• Measures include offering better support from birth, better preventative support in the community, and work to improve quality of care

• Government has set out how it will reduce the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in specialist inpatient care by 50% by March 2024 compared with March 2015

People with a learning disability and autistic people will receive better and more focused community care as part of plans to reduce the number in specialist inpatient care.

The Building the Right Support Action Plan published today brings together in one place commitments from across government and public services to ensure there is suitable community support available for people with a learning disability and autistic people. This supports government plans to reduce reliance on mental health inpatient care.

Measures brought together in the action plan include:

• Speeding up discharges for people with a learning disability and autistic people supported by additional targeted funding of more than £90 million in 2022/2023 including:

• A £40 million investment from the NHS Long Term Plan to continue to improve the capacity and capability of crisis support for autistic people and people with a learning disability in every area of the country and £30 million of funding to continue putting key workers in place for children and young people with the most complex needs

• A £21 million Community Discharge Grant to local authorities which will help people with a learning disability and autistic people to be discharged

• Limiting the scope under which people with a learning disability and autistic people can be detained by reforming the Mental Health Act to improve how people are treated in law

• Building on specialist training for health and care staff to ensure they have the skills to better care for people with a learning disability and autistic people

The plan focuses on keeping people safe now and also delivering long term change for people with a learning disability and autistic people. It aims to ensure people are treated with dignity and respect, experience personalised care and treatment, and can live an ordinary, independent life in their own home as part of the community.

Minister for Care and Mental Health Gillian Keegan said:.

For too long autistic people and people with a learning disability have remained as inpatients in mental health units not necessarily because it was the best place but because of failings in the system and a lack of community facilities to support them.

I am committed to driving further, faster progress to ensure people with a learning disability and autistic people, of all ages, receive high quality health and social care support in their communities when they need it.

The plan prioritises safety and quality of life and includes the proposal in the draft Mental Health Bill that neither a learning disability or autism can be considered mental health disorders requiring compulsory treatment.

Where people would benefit from inpatient care, the plan seeks to improve the quality of care in mental health hospitals. This includes taking steps to ensure care review recommendations are followed, reducing restrictive practices, and targeted support for people in long term segregation to move into the community or a less restrictive setting as appropriate.

This work will be supported by increasing the availability and choice of specialist and supported housing options.

The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a new requirement for registered providers to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism, which is appropriate to their role.

There are also proposed new duties on commissioners to ensure there are the right community based services in their area and there is better monitoring of risk of crisis at a local level.

Early intervention is key to ensuring people get the right support throughout their lives, which includes improved experiences of education and early diagnosis. The government will build on the £10.5 million Covid-19 Mental Health Recovery Fund and £2.5 million NHS Long Term Plan investment, with a further £2.5 million to support the delivery of the Long Term Plan commitment to improve autism diagnosis pathways for children and young people.

A man has been fined for illegally transporting waste soil – and the transport company from which he hired trucks to move it hit with hefty fine.

Sam Dowell, 30, was fined £1,840 at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court last year for causing the transportation and dumping of waste soil without the appropriate permits. Dowell, who pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing, also had to pay £2,000 compensation. He also had to pay a third of the cost of removing the illegally dumped soil, plus costs of £1,900.

Patrick Coleman, 75, of Galsworthy Road, Barnet, North London, who is the sole director of haulage company PJC Sweepers Ltd, which rented the trucks to Dowell. Coleman was acquitted at Cambridgeshire Crown Court on 1 June 2022 for transporting waste without a permit. However, his company was fined £6,000 plus costs of £10,000, a further £4,000 compensation for the remediation of the site. He also had to pay a £170 victim surcharge at the same court on 4 July, 2022.

Dowell had been given a contract to help prepare a piece of land in readiness for the groundworks of a housing development in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire. His employees carried out the work while he identified a site next to the Royston Sewage Treatment Works in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, for dumping the waste soil. Dowell leased lorries from PJC Sweepers Ltd to move it.

However, this site is owned by AWG Land Holdings Ltd, part of the Anglian Water Group. Anglian Water Group includes Anglian Water Services Ltd, and did not have an environmental permit to accept waste.

Coleman’s haulage company should have carried out duty of care checks to ensure the waste soil was being moved to an appropriately licensed waste site.

His Honour Judge Cooper observed:

Despite the drivers being challenged by a representative of the landowner to inform that the deposits were not authorised, they carried on regardless until the police were called. By then around 30 lorry loads of deposits had already been made.

Describing the actions of PJC Sweepers Ltd as “completely reckless”, he added:

Anyone who puts profits before the protection of the environment needs to understand that they face a serious sentence.

Duty of care cannot be delegated to another company. There is a duty to check how the next waste holder in the chain will handle the waste and where the wastes journey will end.

The failure by the company’s employees to make these checks – which would have revealed that the receiving site was not a permitted site. This meant that the deposits of waste soil made on or before 14 January 2019 were illegal.

An environmental permit is important to prevent harm to the environment, nuisance to neighbours and protect the landowners from illegal deposits. It also ensure that the relevant taxes are paid. The defendants were prosecuted due to the undermining of legitimate waste management industry and the suffering to local communities caused by illegal deposits of this nature.

Simon Hawkins, Manager at the Environment Agency, said:

All waste companies must complete duty of care checks. By not following their duty of care, companies can potentially harm our natural resources and blight communities. It also undermines, legitimate businesses that do follow the rules, which enables the offender to gain an unfair commercial advantage over them.

Our role is to protect the environment for people and wildlife, so we won’t hesitate to take action against those who put it at risk. And to businesses flouting the rules our message is clear: you won’t get away with it.

Anyone who suspects illegal waste activity is reminded to report it to our 24-hour hotline by calling 0800 80 70 60, or anonymously contacting Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

You can check your waste collectors waste carriers registration at https://environment.data.gov.uk/public-register/view/search-waste-carriers-brokers or call 03708 506 506.

Last year the Environment Agency and partners launched the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, aiming to stop serious and organised crime in the UK Waste Industry. You can find out more about the initiative on our website.

Summary of regulations under which the 2 parties were prosecuted:

The offences are all committed contrary to Section 33(1)(a) Environmental Protection Act 1990 and is an either-way offence. On summary conviction the maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and/or a term of imprisonment not exceeding 6 months. On conviction on indictment the maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and/or a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years.

From 6 April 2010, anyone operating a regulated facility to recover or dispose of waste can only do so in accordance with an environmental permit granted under the Environmental Permitting Regulations.  An environmental permit is granted subject to a number of conditions to protect the environment and local communities from potentially harmful substances. This includes such things as smell or litter nuisance, and requiring appropriate management systems and infrastructure to be in place prior to commencing any waste activities.

Certain relatively low risk activities are exempted from the need to have an environmental permit. There is no record of an environmental permit or registered exempt waste activities at the site.

Sam Dowell pleaded guilty at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court on 29 March 2021, where he was sentenced on the same date.

Patrick Coleman was acquitted after a hearing at Cambridgeshire Crown Court on 1 June 2022.

For East Anglia press office please contact (24 hours): 0800 917 9250

All Environment Agency news releases, both area and national, can be found under Announcements at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency

Follow us on Twitter @EnvAgencyAnglia                     

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Thank you, President. And I’d like to start by thanking  Special Representative Massieu for your briefing and for the work of your team. I’d also like to appreciate and pay tribute to our briefers Father de Roux and Ms Piamba, and to welcome Foreign Minister Ramirez to our meeting today. Foreign Minister, we appreciate your dedicated engagement with this Council throughout your tenure.

President, I’d like to make three points today:

First, I would like to congratulate the people of Colombia for making their voices heard in last month’s Presidential election. We commend political stakeholders, officials, and volunteers for their dedication and for helping to ensure that the election was fair, inclusive, and recognised by all parties.

We commend President-elect Petro’s commitment to comprehensive implementation of the Final Peace Agreement and to addressing the challenges that remain. Foremost among these challenges, as we’ve heard, will be ensuring security for vulnerable communities affected by violence, displacement and confinement. We welcome the incoming administration’s commitment to creating the conditions for sustained and durable peace in Colombia, and hope a resumption of talks with the ELN will contribute to this.

Second, the UK welcomes the publication of the Truth Commission’s final report, a vital milestone in Colombia’s reconciliation process. We pay tribute to the Commissioners’ hard work in this vast undertaking, and to the thousands of victims who gave evidence for their courage.

The UK is committed to helping all parties implement the Commission’s recommendations, and to supporting the follow-up committee that will supervise their implementation.

Third, we continue to encourage the acceleration of rural reform. Whilst significant steps have been taken so far, accelerated progress on the Territorially Focused Development Plans and the multipurpose cadastre should help build confidence in the commitment to peace and advance rural development to support the transformation of conflict-affected regions.

Mr President, in conclusion, the UK remains fully committed to supporting Colombia on its path to lasting peace, and to helping the people of Colombia to overcome the challenges that remain.

I thank you.

Excellencies, colleagues, friends.

It is an absolute pleasure to be joining you today.

When we met last year, the UK co-convened a constructive discussion on effective climate adaptation, and a green and inclusive recovery from the pandemic.

Today is another important milestone.

Yes, much has changed in the last year.

We meet against the backdrop of multiple global crises, much precipitated by the Putin regime’s illegal, brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

And many now recognise that climate and environmental security are completely interlinked with energy and national security.

And whilst countries must deal with their immediate energy needs, many have understood that our shared long-term energy futures do not lie in fossil fuels.

But even as we deal with these challenges, the central premise of last year’s session – that we must deliver a just and sustainable recovery – holds true.

Because just as the global economic situation is perilous, the science is clear that the chronic threat of climate change is getting worse.

Now, I am very pleased that the UK is at the forefront of the efforts to tackle global warming.

And last year’s G7, convened in Carbis Bay, delivered a step change in infrastructure investment, in pursuit of clean, green growth.

We have continued to lead through our “British Investment Partnerships,” and the “Clean Green Initiative,” mobilising billions, and our financial expertise, to drive clean growth around the world.

And for me it has been an incredible honour to drive this agenda forward as COP26 President.

The Glasgow Climate Pact, forged amongst nearly 200 countries, was historic.

And based on the commitments made in that Pact, and indeed outside the negotiating rooms,

I believe that we were able to say with credibility that we kept alive the prospect of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels; and that we had supported the most vulnerable.

We got important commitments on mitigation, particularly the call for countries to revisit and strengthen their NDCs by the end of this year.

The Glasgow Sharm-el Sheikh work programme underlined the imperative for all countries to prepare and respond to climate risks.

And, for the first time ever in these processes, the Pact recognised the need to address the issue of loss and damage substantively, and systematically.

Countries, companies and financial institutions pledged to clean up vital sectors, to end deforestation, and to accelerate the move to clean technologies.

And we did important work to scale-up climate finance, with the $100 billion Delivery Plan, the commitment to at least double adaptation finance by 2025, and work to ensure that finance flows to national and local adaptation priorities.

Financial institutions with over $130 trillion of assets on their balance sheets committed to a net zero future.

And I was delighted that we were able to announce the first “Just Energy Transition Partnership,” the South Africa JETP.

Now many of these commitments ensured we pushed forward across several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as well, from “Life Below Water” to “Life On Land.”

What we achieved together in Glasgow was significant.

And I am pleased that we have seen some progress since November.

We’ve got 16 new, revised NDCs.

We’ve got a handful of new long-term strategies.

Over 2.5 billion people now covered by adaptation plans.

And extensive work to scale up and improve access to finance is continuing.

But, collectively, friends, the progress has been too limited, and just too slow.

Many of the commitments we heard in Glasgow remain just that, commitments.

Words on a page.

And all the while the evidence tells us that time is running out.

From the science of the IPCC reports, to the wildfires, droughts and floods to which the world is sadly too often witness.

So, across all the commitments we made in Glasgow, we simply must quicken the pace.

If we don’t, next year’s Global Stocktake will make clear that we are not delivering on the Paris Goals, that 1.5 degrees is moving further, and frankly irreversibly, out of reach, and that we risk going beyond our limits to adapt.

The consequences of that would be grave, for every sector, and for every country.

This, my friends, is about the immediate impact on the lives and livelihoods of many millions around the world.

So, I will continue to urge countries and companies to redouble their efforts, to ensure that their emissions targets represent the highest possible ambition, and to implement the commitments that they have made.

And I am going to convene the second Climate and Development Ministerial in the margins of the UN General Assembly.

And we will of course continue to engage with our friends in Egypt.

In all this work, my message is a consistent one.

We do have an opportunity to build back better and greener, and to put the world on the path to a more sustainable future.

But we are running out of time.

We have to act.

And we have to act now.

Thank you.