Public Health England (PHE) has launched a series of new e-learning tools to boost health and care professionals’ knowledge and skills in dealing with some of the biggest issues in public health.

The new interactive e-learning tools, developed by PHE and Health Education England e-Learning for Healthcare, offer bite-sized information on key public health issues to help professionals prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing.

E-learning tools are now available for cardiovascular disease prevention, adult obesity, antimicrobial resistance, physical activity, social prescribing, giving children the best start in life and supporting those at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness.

The tools explain why each topic is a public health priority, with practical advice on how different skills, techniques and approaches can help professionals across the health and social care sector to address the issues through their practice.

For example, the adult obesity tool offers advice on how professionals can approach conversations about weight and how they can measure and evaluate the impact of their work.

Each tool signposts to further information to help professionals embed prevention in their everyday practice, with short knowledge tests to help enhance learning.

Professor Jamie Waterall, Deputy Chief Nurse at Public Health England, said:

With prevention a major priority under the NHS Long Term Plan, it’s vital that every health and care professional has quick access to advice that will help them make the most difference through their everyday practice.

These tools make it easier for all health and care professionals to access information that will help them make a greater impact in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing.

We know that health and care professionals are often time poor, which is why these tools are designed to be used flexibly, helping people enhance learning alongside their day-to-day roles.

There will be 15 more e-learning tools published over the coming year for topics ranging from smoking cessation to health at work.

Each tool is underpinned by the latest evidence and has been developed by topic experts at PHE, designed to build on professionals’ existing knowledge.

The advice is relevant for people working across the health and social care sector regardless of specialism, from frontline practitioners to managers and strategic leaders.

Neil Ralph, National Programme Manager, Health Education England, said:

Sharing our expertise on the development and design of e-learning content on the topic of prevention, a high-profile priority for the NHS, demonstrates the impact our programmes can have on patient outcomes.

Each of the new tools has been created from PHE’s All Our Health framework, a collection of materials, tools and resources which support prevention priorities to help reduce health inequalities and premature mortality.

Access the new e-learning tools online.

View the full range of All Our Health topics.

About All Our Health

PHE’s All Our Health framework is a call to action to all health and care professionals to embed prevention within their day to day practice. Through educational materials, tools and resources, All Our Health helps professionals make an even greater impact in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing.

Public Health England (PHE) has launched a series of new e-learning tools to boost health and care professionals’ knowledge and skills in dealing with some of the biggest issues in public health.

The new interactive e-learning tools, developed by PHE and Health Education England e-Learning for Healthcare, offer bite-sized information on key public health issues to help professionals prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing.

E-learning tools are now available for cardiovascular disease prevention, adult obesity, antimicrobial resistance, physical activity, social prescribing, giving children the best start in life and supporting those at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness.

The tools explain why each topic is a public health priority, with practical advice on how different skills, techniques and approaches can help professionals across the health and social care sector to address the issues through their practice.

For example, the adult obesity tool offers advice on how professionals can approach conversations about weight and how they can measure and evaluate the impact of their work.

Each tool signposts to further information to help professionals embed prevention in their everyday practice, with short knowledge tests to help enhance learning.

Professor Jamie Waterall, Deputy Chief Nurse at Public Health England, said:

With prevention a major priority under the NHS Long Term Plan, it’s vital that every health and care professional has quick access to advice that will help them make the most difference through their everyday practice.

These tools make it easier for all health and care professionals to access information that will help them make a greater impact in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing.

We know that health and care professionals are often time poor, which is why these tools are designed to be used flexibly, helping people enhance learning alongside their day-to-day roles.

There will be 15 more e-learning tools published over the coming year for topics ranging from smoking cessation to health at work.

Each tool is underpinned by the latest evidence and has been developed by topic experts at PHE, designed to build on professionals’ existing knowledge.

The advice is relevant for people working across the health and social care sector regardless of specialism, from frontline practitioners to managers and strategic leaders.

Neil Ralph, National Programme Manager, Health Education England, said:

Sharing our expertise on the development and design of e-learning content on the topic of prevention, a high-profile priority for the NHS, demonstrates the impact our programmes can have on patient outcomes.

Each of the new tools has been created from PHE’s All Our Health framework, a collection of materials, tools and resources which support prevention priorities to help reduce health inequalities and premature mortality.

Access the new e-learning tools online.

View the full range of All Our Health topics.

About All Our Health

PHE’s All Our Health framework is a call to action to all health and care professionals to embed prevention within their day to day practice. Through educational materials, tools and resources, All Our Health helps professionals make an even greater impact in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing.

Jodie Annabel Fairbrother (40), from Immingham, Lincolnshire, was the former owner of a boarding kennels in South Killingholme. The business traded from Janika Boarding Kennels under the name ‘4Paws’ and provided animal transport, boarding kennels and a veterinary clinic.

In March 2018, 4Paws was subject to visits from the RSPCA and the police over animal welfare concerns. Over 100 animals were removed and Jodie Fairbrother later closed the business before applying for bankruptcy in November 2018.

Having been previously bankrupt in 2005, Jodie Fairbrother would have been aware that she was required to inform the Official Receiver about any assets she owned, including property. However, she failed to declare that she jointly owned the boarding kennels 4Paws had been trading from.

Following a tip-off, the Official Receiver later confirmed that Jodie Fairbrother jointly owned the property. But throughout the investigation, the former business-owner denied she was the property’s owner and claimed instead she was a tenant even after being shown copies of the land registry.

Further investigations discovered that a month before she applied to be bankrupt, Jodie Fairbrother sold her stake in the property in October 2018 and had received thousands of pounds in return.

The Secretary of State has since accepted a bankruptcy restrictions’ undertaking from Jodie Annabel Fairbrother where she voluntarily accepted she failed to declare the property owned to the Official Receiver.

The bankruptcy restrictions, effective from 28 March 2019, last for 7 years and prohibit Jodie Fairbrother from several activities, including acting as a director of a company without permission from the court and attempting to borrow more than £500 without declaring restrictions they are subject to.

Gerard O’Hare, Official Receiver, said:

This case has seen a litany of offences carried out by Jodie Fairbrother and then she thought she could hide assets preventing her creditors from receiving the money they are rightfully owed.

Seven years of extended bankruptcy restrictions is a significant ban and not only seriously confines Jodie Fairbrother’s conduct going forward but should also act as a warning to those who attempt to defraud their creditors by hiding their assets.

Jodie Annabel Fairbrother is of Immingham and her date of birth is September 1978.

Details of Jodie Fairbrother’s BRU is available on the Individual Insolvency Register

Information on bankruptcy and the restrictions concerned are available on GOV.UK.

The Insolvency Service administers the insolvency regime, investigating all compulsory liquidations and individual insolvencies (bankruptcies) through the Official Receiver to establish why they became insolvent. It may also use powers under the Companies Act 1985 to conduct confidential fact-finding investigations into the activities of live limited companies in the UK. In addition, the agency deals with disqualification of directors in corporate failures, assesses and pays statutory entitlement to redundancy payments when an employer cannot or will not pay employees, provides banking and investment services for bankruptcy and liquidation estate funds and advises ministers and other government departments on insolvency law and practice.

Further information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct, is available.

Media enquiries for this press release – 020 7674 6910 or 020 7596 6187

You can also follow the Insolvency Service on:

Today (8 April 2019), HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) announced that the deadline for applications for an £8 million government initiative to help businesses prepare for EU Exit has been extended to 31 May 2019.

This will enable more businesses to benefit from the investment available and provide more time for applications.

The funding will support customs intermediaries and traders completing customs declarations, and can be used to help businesses meet the costs of employee training and IT improvements.

Treasury Minister Mel Stride MP, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:

We are doing everything we can to get businesses ready for the UK leaving the EU, however businesses also need to take action themselves to prepare.

There is help available – we have provided funding to support businesses with customs processes, and we are now extending the deadline to 31 May 2019 giving more time for applications.

We have already received over 300 applications, and I’d urge businesses to apply as soon as possible to avoid missing out.

The grant funding builds upon the ongoing efforts of HMRC to get businesses ready for EU Exit, including having written several letters to 145,000 VAT-registered businesses that trade with the EU to advise them how to prepare for a no deal scenario, and publishing more than 100 pages of guidance for businesses on processes and procedures at the border in a no deal scenario.

Further information

All businesses who move goods into or out of the EU – even if it’s just once a year – need to take action including getting an EORI number and understanding what declarations they need to make.

In October 2018 HMRC and HMT announced an £8 million fund to help businesses prepare for a no deal scenario. The £8m funding was broken down into:

• £2 million to fund training for intermediaries and traders completing customs declarations (or intending to complete customs declarations in the future). The grant will provide funding for up to 50% of the cost of training staff
• £3 million in IT improvement funding, available to small and medium sized employers in the customs intermediaries sector currently completing customs declarations on behalf of importers and exporters. The grant will fund investment in packaged software that increases the automation and productivity of completing customs declarations
• £3 million was invested to increase training provision. HMRC provided the funding to service provider Knowledge Pool which is engaging with training providers to increase the number of courses available in the short term, as well as investing in the development of new courses which will be available over the coming months to support customs broker training
• in March, HMRC announced that in the event of no deal, importers using Transitional Simplified Procedures (TSP) can postpone doing customs declarations for 6 months from the date the UK exits the EU. This funding gives people time to apply and become comfortable in doing these declarations

Who can apply

Training grant

To apply for the training grant, your business must either:

• complete customs declarations for yourself or someone else (or intend to in the future)
• import from, or export to the EU and complete customs declarations (or intend to complete customs declarations in the future)

IT improvements grant

To apply for the IT improvements grant, your business must:

• currently complete customs declarations for importers and exporters
• have 250 employees or fewer
• have an annual turnover of less than €50 million

The types of funding available

There are 2 different grants that you can apply for to help your business complete customs declarations:

1. a training grant to help your employees to complete customs declarations and processes
2. an IT improvements grant to help your business complete customs declarations more efficiently

Where you can apply

Online applications must be received by 31 May 2019. We advise applying as soon as possible, as it may be that applications close earlier than this date, dependent on uptake.

We encourage applicants to check the guidance carefully and submit all of the relevant information to ensure applications can be processed as quickly as possible

Businesses can apply for both the training and IT grants. The IT grant is only available to current customs intermediaries with 250 employees or less and an annual turnover of £50 million or less.

PWC is administering the grants on behalf of HMRC. If you want to apply for funding, please apply online – do not contact HMRC.

• Independent regulator will be appointed to enforce stringent new standards
• Social media firms must abide by mandatory “duty of care” to protect users and could face heavy fines if they fail to deliver
• Measures are the first of their kind in the world in the fight to make the internet a safer place

In the first online safety laws of their kind, social media companies and tech firms will be legally required to protect their users and face tough penalties if they do not comply.

As part of the Online Harms White Paper, a joint proposal from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Home Office, a new independent regulator will be introduced to ensure companies meet their responsibilities.

This will include a mandatory ‘duty of care’, which will require companies to take reasonable steps to keep their users safe and tackle illegal and harmful activity on their services. The regulator will have effective enforcement tools, and we are consulting on powers to issue substantial fines, block access to sites and potentially to impose liability on individual members of senior management.

Prime Minister Theresa May said:

The internet can be brilliant at connecting people across the world – but for too long these companies have not done enough to protect users, especially children and young people, from harmful content.

That is not good enough, and it is time to do things differently. We have listened to campaigners and parents, and are putting a legal duty of care on internet companies to keep people safe.

Online companies must start taking responsibility for their platforms, and help restore public trust in this technology.

A range of harms will be tackled as part of the Online Harms White Paper, including inciting violence and violent content, encouraging suicide, disinformation, cyber bullying and children accessing inappropriate material.

There will be stringent requirements for companies to take even tougher action to ensure they tackle terrorist and child sexual exploitation and abuse content.

The new proposed laws will apply to any company that allows users to share or discover user generated content or interact with each other online. This means a wide range of companies of all sizes are in scope, including social media platforms, file hosting sites, public discussion forums, messaging services, and search engines.

Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright said:

The era of self-regulation for online companies is over. Voluntary actions from industry to tackle online harms have not been applied consistently or gone far enough. Tech can be an incredible force for good and we want the sector to be part of the solution in protecting their users. However those that fail to do this will face tough action.

We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a digital business and our proposals for new laws will help make sure everyone in our country can enjoy the Internet safely.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid said:

The tech giants and social media companies have a moral duty to protect the young people they profit from.

Despite our repeated calls to action, harmful and illegal content – including child abuse and terrorism – is still too readily available online.

That is why we are forcing these firms to clean up their act once and for all. I made it my mission to protect our young people – and we are now delivering on that promise.

A regulator will be appointed to enforce the new framework. The Government is now consulting on whether the regulator should be a new or existing body. The regulator will be funded by industry in the medium term, and the Government is exploring options such as an industry levy to put it on a sustainable footing.

A 12 week consultation on the proposals has also been launched today. Once this concludes we will then set out the action we will take in developing our final proposals for legislation.

Tough new measures set out in the White Paper include:

• A new statutory ‘duty of care’ to make companies take more responsibility for the safety of their users and tackle harm caused by content or activity on their services.

• Further stringent requirements on tech companies to ensure child abuse and terrorist content is not disseminated online.

• Giving a regulator the power to force social media platforms and others to publish annual transparency reports on the amount of harmful content on their platforms and what they are doing to address this.

• Making companies respond to users’ complaints, and act to address them quickly.

• Codes of practice, issued by the regulator, which could include measures such as requirements to minimise the spread of misleading and harmful disinformation with dedicated fact checkers, particularly during election periods.

• A new “Safety by Design” framework to help companies incorporate online safety features in new apps and platforms from the start.

• A media literacy strategy to equip people with the knowledge to recognise and deal with a range of deceptive and malicious behaviours online, including catfishing, grooming and extremism.

The UK remains committed to a free, open and secure Internet. The regulator will have a legal duty to pay due regard to innovation, and to protect users’ rights online, being particularly mindful to not infringe privacy and freedom of expression.

NSPCC CEO Peter Wanless said:

This is a hugely significant commitment by the Government that once enacted, can make the UK a world pioneer in protecting children online.

For too long social networks have failed to prioritise children’s safety and left them exposed to grooming, abuse, and harmful content. So it’s high time they were forced to act through this legally binding duty to protect children, backed up with hefty punishments if they fail to do so.

We are pleased that the Government has listened to the NSPCC’s detailed proposals and we are grateful to all those who supported our campaign.

Recognising that the Internet can be a tremendous force for good, and that technology will be an integral part of any solution, the new plans have been designed to promote a culture of continuous improvement among companies. The new regime will ensure that online firms are incentivised to develop and share new technological solutions, like Google’s “Family Link” and Apple’s Screen Time app, rather than just complying with minimum requirements. Government has balanced the clear need for tough regulation with its ambition for the UK to be the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business, and the new regulatory framework will provide strong protection for our citizens while driving innovation by not placing an impossible burden on smaller companies.

Barnardo’s Chief Executive, Javed Khan said:

Children in the UK are facing growing risks online – from cyber-bullying to sexual grooming to gaming addiction.

The internet can be a force for good but we can’t ignore the risks. Two thirds of the vulnerable children and young people supported through our sexual exploitation services were groomed online before meeting their abuser in person.

Barnardo’s has long called for new laws to protect children online, just as we do offline, so they can learn, play and communicate safely.

The Government’s announcement today is a very important step in the right direction. We particularly welcome proposals for a new independent regulator, which should ensure internet bosses make the UK one of the safest places in the world for children to be online.

Alex Holmes, Deputy CEO at The Diana Award said:

The Diana Award welcomes today’s Online Harms White Paper. We understand the powerful and influential role that the internet plays in the lives of young people and that’s why we are dedicated to training Anti-Bullying Ambassadors in schools across the UK to keep themselves and their peers safe online.

We believe that the time is right for further innovation from the tech sector when it comes to their approach to safety. While their products are constantly evolving and innovating, there is room for innovation on their approach to safeguarding.

We look forward to continuing to work with industry, government and other organisations to help children and young people in particular, manage risks and reduce harms.

Will Gardner, CEO of Childnet said:

We look forward to this opportunity to help shape a better and safer environment for children and to continue and grow our current work to equip them with the information and skills they need to navigate the internet positively and safely. As we speak to thousands of children, parents, teachers and other professionals each year, we want to mobilise and support them to be part of the solution.

We know that young people have strong ideas and opinions on online safety and it is their experiences we hope to reflect when responding to this consultation.”

Carolyn Bunting, CEO, Internet Matters, said:

We support the government’s desire to make the UK the safest place to be online. The internet simply wasn’t built with children in mind, so it is vital that government plays a greater role in determining and setting standards for the services that children commonly use, and that industry responds quickly and effectively.

Proactive regulation and better technical solutions, whilst welcomed, are just one part of the solution. We have to help parents to have greater awareness and understanding of their child’s digital wellbeing. It would be unfair to leave those parents or guardians to figure it out for themselves. Instead we must make available as many accessible, simple resources for parents based on expert advice which makes it as easy as possible for them to understand.​

Read the White Paper and relevant consultation documents.

Today we have published our updated Digital Charter, alongside the White Paper. Through the Digital Charter, we are protecting citizens, increasing public trust in new technologies, and creating the best possible basis on which the digital economy and society can thrive.

Online harms in scope of the White Paper – The table below shows the initial list of online harmful content or activity in scope of the White Paper, based on an assessment of their impact on individuals and society and their prevalence. This list is, by design, neither exhaustive nor fixed. A static list could prevent swift regulatory action to address new forms of online harm, new technologies and online activities.

The Cabinet Office has announced the ‘RESIST’ toolkit, which enables organisations to develop a strategic counter-disinformation capability. The toolkit is primarily a resource for public service communications teams and it equips people with the knowledge and skills to identify, assess and respond to disinformation. The ‘RESIST’ model provides straightforward steps to follow and promotes a consistent approach.

The Government is also taking action on disinformation with a behaviour change campaign aimed at the public. The pilot campaign has launched and aims to increase audience resilience to disinformation, by educating and empowering those who see, inadvertently share and are affected by false and misleading information. The campaign will increase the audience’s ability to spot disinformation by providing them with straightforward advice to help them check whether content is likely to be false or intentionally misleading.