protection Area (SPA) stretches 12 miles from the coastline into the North Sea, and covers an area of more than 120,000 football pitches.

It’s the most important site in the UK for Arctic, common and roseate terns, the second most important site for sandwich tern, and the third most important site for Atlantic puffin.

International designation will help ensure any disturbance to the birds’ essential open water feeding areas is minimised, so the birds have a safe space to feed in.

It builds on the protection already afforded to important breeding sites via the network of SPAs at Coquet Island, Farne Islands, Lindisfarne and Northumbria Coast. Today’s designation will help to protect the full range of habitats needed by the birds.

Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said:

We already have one of the strongest track records in the world when it comes to looking after our precious marine environment, and today’s designations will strengthen our blue-belt of protected areas while helping seabirds across the country thrive.

Andrew Sells, Natural England’s Chairman said:

This is a momentous day for a huge number of our best-loved and most charismatic seabirds, many of which have suffered population declines over recent decades.

These designations will protect vital feeding areas for seabirds along the English coast, creating safe havens to help the birds thrive for generations to come.

Chris Corrigan, Director, RSPB England said:

It is fantastic to see these special places being recognised and given the protection they so need and we hope to see more designations in the very near future.

As the UK moves closer to leaving the EU, we urge the government to continue to recognise the significance of protecting these sites, based on scientific evidence, and they continue to protect and manage these sites to the same or even higher standards than those currently secured by European law for generations to come.

Along with the new Northumberland Marine SPA, Natural England also announced extensions to Hamford Water SPA in Essex and Morecambe Bay and Duddon Estuary SPA in Cumbria.

These designations add an area of more than 150,000 football pitches (450 square miles) to the existing Marine Protected Area network. This gives international protection to feeding habitats for over 425,000 seabirds for the first time.

As an important breeding site in the UK Northumberland Marine SPA ranks:

• top for Arctic tern (9,564 individuals), common tern (2,572) and roseate tern (160)
• 2nd for sandwich tern (43,24 individuals)
• 3rd for Atlantic puffin (108,484 individuals)
• 4th for common guillemot (65,751 individuals)
• 11th for little tern (90 individuals)

Artic terns make the longest annual migration of any bird species in the world – an average of 44,000 miles each year.

The new Northumberland Marine SPA covers a 41 mile stretch between Scremertson and Blyth.

The most important site for breeding seabirds in the UK is at Flamborough, along the Yorkshire coast.

Contact Natural England for more information

Mary Tomlinson, Senior Press Officer, Natural England. Email: mary.tomlinson@naturalengland.org.uk. Telephone: 0208 225 7322

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The Simplyhealth Great North Run – the world’s largest half marathon – will form part of the finale of next year’s Great Exhibition of the North, Culture Secretary Karen Bradley announced today.

The mass-participation race, which attracts 57,000 runners a year, will be the centrepiece of the Exhibition’s final weekend in September 2018.

The Great Exhibition of the North is set to be the biggest event in England next year. The Exhibition, supported by £5 million of Government funding, will showcase the best of art, culture, design and innovation across the Northern Powerhouse.

Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said:

“The Great North Run is a British sporting institution that has raised the profile of Tyneside across the world. It is a fantastic example of how events like these can change a city’s culture and I am thrilled it is partnering with the Great Exhibition of the North.

“The race will be the perfect finale to the three month Exhibition, which will celebrate the very best of art, design and innovation across the whole of the North of England and help boost investment and tourism in the region to leave a lasting legacy.”

Brendan Foster, founder and chairman of The Great North Run, said:

“2018 will be another milestone year for the Simplyhealth Great North Run as the centrepiece to the Great Exhibition of the North’s final weekend.

“The region is at the very heart of mass-participation running and this partnership should help to inspire even more people to get active and take part in running, the most accessible and inclusive sport of all.”

Newcastle and Gateshead’s world-class venues and unique outdoor spaces are hosting the Exhibition, which will feature a summer of amazing exhibits, inspired technology, and cutting edge culture.

The space suit worn by astronaut Helen Sharman when she visited the Mir Space Station will be on display in the North of England for the first time. It will be exhibited at the Great North Museum alongside a range of star items, including the last piano John Lennon ever played.

Sharman, from Sheffield, was the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the Mir Space Station in 1991. The 22lb suit she wore after being selected from over 13,000 applicants to represent the British Juno Mission has never been displayed in the North before. It has been loaned by the Science Museum and will be one of the star exhibits at the Great North Museum next year.

Helen Sharman said:

“It’s fantastic to see that the Sokol space suit from my 1991 journey to the Mir Space Station will feature in the Great Exhibition of the North 2018. I’m delighted that the loan of my space suit by the Science Museum Group will help the Great Exhibition of the North to celebrate the many incredible scientific, technological and cultural contributions made by northerners. I hope that the story of a young person from Sheffield becoming the first Briton in space will inspire young visitors to believe that they too can achieve something completely unexpected.”

Find out more about the the Exhibition

Also on display will be John Lennon’s Record Plant Piano that featured on Double Fantasy, the last album he released before his death in 1980. The piano, which has also been used by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Elton John, has been loaned by The Beatles Story visitor attraction in Liverpool.

Martin King of The Beatles Story said:

“Any exhibition of great things from the North of England should reference The Beatles, or at least one of them. John Lennon’s favourite piano from his New York years featured on many of his solo works and, poignantly, was the last instrument he ever played. We hope visitors will look upon it and think about the four lads from Liverpool who are still, 50 years on, considered to be the world’s greatest ever band.”

Sir Gary Verity, Chair of the Board for the Great Exhibition of the North, said:

“The programme highlights we’ve announced today reflect what an exciting event the Great Exhibition of the North will be 2018. We’re telling the story of the North through its people, music, art and inventions.

“Never before have pieces such as Helen Sharman’s space suit and John Lennon’s Record Plant Piano been on display together in one venue. They’ll be joined by many more iconic objects from across the North. We’ll also be celebrating the North of England’s strengths in digital, health and innovation, and how Northern inventions continue to shape the world we live in.

“Today’s announcement is just a flavour of what people can expect when the Great Exhibition of the North takes over the buildings, streets and public spaces in NewcastleGateshead next summer.”

Visitors will be able to discover the story of the North of England through three walking routes themed around art, design and innovation, beginning at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Sage Gateshead or Great North Museum: Hancock.

The BALTIC will present the best in Northern contemporary art including a new solo show from Turner Prize nominee Michael Dean. The Newcastle-born artist is renowned for creating sculpture out of words, using everyday materials such as concrete, steel, soil and sand.

The Sage Gateshead will commission an animated, musical adventure called “Seven Bridges”, developed by composer Ed Carter and children’s television script-writer Katie Simmons. Set along the River Tyne to Dunston Staiths, the film will be presented live with music from the Royal Northern Sinfonia and introduce children to the architectural and engineering landmarks of the region.

The Exhibition will highlight the North’s strengths in key sectors, including digital, health innovation and energy, as well as profiling great Northern innovations such as Graphene, which was discovered by scientists working at the University of Manchester in 2004.

It is expected to attract an additional 1.2 million visitors to Newcastle and Gateshead and bring a £184 million boost to the North East, showing how cultural investment can benefit and inspire entire communities.

For more information visit www.getnorth2018.com

-ENDS- Notes to editors:

• Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum Group, said: “It’s a pleasure to support the Great Exhibition of the North 2018 with two remarkable objects telling the story of the north’s contribution to the global development of space research and railways. Both Stephenson’s Rocket and Helen Sharman’s spacesuit are hugely significant objects in our collection and with over 150 years between them, they tell the story of the UK’s continuing scientific prowess.”
• The Great Exhibition of the North was first announced by Government in April 2016 and a competition was launched to secure £5m of government funding to stage the exhibition.
• In October 2016, NewcastleGateshead was selected to host the Great Exhibition of The North; NewcastleGateshead Initiative (NGI) led the bid and is the lead delivery partner for the Exhibition, working closely with colleagues at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, BALTIC, Sage Gateshead, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and a board chaired by Sir Gary Verity.
• The Newcastle and Gateshead programme for the Great Exhibition of the North 2018 will span three months, opening over the weekend of the 22 June 2018. It will celebrate innovation and creativity across Northern England and will help boost investment and tourism, while leaving a lasting cultural and economic legacy.
• Ambitious plans will use the whole destination as the stage, with a newly commissioned creative programme taking place in a range of venues and outdoor spaces across NewcastleGateshead. Further details on the content will be announced in the coming months.
• NewcastleGateshead Initiative is a destination management and marketing agency; a public-private partnership supported by Gateshead and Newcastle City Councils, working with around 170 private sector partner organisations. It’s mission is to inspire people to visit, and to live, learn work and invest in Newcastle and Gateshead and the wider region.

The Great Run Company

The Great Run Series is the world’s favourite run with over 230,000 participants a year taking part. The events programme stretches across the UK from Aberdeen to Portsmouth offering a full range of distances from 5k through to the half marathon. A full range of online training services are available from Great Run Training. Great Run Local is a series of weekly events staged in our key cities. All designed to provide the support and advice for participants of all abilities to achieve their personal
goal.

To find out more about the events and services provided by Great Run and its partners visit www.greatrun.org.

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Young Muslims living in the UK face an enormous social mobility challenge and are being held back from reaching their full potential at every stage of their lives, a report by the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) has found.

The report uncovers significant barriers to improved social mobility for young Muslims from school through university and into the workplace – with many reporting experience of Islamophobia, discrimination and racism.

Previous analysis by the Social Mobility Commission, an independent advisory body, found that young people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds are more likely than ever to succeed in education and go on to university than other groups – particularly girls.

Despite their successes, however, this did not translate into the labour market and Muslims experience the greatest economic disadvantages of any faith group in UK society.

Based on in-depth focus groups and interviews conducted by a team of academics led by Sheffield Hallam University, the new research explores the attitudes and reasons behind this broken ‘social mobility promise’ by examining young Muslims’ perceptions and experiences of growing up and seeking work in Britain.

Within the economically active population (age 16 to 74 years) only 1 in 5 (19.8%) of the Muslim population is in full-time employment, compared to more than 1 in 3 (34.9%) of the overall population (in England and Wales).

Muslim women in the UK are more likely than all other women to be economically inactive with 18% of Muslim women aged 16 to 74 recorded as “looking after home and family” compared with 6% in the overall population.

Only 6% of Muslims are in ‘higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations’ compared to 10% of the overall population. They also have slightly lower levels of qualifications, with approximately a quarter of Muslims over the age of 16 having ‘level 4 and above’ (degree-level and above) qualifications (The Muslim Council of Britain, 2015).

Moreover, nearly half of the Muslim population (46%) live in the 10% of the most deprived local authority districts. This has implications for access to resources, school attainment, progression to higher education and the availability of jobs, including those at postgraduate or managerial levels. These inequalities vary by region, with the Midlands experiencing the largest margin of inequality and the South the smallest.

The body of the report’s findings, however, is based on the views of young Muslims themselves expressed through structured and in-depth focus groups.

Participants expressed a strong sense of work ethic, high resilience and a desire to succeed in school and beyond. But many felt they must work ‘ten times as hard’ as non-Muslims just to get the same opportunities due to cultural differences and various forms of discrimination.

The young Muslims who were interviewed reported that teachers often had stereotypical or low expectations of them. They argued there are insufficient Muslim teachers or other role models in schools and they are given insufficient or inadequate individual tailored support, guidance and encouragement at school. The services available to them were not enough to fill a parental gap particularly if parents were educated in a different system, were less able to support them in their studies or lacked the capital, knowledge or access to social networks to help their children make informed choices.

Some said they avoided asking for help for fear they will be targets for bullying and or harassment. This then impacted on confidence which they said resulted in some young Muslims ‘giving up’.

In higher education, young Muslims are more likely to drop out early or to gain fewer ‘good degrees’ (1st or 2:1s) than their non-Muslim peers. Interviewees felt their choices were more constrained because of inequitable access to high status universities (often because of geography), discrimination at the point of entry or self-limiting choices for fear of being in a minority.

The research finds that young Muslims feel their transition into the labour market is then hampered by discrimination in the recruitment process. Some interviewees reported that discrimination could take place due to applicants with ethnic-sounding names being less likely to get interviews with some employers.

Once in work, young Muslims in the focus groups said that racism, discrimination and lack of cultural awareness in the workplace had impacted on their career development and progression. Some reported feeling obliged to defend their faith with workplace colleagues in the face of negative discourses in the media.

Muslim women in the focus groups also felt that wearing the headscarf at work was an additional visual marker of difference that was perceived and experienced as leading to further discrimination.

The research suggested that many of these issues were worse for women. The report finds that within some communities, young Muslims felt that parents held high but different expectations for boys and girls concerning their educational and employment outcomes, with boys seen to be afforded more freedom. There was also an explicit recognition that within some communities, women are encouraged to focus on marriage and motherhood rather than gain employment. In particular, it was acknowledged that more traditional views of girls’ roles were sometimes reinforced by teachers within private Islamic schools.

Overall the research suggests that young Muslims feel a real challenge in maintaining their identity while seeking to succeed in Britain. They felt worried about being different and unsure about whether getting on was compatible with their identity as Muslims. Some responded by asserting their Muslim identity, although in some cases this constrained the career choices they made. Others felt there was a pressure to hide their Muslim identity and so avoid the issue that way.

The Rt Hon Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said:

The British social mobility promise is that hard work will be rewarded. Unfortunately, for many young Muslims in Britain today this promise is being broken.

This report paints a disturbing picture of the challenges they face to making greater social progress. Young Muslims themselves identify cultural barriers in their communities and discrimination in the education system and labour market as some of the principal obstacles that stand in their way. Young Muslim women face a specific challenge to maintain their identity while seeking to succeed in modern Britain.

These are complex issues and it is vital they are the subject of mature consideration and debate. It is particularly important to hear from young people from the Muslim community and respond positively to them.

There are no easy or straightforward solutions to the issues they have raised. But a truly inclusive society depends on creating a level playing field of opportunity for all, regardless of gender, ethnicity or background. That will require renewed action by government and communities, just as it will by educators and employers.

Professor Jacqueline Stevenson, from Sheffield Hallam University, who led the research, said:

Muslims are excluded, discriminated against, or failed, at all stages of their transition from education to employment. Taken together, these contributory factors have profound implications for social mobility.

Young Muslims in the UK come from a wide range of backgrounds and life situations. Muslims from low socio-economic backgrounds lack sufficient resources and support to enable them to reach their potential. This is exacerbated by their parents’ experiences of higher levels of underemployment and unemployment, particularly where their qualifications were not recognised in the UK.

The report makes several key recommendations. These include:

• mentoring and other support programmes for young (school aged) Muslims should be established to include sessions or provision for parents to ensure they are provided with support and information about post-16 choices
• the Department for Education should put in place a careers strategy that promotes informed and inclusive choices by pupils, free from stereotypical assumptions. These should be piloted in areas with high rates of unemployment for people from Muslim communities and include routes for involving parents in understanding these choices
• teacher training should include sophisticated and practical diversity training with a focus on religious diversity
• business bodies should promote greater awareness and take-up of good unconscious bias, diversity, religious literacy and cultural competence training by employers

1. The Social Mobility Commission is an advisory, non-departmental public body established under the Life Chances Act 2010 as modified by the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. It has a duty to assess progress in improving social mobility in the United Kingdom and to promote social mobility in England. It currently consists of 4 commissioners and is supported by a small secretariat.
2. The commission board currently comprises:
   • Alan Milburn (Chair)
   • Baroness Gillian Shephard (Deputy Chair)
   • Paul Gregg, Professor of Economic and Social Policy, University of Bath
   • David Johnston, Chief Executive of the Social Mobility Foundation
3. The functions of the commission include:
   • monitoring progress on improving social mobility
   • providing published advice to ministers on matters relating to social mobility
   • undertaking social mobility advocacy
4. The ‘Social mobility challenges faced by young Muslims’ report is available on the Social Mobility Commission website.
5. Case studies and interviews are available on request.
6. Note on the methodology: a total of 58 Muslims between the ages of 18 to 35 took part in the focus groups; a three-stage Delphi study was used to draw out perceptions in relation to key causes of low social mobility and a one-day summit event was held to present the draft findings to 43 stakeholder participants.
7. Data on ‘higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations’ is sourced from Nomis/Office for National Statistics, 2013.

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