Tag Archives: HM Government

The river that gives Sleaford its name is being given a helping hand by the Environment Agency with the switch-on of a groundwater scheme.

Around 1.1million litres of water a day is being drawn up from an underground limestone aquifer, via a 44-metre deep borehole, and fed into the River Slea, keeping it from drying out.

The ‘augmentation scheme’ ensures the river continues to flow during its driest months, benefiting local habitat and preserving the look and feel of the town’s water environment.

Almost 150 years ago, the river was described as “a never failing source of pure water” but natural and man-made changes to the environment and water cycle saw it dry up for extended periods from the 1960s.

The augmentation scheme was established in 1995 in response to calls from the local community, which values the river as an attractive feature.

For most years since, it has been supplementing the flow during the river’s driest months, which tend to be between July and December. Without it, the river would typically run dry during this period.

Claire Anderson, environment planning specialist at the Environment Agency, said:

The Environment Agency exists to create better places for people to enjoy and wildlife to thrive. This scheme achieves both. By supplementing the flow of water, we contribute to the town’s cherished water environment and we minimise the environmental impact of dry weather, protecting the habitat in which dozens of species live.

After activating the scheme, Environment Agency officers monitor the Slea between the borehole and Cogglesford Mill, ensuring everything is working as it should.

The Slea augmentation scheme was activated on Saturday 15 July.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) was recognised recently for its commitment to accident and ill health prevention with the highly prestigious Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Gold Achievement Award.

DIO’s Chief Operating Officer, Geoff Robson attended the awards ceremony held at the Birmingham Hilton Hotel on 12 July 2017, to accept the highly prestigious award on behalf of DIO.

RoSPA achievement awards are a highly regarded and sought after business accolade. The scheme is open to businesses and organisations of all types and sizes from across the UK and overseas. Judges consider entrants’ occupational health and safety management systems, including practices such as leadership, active performance monitoring and workforce involvement.

To satisfy the strict criteria for the RoSPA Gold Award, DIO was required to provide evidence of a very high level of safety performance, demonstrating well developed occupational health and safety management systems and culture, outstanding control of risk and very low levels of error, harm and loss. In addition, we were required to demonstrate continued and improving performance over the past 5 years.

In accepting the award Geoff Robson said:

It is a great honour to accept this award on behalf of DIO based on evidence of working practices across our whole organisation. Putting safety first is our primary value, and what better evidence of our organisation honouring that commitment than receiving such a prestigious award. Moreover, it demonstrates to those visiting, working or living on the defence estate our commitment to their safety.

The entry was coordinated by Clare Read, Head of Regional Health and Safety Support Team who said:

We are extremely proud of our health and safety achievements and the very real improvements in safety performance across the organisation as evidenced in our award submission. To attain our target of a Gold Award is a fantastic achievement, which places DIO in the health and safety “premier league” and reflects the hard work put into developing and improving our Safety Management System. We look forward to reviewing the RoSPA award panel feedback and will be seeking ways to further develop and improve our process and procedures.

Guests were invited to a special event on Friday 30 June to mark the completion of the final phase of construction for the £7 million defences.

The market town of Northwich suffered serious flooding in 1946 and more recently in 2000 and 2012. This has caused distress and financial impact for residents as well as costing millions of pounds worth of damage to homes and businesses.

The new scheme reduces flood risk to almost 400 homes and businesses as well as 3 development sites in Northwich, Cheshire. It is the result of close effective partnership working between the Environment Agency, Northwich Town Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council, Northwich BID and the Canal and Rivers Trust, as well as local businesses and the wider community.

The scheme itself is made up of 1.7km of flood defences using a combination of flood walls and embankments, along the banks of the River Dane and River Weaver. To ensure that Northwich’s historic facade is kept intact, the project has used high quality finishes on the walls and state-of-the-art solutions including glass panels and floating ecosystems in order to reduce the visual impact of the defences. In addition to fixed flood defences, the scheme will also use demountable defences and flood gates across key footpaths and highways.

Lee Rawlinson, Environment Agency Area Manager, said:

This scheme will help to keep the local community protected while at the same time helping to safeguard the economic investment in the town, and the permanent jobs created as a result. Northwich is at risk of flooding from the Rivers Dane and Weaver and the construction of this flood scheme will reduce the risk to nearly 400 local homes which equates to protecting more than 1,000 residents and further businesses. Cheshire West and Chester Council has been working tirelessly to encourage development in the town and by reducing the risk of flooding, we can further boost the confidence of potential investors and ensure Northwich continues to prosper during, what are, challenging times.

Councillor Samantha Dixon, Leader of Chester West and Cheshire Council, who officially opened the scheme, said the flood defence project would play a key role in the town’s continued economic growth. She explained:

Recent public investment in Northwich includes £35 million for the capital works to stabilise the town from subsidence, and future growth plans include £100 million of private investment and £15 million of public investment. The partnership work undertaken during the last few years will help to put Northwich in a much better economic position for the future and will help to support inward investment.

Even with new flood defences in place, the risk of flooding can never entirely be removed. It is important that residents prepare in advance. They can start by telephoning the Environment Agency Floodline on 0345 988 1188 to find out if they can sign up for free flood warnings.

Information about preparing for flooding, including how to check your flood risk, develop a flood plan and putting together a flood kit is also available online.

We are going to be talking about sanctions against those who have been involved in a series of chemical weapons attacks in Syria and I’m very pleased to say that this is one of the things that the UK government has been talking about for many months. There’s been a series of chemical weapon attacks, the latest of which was the barbaric attack in Khan Shaykhun on April 4. What the Foreign Affairs Council will be agreeing today is that 16 named individuals will be sanctioned, their movements will be restricted, their assets will be frozen. They are military technical personnel, which shows the resolve of the UK and the rest of our friends in Europe in dealing with those who are responsible for chemical weapons attacks.

We will be also discussing the continuing crisis in North Korea. On the Testing of the ICBM that we saw recently, we remain absolutely determined to try to get the North Koreans to see sense and to continue to put pressure on the regime in Pyongyang. We think the best way to do that is to put pressure on the Chinese. We are seeing some progress there but a lot more to be done.

On 7 July 2017 JJR Fishing Limited, owner of the fishing vessel Golden Sceptre PD50 and its master, James West, pleaded guilty to 2 breaches of the Fisheries Act 1981 at North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court.

The court heard that in January 2017 the vessel was boarded by officers from the Royal Navy fisheries protection vessel HMS Severn which was carrying out fisheries enforcement duties in the area. During the inspection it was identified that the vessel was not transmitting on its Automatic Identification System (AIS), contrary to Section 30(1) of the Fisheries Act 1981 as read with article 10 of Council regulation (EC) No. 1224/2009. When questioned about this by the officers Mr West, who is also a director of JJR Fishing Limited, replied that he had turned the system off in order that other vessels would not be able to see where he was fishing.

The court also heard that Mr West had failed to comply with the obligation to submit a fishing vessel logbook, in that he had not submitted any fishing activity reports for two days’ worth of fishing activity.

The vessel owner, JJR Fishing Limited was ordered to pay a fine of £15,750 together with an additional fine based on the value of the catch of £2,250, with a victim surcharge of £120 and court costs of £1,500.

The vessel master James West was fined £5,250 together with an additional fine based on the value of the catch of £1,250, with a victim surcharge of £120 and court costs of £437.

A spokesman for the MMO said:

“The court in this case considered these offences to be serious in nature and imposed significant penalties, which recognises the scale of offending that took place in failing to submit logbook information and failing to transmit AIS. Failing to comply with regulations which apply to commercial sea fishing carries with it the risk of fines of this magnitude.”

“In these cases the MMO will always take the appropriate action including prosecution to ensure offenders do not profit from such illegal activity and to protect fish stocks for the wider fishing industry and future generations.”