Press release: Environment Agency tests new powers for volunteer bailiffs

The Environment Agency and Angling Trust are running a pilot project, funded by the fishing licence, testing the benefits of giving members of Voluntary Bailiff Service powers to make fishing licence and byelaw checks. If successful, the initiative’s expansion would allow Environment Agency fisheries officers to focus on investigations into other types of fisheries crime.

In the first phase of the project, the Angling Trust recruited over 300 volunteers across England to help Environment Agency fisheries officers by providing information and reporting suspicious incidents on riverbanks and lakes.

In the second phase, the pilot project has now trained 10 of the Voluntary Bailiff Service members from the south east to undertake fishing licence and byelaw compliance checking patrols, reporting offenders in the same way that Environment Agency enforcement officers do.

Judy Proctor, head of fisheries at the Environment Agency said:

The volunteer bailiffs already provide a great service to angling by helping our officers catch people fishing illegally. We will be evaluating the pilot carefully to see what more can be done and how we can improve the service.

There is no excuse for illegal fishing. A fishing licence costs from just £30 for a whole year and you can get one on GOV.UK. Anyone fishing illegally can expect to be prosecuted and face a fine of up to £2,500 and up to £50,000 for byelaw offences. In 2015/16, the Environment Agency’s patrols checked 62,076 rod licences and brought 2,043 successful prosecutions for fisheries crime.

The Voluntary Bailiff Service recently inducted a further 35 new Phase 1 recruits in the North East and is currently recruiting in the rest of England. Induction and training days are being held this spring and anyone expressing an interest in joining the VBS should email karen.sarkar@anglingtrust.net

Company fined after worker suffers hand injuries

PD Lift Services Limited has been fined £36,000 after a worker lost his thumb while working on passenger lifts in north London.

Westminster Magistrates Court heard how the worker was replacing the lifts at Tufnell Park underground station. On 26^th October 2015, while lowering and guiding weights down the lift void, the load fell and amputated his thumb.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the lifting activity was not properly planned, or carried out safely. All four employees of PD Lifts were also exposed to serious work at height risks.

PD Lift Services Limited of Wimpole Street, London pleaded guilty, was fined £36,000 and was ordered to pay full costs of £1173.60, plus a victim surcharge of £120.

Speaking after the hearing HSE inspector Sarah Robinson said: “This was a preventable incident which happened as a direct result of the failure of PD Lift Services Limited to plan the lifting operation, or carry it out safely.”

Notes to Editors:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice, promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice, and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
More about the legislation referred to in this case can be found at: www.legislation.gov.uk/
HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.uk

Necessity toolkit

Our website has undergone quite a makeover! With new features and drop down menus, we present you our new look website to share information about who we are and what we do. Watch the video to learn more about it.

Read how the EDPS is organised under the About EDPS section; for detailed information on our data protection work, Ethics, IPEN, Big Data and more, go to our Data Protection section. Look in our Press & Publications section for our newsletter, blog, press releases, press kit and speeches. Happy browsing!

Remarks at the launch of the Australia-India Sports Partnership

PRIME MINISTER: Well thank you Tony, and we were just talking with Annabel Mehta and Sachin Tendulkar about Apnalaya, this wonderful foundation which is supporting kids from the slums in Mumbai and giving them the ability to reach for the skies.

This was started by your predecessor, Tony, Tom Holland in 1971. Annabel has been involved in it from the following year and, of course, Sachin is bringing his remarkable prowess, charisma and leadership to support it.

I’m delighted to be here and I want to acknowledge Mr Vijay Goel the Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports, Kate Palmer, who will be speaking to you shortly who is the Chief Executive of the Australian Sports Commission, and, of course, as I have noted, Sachin Tendulkar.

Wisden, the cricketing bible, describes Sachin as the greatest batsman after Bradman. What an extraordinary career he’s had. Took up cricket at the age of 11, played for India at the age of 16 – that is an accelerated career progression if ever there was one.

He’s described the Sydney Cricket Ground, which is in my electorate of Wentworth in Sydney, as his favourite cricket ground outside of India. And you can see why, with an average score of 157 while playing at the SCG, including that extraordinary 241 not out in 2004 and playing his last test at the SCG in 2012, which was the 100th test match played at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Sachin Tendulkar’s name, his record, his character is such a huge a part of cricketing history but above all beyond the statistics, and cricketers and cricket fans of course love statistics, it is the ultimate statistical game I suppose, but above all the leadership he showed, the character he showed, the discipline, the combination of discipline, technical skill and then extraordinary creative brilliance to get the crowd on their feet with a genius accorded to so few.

Sachin Tendulkar is one of the most remarkable sportsmen of our time as we know, but, and not everybody, everyone can aspire I suppose to be Sachin Tendulkar but not many will achieve that status, we know that. But what he’s been able to show through his character and his leadership as a cricketer, as a sportsman, as an Indian leader and statesmen, as a member of the upper house, he’s been able to give a leadership to sport right across the board.

And sport is critically important for both our countries.

We were talking about Prime Minister Modi’s determination to ensure that Indians are healthier. Obesity is a growing challenge in India as it is indeed in Australia and so activity is a vitally important part of that and starting young, and these young kids, just like their counterparts in Australia, are getting fit, getting active.

Now the other aspect of sport, and we were talking about this earlier, is the way in which it provides a social, it builds up social capital. In sporting clubs, whether it’s a cricket club or a football club or a surf club, a very Australian and very democratically Australian institution, you have people from every profession, every religion, every background mixing together. Sport ties communities together, so it’s vitally important at that level too.

Now, a central feature of our sporting heritage is our record of achievement in the Olympic Games.

We’ve competed in every Summer Olympics since 1896 and won 524 Olympic medals including 155 gold medals. And that’s been a long term endeavour.

Our sporting achievements are underpinned by robust sports administration, world class research, talent identification, athlete development, sports management and technology. And those building blocks are what India looks to as it seeks to achieve Olympic success to equal its prowess on the cricket pitch.

Prime Minister Modi is resolute in his ambition to build India’s sporting capability, to set more Indian athletes on the medal winning trail. And that’s where our two nations’ sporting competitiveness becomes collaboration off the field.

We have experience and expertise to share. We’re a natural partner for India in the long term.

And so today I’m pleased to launch the sports partnership between Australia and India.

On Monday, Prime Minister Modi and I witnessed the exchange of the Memorandum of Understanding on sports between our governments.

This sets the agenda to advance cooperation in four key areas – athlete and coach training and development, sports science, sports governance and integrity, and grass roots participation. It encourages the exchange of research technology and advice, and of administrators, athletes and coaches.

An Australia-India sports partnership takes a long term view. It establishes India as a partner of choice with Australia in developing sports capability.

This partnership is underpinned by growing links around sport and allied professions through the Australian and Indian systems.

For example, Victoria University and the University of Canberra will both work with India to assist in the establishment of a national sports university.

The Australian Institute of Sport is exploring ways of supporting the Indian Commonwealth Games team in preparation for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games next year.

And it’s great to see the KOOH Sports education technology platform here today.

An Indian company lead by a distinguished Australian – a long term associate of Sachin Tendulkar, of the Indian Cricket team and here in India for thirteen years – using technology to support 200,000 students in over 200 schools to undertake the type of sporting programs and fitness and conditioning programs that we have just witnessed.

So these are great examples of what we can achieve together and I look forward to developing and strengthening the sporting bonds between our nations and I’ll now ask Kate Palmer to say a few words more about this great initiative.

Thanks.

Good Vibrations – The University of Dundee in 1967

Good Vibrations – The University in 1967

An exhibition by Archive Services and Museum Services in the Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee

As the University of Dundee celebrates its 50th anniversary as an independent institution, this special exhibition explores what was going on in that pivotal year, both on campus and in the city as a whole.

Using rarely seen photographs, documents, artworks and artefacts it describes the major developments in the University – its new buildings and departments, its pioneering research areas – as well as looking at what life was like as a student in Dundee at that time.

The exhibition also explores what was happening in separate institutions that are now part of the University such as Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Dundee College of Education.