Coast Clever

HM Coastguard launches a new film featuring Akinfenwa, to highlight the hidden dangers of the coast and urging the public to stay “Coast Clever” ahead of half term. HM Coastguard is called to around 36,000 incidents each year – with peak times happening in the summer, bank holidays and half term time. This figure has increased by 50% in 4 years, with 24,000 incidents reported in 2018.

The campaign comes on the back of a survey commissioned by HM Coastguard that shows that although 72% of people know that they should check tide times before they set out for a walk at the coast, only 33% claim that they do, highlighting the difference between knowing and doing.

The film features Adebayo “The Beast” Akinfenwa, as he shows the viewers some of the most common pitfalls around the coast – the cliffs, the mud and the tides. Widely known for his physique, and being football’s strongest man, Akinfenwa highlights how even the strongest people cannot underestimate the coast.

In the film, HM Coastguard asks people to be prepared before going to the coast to ensure they can peacefully enjoy their time. When going to the coast everyone should:

• stay away from cliff edges and bases
• check tide times before setting out
• avoid mud
• in case of emergency at the coast call 999 and ask for Coastguard

The survey also found that if respondents became stuck in mud at the coast, 28% of people would try to get someone else to pull them out while 24% would stay still to see if it lets you out and 13% would wriggle around to try and get out. HM Coastguard advises to try and spread your weight if you get stuck in the mud and call 999 for the Coastguard.

Commenting on the “Coast Clever” campaign Claire Hughes, Director of His Majesty’s Coastguard said:

Everyone enjoys a bit of time at the coast by the seaside. This half term, we want to remind Brits to enjoy their time at the coast as safely as possible. While many of us know to take precautions when going to the coast, our recent survey shows this is not necessarily always practiced. Our campaign ‘Coast Clever’ is a great reminder for people to check tide times, stay away from cliff edges and avoid the mud. But if you are in an emergency, call 999 and ask for the Coastguard.

Adebayo “The Beast” Akinfenwa, professional footballer and presenter, commented on his involvement:

I’m known as football’s strongest man but sometimes being the strongest isn’t enough. Out on the UK coast, it’s about being prepared, careful and diligent. We all love a bit of a chill time by the coast, but I want to encourage people to be safe out there. The coast can tackle even the strongest opponent – take it to from , ‘The Beast’.

Taking the time to prepare goes a long way, so let’s not underestimate the coast. By being clever – we can all enjoy the coast for a nice long time.

To find out more, search “coastal safety”.

Brendan Michael Gaughan, 40, from Glasgow has been disqualified as a director for 12 years, after using his companies to take out Bounce Back Loans totalling £135,000 that the companies were not eligible for.

Gaughan was director of three separate property management companies, Gaughan Group Ltd, Gaughan Property Ltd, and Rentl Property Ltd. They were only incorporated in February 2020 and did no business until April 2020.

As a result, they were not eligible for funds through the Bounce Back Loan (BBL) scheme, which was available only to firms that had been doing business on 1 March 2020.

However in May 2020, Gaughan Group received a BBL of £50,000, Gaughan Property received a BBL also of £50,000, and Rentl Property Ltd received a BBL of £35,000.

Gaughan transferred all the funds into a single account and proceeded to use the money to buy a property worth nearly £160,000 in August 2020. He then sold the property in March 2021 for just over £140,000, and on the same day transferred £100,000 of the proceeds to his personal account.

All three companies were put into liquidation on 11 October 2021, which triggered an investigation by the Insolvency Service.

The Secretary of State accepted disqualification undertakings from Brendan Michael Gaughan, after he did not dispute that none of his companies had been eligible for Bounce Back Loans. He has been banned for 12 years, effective from 27 October 2022.

The disqualification undertakings prevent him from directly, or indirectly, becoming involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company, without the permission of the court.

Steven McGinty, Investigation Manager at the Insolvency Service said:

Bounce Back Loans were made available for trading companies adversely affected by the pandemic. Brendan Gaughan should have known his companies weren’t entitled to the loans yet he took them anyway and used the funds for personal gain.

We will not hesitate to take action against directors who have abused Covid-19 financial support like this.

Notes to editors

Brendan Michael Gaughan is of Glasgow and his date of birth is November 1982.

Gaughan Group Ltd – SC655799

Gaughan Property Ltd – SC655896

Rentl Property Ltd – SC655897

Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings.

Persons subject to a disqualification order are bound by a range of other restrictions.

Information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct.

Contact Press Office

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The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has published revised case management guidance. I know that I, and many services, have been looking forward to this day and the much-needed clarification that the guidance provides.

The revised guidance accompanies the Lord Chancellor’s national standards for children in the youth justice system, which set out the minimum expectations for services. Crucially, it plugs a gap in our advice for how services should implement the standards in accordance with their guiding principle for youth justice – Child First. This will ensure that practice reflects contemporary understanding of what enables positive child outcomes, creating safer communities with fewer victims.

Each section of the guidance was reviewed, re-written and tested. In doing so, we gained valuable insights from across the sector into local practice on the ground. We incorporated changes in legislation, current research evidence, as well as the suitability of the language used.

We also listened to your requests to improve its usability and so rebuilt the guidance as a searchable manual.

We have published the revised guidance as soon as possible so you can take advantage of the revisions, but please note that updates to the out-of-court disposals and custody and resettlement sections will not be incorporated until the end of this year or early next year.

Updating the case management guidance was no easy feat because practice, evidence and understanding are ever evolving. It required a major collaborative effort, spanning three years of partnership working that involved the YJB team, professionals from across the youth justice system, government officials, children and young adults, academic researchers, and wider stakeholders. Much of their input came in particularly difficult circumstances, including during the pandemic. I can’t thank them enough for their resilience and commitment.

Please ensure that you spread the word about this revised guidance and encourage your colleagues to use it.

Involving professionals, third sector experts and academics

We needed to reflect experience and insights from the full spectrum of frontline professionals in local youth justice delivery. To do this we convened a user group of 28 members from across England and Wales, including frontline youth justice service (YJS) practitioners, health, court and police representatives, and colleagues from the secure estate. The user group’s expertise was invaluable.

To gain a broader perspective, we similarly benefitted hugely from the insights of our Quality of Advocacy Working Group, Voluntary and Community Sector Liaison Group and our Academic Liaison Network.

Involving children and young adults

Our Youth Advisory Network is a group of children and young adults with direct experience of the justice system. We developed specific sections of our guidance in collaboration with them and ensured that their voices helped to shape it.

We asked them for their views about how their practitioner can work with them better.

Children’s insights from lived experience proved vital. For instance, they made the powerful point that if they are ten minutes late for an appointment, they can be penalised, but it was not unusual to have to wait much longer for their worker if running late from other appointments or urgent business. They reflected that respect should go both ways – and we know from research that children mirror how they are treated by professionals. This is reflected in the guidance.

We also learnt that the assessment process is unlikely to be a neutral event for a child. This is particularly true for those who have experienced trauma. The telling (and re-telling) of their stories to individuals they do not know may be difficult and painful. This is because their YJS is often just one of many agencies which is assessing their needs.

These insights are reflected in new practical advice on how to involve children in their assessment as well as how best to interview them for reports. We adapted the guidance to encourage children to participate and tell their stories in their own way. We also guided practitioners to ask the child what interventions would assist and be meaningful to them.

Child First guidance

One of my roles was to chair a sub-committee of leading academics and stakeholders reviewing the evidence around some of the more challenging issues, such as remanding, intensive supervision, and breaching. At its heart, our advice tried to ensure that the guidance was in line with Child First.

Child First isn’t a phrase, mantra, or philosophy; it’s the published guiding principle for the youth justice sector. Essentially, it summarises our contemporary evidence-based understanding in youth justice.

And this understanding has progressed substantially in recent years, helping us to move beyond a deficit-focus on managing ‘risk of offending’, towards a more constructive focus helping children to make positive contributions to society. This has been reflected throughout the updated guidance.

The Child First principle has four tenets that summarise what is important in youth justice. It’s laid out in full in this document, but can be summed up in this simple ABCD:

As children

Recognise how children are developmentally different from adults and require different support.

Building pro-social identity

Promote children’s individual strengths and capacities to develop a pro-social identity, focusing on positive child outcomes rather than just trying to manage offending.

Collaborating with children

Involve children meaningfully to encourage their investment, engagement, and social inclusion.

Diverting from stigma

Promote supportive diversion from the criminal justice system where possible, or minimising stigma within it, as we know that stigma causes further offending.

Reflecting current evidence in our revised case management guidance is an important step towards to achieving a Child First youth justice system that enables children to make a constructive contribution to society. This will prevent offending and create safer communities with fewer victims.

The UK’s world-leading manufacturing industries will be boosted thanks to £211 million in new government funding for battery research and innovation, Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg confirmed today (Friday 21 October).

The record funding uplift will be delivered through the Faraday Battery Challenge, which began in 2017 and supports world-class scientific technology development and manufacturing scale-up capability for batteries in the UK. It will help to seize on opportunities for private investment and economic growth in industries where powerful, fast charging batteries will be essential – such as domestic energy storage and electric vehicles.

The funding, from last year’s settlement, will be delivered between 2022 and 2025 by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with support from the Faraday Institution, Innovate UK and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC).

It will help the sector deliver 100,000 jobs in battery gigafactories and the battery supply chain by 2040. Supporting the scale-up of these technologies and unlocking further private investment supports the sustainable growth of the economy, which will boost tax revenues and put public services on a more secure footing for the longer term, helping improve life for people across the UK.

Speaking on a visit to the £130 million UKBIC, which is the UK’s centre of excellence in battery manufacturing, Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg said:

Safe and powerful batteries are central to our plans to grow the industries of the future. From our world leading renewables industry, to our growing electric vehicle sector, secure supplies of batteries are key to delivering jobs and prosperity.

The Faraday Battery Challenge has brought the UK’s greatest minds and best facilities together to develop the innovations that will help us achieve this goal. The work it has done since 2017 has laid the groundwork for our future economic success and I am pleased to confirm this work will continue, supported by record funding.

The Faraday Battery Challenge combines:

• research and capability development to reduce battery weight and cost, increase energy and power, and ensure reliability and recyclability;
• collaborative business-led innovation in the UK battery sector, development of the wider network and skills needed to manufacture batteries through Innovate UK; and
• manufacturing scale-up & skills development at the UKBIC the national battery manufacturing development facility.

The Challenge has supported over 140 organisations working across the UK, attracting over £400 million in further private sector investment. It has enabled the Faraday Institution, the UK’s independent battery research body, to unite 500 researchers across more than 25 universities to improve current and develop future battery technologies.

Faraday Battery Challenge Director Tony Harper said:

This new funding allows us to strengthen the foundation we’ve created by consolidating and building on the UK’s position to become a battery science superpower. We now have an opportunity to ensure that our national industrialisation infrastructure remains world leading in this fast-evolving critical net zero technology.

With the support of the Challenge, the £130 million UKBIC in Coventry opened three years ahead of its nearest European competition. The Centre provides the link between battery research and successful mass production. So far UKBIC has supported over 140 UK battery developers, working on more than 80 research and innovation projects, to successfully scale their products to market.

Felicity Buchan, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said:

The battery industry will play a pivotal role in the growth of our future economy. That’s why it’s so important that we are making this record investment in cutting-edge research, supporting businesses to become more innovative and productive, and creating high-skill, high-wage jobs across the UK.

UKBIC Managing Director Jeff Pratt said:

I am delighted with this announcement which demonstrates the government’s sustained commitment to supporting the development of advanced battery technologies across the UK. Since the Faraday Battery Challenge was launched in 2017, we have seen rapid change in the battery industry as it develops increased capacity across Europe; and this will continue over the coming decade.

For UKBIC, this additional funding will ensure that we retain our leading-edge manufacturing capability for the UK and can continue to support our industry in the next few years as novel chemistries and formats scale towards volume production.

UKRI Chief Executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said:

Advanced battery technology will play a central role in our lives and the economy, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, creating new jobs and opening up new opportunities.

The Faraday Battery Challenge is at the forefront of the clean technology revolution, catalysing collaboration and innovation that will benefit society.

This exciting work and the further investment announced today underlines the ways in which research and innovation can help to create a sustainable future while driving economic growth.

Along with the Challenge, the UK government is helping to deliver a world leading electric vehicle industry for the UK through the Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF). Through the ATF the UK has secured major investments in battery production, including Envision AESC expanding their existing plant in Sunderland.

A further £4 million is also being announced through UKRI’s Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge to support skills, talent and training across Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) manufacturing and supply chains. PEMD components are the parts that make things ‘go’, from cars to hairdryers, underpinning a wide range of high-value industries.

Faraday Battery Challenge

The Faraday Battery Challenge has been backed by £541 million since 2017. It is delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation. It is making the UK a science superpower for batteries by supporting the UK’s world-class battery facilities and growing innovative businesses that are developing the battery supply chain for our future prosperity. Its aim is to build a high-tech, high-value, high-skill battery industry in the UK.

Projects previously backed by the Challenge include:

Cornish Lithium

Backing for Cornish Lithium Ltd, in the first of four pilot plants that will extract lithium from geothermal waters near Redruth. The firm also intends to recover lithium-laden mica deposits from old China clay pits in the county. Cornwall could produce a third of the UK’s lithium requirement for electric vehicle (EV) batteries within five years.

Nexeon

Backing for Nexon Ltd’s SUNRISE project, which looks to triple the energy density of Lithium-ion batteries, by using silicon-based anodes instead of conventional graphite ones. Nexeon is already supplying a number of Tier 1 global battery manufacturers and OEMs. Its latest investment funding round saw the firm secure $200 million to mass produce tens of thousands of metric tonnes annually of its silicon-based anode materials for use in rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries.

About the Faraday Institution

The Faraday Institution is the UK’s independent institute for electrochemical energy storage research, skills development, market analysis, and early-stage commercialisation. Bringing together expertise from universities and industry, the Faraday Institution endeavours to make the UK the go-to place for the research and development of new electrical storage technologies for both the automotive and wider relevant sectors.

The Faraday Institution is funded by the Faraday Battery Challenge at UK Research and Innovation. Headquartered at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, the Faraday Institution is a registered charity with an independent board of trustees.

About the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC)

The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) was opened in July 2021. The national battery manufacturing development facility provides the missing link between battery technology, which has proved promising at laboratory or prototype scale, and successful mass production.

Based in Coventry, UKBIC welcomes manufacturers, entrepreneurs, researchers and educators, and can be accessed by any organisation with existing or new battery technology – if that technology brings green jobs and prosperity to the UK.

In addition to funding from the Faraday Battery Challenge through UK Research and Innovation, UKBIC is part-funded through the West Midlands Combined Authority. The facility was delivered through a consortium of Coventry City Council, Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and WMG, at the University of Warwick, following a competition in 2018 led by the Advanced Propulsion Centre with support from Innovate UK.

Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge

Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) technologies are what make things ‘go’. They are found in a wide range of places from cars, to solar panels, to mobile phones and in hairdryers. High-tech, high-value industries rely on them and a workforce skilled in their design and creation.

The Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge supports projects that that build awareness of PEMD and fill gaps in the UK’s workforce talent and training capabilities.