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This evening (Tuesday 27 June) we are updating the online forms you use to get in touch with us.
The updates include changes to the layouts so they are easier to use.
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We will let you know when the maintenance is complete.
Communities Secretary Sajid Javid today (27 June 2017) announced a new independent expert advisory panel to advise on any immediate measures that can be put in place to make buildings safe following the Grenfell Tower fire.
A separate independent Public Inquiry will investigate what happened and who was responsible for the disaster. This expert panel will look at any immediate action that is required so the public can be confident everything possible is being done to make all public and private buildings safe as quickly as possible.
The Panel will be made up of a range of building and fire safety experts, and will be chaired by Sir Ken Knight, former London Fire Commissioner and former Government Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser.
Other core members of the panel will be Dr Peter Bonfield, Chief Executive of the Building Research Establishment, Roy Wilsher, Chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council and Amanda Clack, EY partner and President of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The panel have a wealth of experience in fire and building safety, including testing processes. They will also draw in wider technical expertise as necessary to inform their advice to the Communities Secretary. It is intended that a first meeting of the Panel will take place this week.
Sajid Javid said:
It’s absolutely right that there will be an independent public inquiry to get to the truth about what happened and who was responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
However, I want to know if there are measures we can put in place now to keep people safe and I want them done immediately. I want the public to be confident everything possible is being done.
That is why I am announcing a new expert advisory panel to advise government on any immediate action that is required to ensure all buildings are safe.
Sir Ken Knight said:
I thank the Secretary of State for appointing me to chair this panel and welcome the opportunity to work with other experts to ensure that our buildings are safe and that we take whatever steps are necessary to ensure such a dreadful incident never happens again.
Dr Peter Bonfield said:
It is important that the best expertise from across our industry, the research communities, the professions and the public sector is drawn out to support the government and society at this critical time of need. I look forward to working with Sir Ken and drawing in expertise which will help address the challenges faced. I know that the will to positively contribute from professional bodies and others is strong and we will deploy this to support our work.
Rollout of improvement work to the LAA Portal has been delayed.
The original intention was to complete this work in May 2017. But we are now working on a new rollout schedule and will be providing updates on GOV.UK.
Keep an eye on our e-alerts and GOV.UK news stories in the coming weeks. These will give you the information you need on accessing the Portal.
As we told you in April, the upgrade will require an IT outage to the Portal and all the applications accessed through it. This will be done during an off-peak period in order to cause minimal disruption.
Once the work has been finalised you should see the following improvements:
You will need to reset your password once the upgrade has been completed.
It is vital that that you know your password for the current Portal in order to do this. If you cannot recall your current password you will need to use the ‘Password Resets’ link below.
If you know your password you will not need reset it at this stage.
Password Resets – use this link and select the password reset video from the list of options
Portal upgrade guidance – advice on logging into the new Portal and frequently asked questions
Upgraded Portal password resets – a short video on what to do if you forget your password in the upgraded Portal (video will load automatically).
On 21 June 2017 James West, owner of the vessel Replenish and its master Stanley Ross pleaded guilty to a breach of the Fisheries Act 1981 at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court.
The court heard that in May 2016 when the vessel was fishing in a Biologically Sensitive Area (BSA) in the Celtic Sea targeting nephrops, it was boarded by officers from the Royal Navy vessel HMS Tyne which was carrying out fisheries enforcement duties in the area. During a gear inspection it was found that both port and starboard net codends were within a prohibited mesh size for the BSA, contrary to Section 30(1) Fisheries Act 1982 as read with Article 5(2) of Council Regulation (EC) 494/2002. .
The vessel owner James West was fined £1,000, with £2,051.50 costs and a victim surcharge of £100.
The vessel master Stanley Ross was fined £500, with £2,051.50 costs and a victim surcharge of £50.
A spokesman for the MMO said:
“Nets used in this kind of fishery can shrink over time; as a result nets that were made in permitted mesh size range may shrink to a size that is considered damaging to juvenile fish stocks. It is the responsibility of the vessel master and owner to allow for this and ensure the gear is correct according to the fishing area the vessel is operating in.
The Replenish was fishing in a Biologically Sensitive Area and it is therefore critical to ensure the appropriate fisheries regulations are adhered to in order to protect juvenile fish. This prosecution shows that when they are not the Marine Management Organisation will take the appropriate action.”
Good afternoon, and thank you again to Chatham House for putting on this very timely event at a timely moment. Last Friday we saw the United Kingdom hit by yet another cyber attack, this time directed against our Parliamentary IT facilities.
Investigations so far have found that the hackers were attempting to carry out a sustained and determined attack on all parliamentary user accounts in an attempt to identify weak passwords and to gain access to users’ emails.
Immediate steps have been taken to address that particular problem.
It has meant that some Members of Parliament and staff have been temporarily unable to access their email accounts outside of Westminster.
As MPs, some have been unable to answer constituents’ emails on a Sunday, and we’ve had to live with that.
Since then, the National Cyber Security Centre has been working around the clock with our UK Parliamentary Digital service to understand the nature of the attack, to contain it, and to put in place mitigation measures to prevent possible future breaches.
Now, this latest attack is far away from being an isolated incident. It follows hot on the heels of the Wannacry virus that didn’t just shut down NHS operating theatres, but in the end affected more than 200,000 people over 150 different countries. So here was yet more evidence that cyber is a truly global phenomenon, evidence that has been piling up following the attacks on Germany’s lower house of Parliament.
Bulgaria has also suffered, and I quote from them, according to their President, “the heaviest and most intense cyber attack…conducted in south-east Europe.” And of course, there have been attacks on America, with the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluding that Russia had targeted the Presidential election.
I quote, its “intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.”
All these attacks point to our adversaries becoming more diverse, becoming better at what they do, and becoming more adept at using virtual attacks to inflict very real damage. One in five British businesses has been hacked by cyber criminals in the last year according to the British Chambers of Commerce. Analysts put the cost to our economy already in the billions, while it’s been estimated that the United States lose up to 3 per cent of GDP to Intellectual Property theft.
For the military, the consequences of cyber disruption are equally devastating. Reuters has reported that Russia used malware implants on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery. That’s why back in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review we put cyber up there with terror and major natural hazards as a Tier One threat to this country. To date, alarming as some these attacks have been, our people have proved equal to the task of defending against them. Fewer than 1 per cent of the 9,000 email accounts on the parliamentary network were compromised. But there is absolutely no complacency here.
We are investing a huge chunk of money – some £1.9bn – into boosting our cyber security And Defence, in particular, has a three-fold role to play in this national cyber security effort.
First and foremost, we’re keeping our digital house in order. We’re not just working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre to ensure that our military and civilian systems are robust.
We have networks of information risk and asset owners embedded in our organisation to properly police data and to deal with problems.
And we are encouraging all our staff to observe good cyber etiquette.
They must now complete mandatory information handling refresher training annually and they must take personal responsibility for their data.
We’re also doing more to recruit the cyber savvy. There’s our cyber reservists, experts from industry and academia who are putting their high tech skills at the service of the nation by weeding out network vulnerabilities. At the same time, we’re building up a new 21stcentury Cyber Corps, a band of expert volunteers, leaders in industry, who are going advise us on how to keep ahead in the cyber space race. Finally, cyber is becoming now a core part of our military training. In January, we will open a dedicated state-of-the-art Defence Cyber School at Shrivenham, bringing together all our military joint cyber training into one place. And we look forward to that first class of 2018 emerging with the digital X-factor to transform our future cyber capability.
Second, the interconnected nature of the web, the way it blurs the boundaries between military and civilian, between public and private, means we all have a responsibility to look after ourselves online.
A stronger password here, a Windows update there, and we would have stood an even better chance of warding off the Parliamentary and Wannacry attacks. So my second point is that the MOD has a key role to play in contributing to a culture of resilience. That’s why we set up the Defence Cyber Partnership Programme (DCPP) to ensure that companies with whom we have defence contracts are properly protecting themselves and meeting a host of cyber security standards.
But there’s a third way in which we can protect our national infrastructure, and that’s by strengthening our deterrence. So we’re using our rising budget to invest our £178bn in full spectrum capability, from carriers to Ajax armoured vehicles, fifth generation F35 to the latest UAVs, signalling to potential cyber strikers that the price of an online attack could invite a response from any domain, air, land, sea or cyber space. And when it comes to the latter, we’re making sure that offensive cyber is now an integral part of our arsenal. We now have the skills to expose cyber criminals, to them hunt down and to prosecute them, to respond in kind to any assault at a time of our choosing.
Our National Offensive Cyber Planning allows us to integrate cyber into all our military operations. And I can confirm that we are now using offensive cyber routinely in the war against Daesh, not only in Iraq but also in the campaign to liberate Raqqa and other towns on the Euphrates. Offensive cyber there is already beginning to have a major effect on degrading Daesh’s capabilities.
We’re determined as a coalition to maintain our advantage in this arena and that is why we are investing with our allies in the sort of kit capable of data use.
To help create a picture of the virtual battlefield we have recently here in the United Kingdom launched a multimillion pound competition to develop machine learning algorithms and Artificial Intelligence which will assimilate this wealth of new data and will free up our personnel to deliver a more coordinated, targeted response. The first contracts from that investment have already been awarded to a variety of UK suppliers including from academia and innovative micro-scale businesses and other SMEs, all of whom are working on a range of solutions from rapid sensor integration to predictive cognitive control systems.
Cyber deterrence is obviously stronger when we stand together with our like-minded allies. And that’s why we’re working hard, in particular, to get NATO, the bedrock of our security, to do more to defend effectively online.
At last year’s Warsaw summit we achieved a breakthrough in getting the Alliance to recognise cyber as a distinctive domain of operations. We also succeeded in persuading NATO nations to sign the cyber pledge, committing Allies to enhance their national defences as a priority and to strengthen their capability, collectively and individually, to resist cyber attacks in any form. There remains work to be done to share our data to deal with major incidents together and to improve the underlying infrastructure of the Internet. At the same time, we will also need new doctrine to clarify our response within NATO to anonymous cyber activity which often takes place now in that grey zone below the previously understood threshold of war. And all the while we are developing the effects, covert and overt, cognitive and physical, to help provide a proportionate response to those cyber attacks.
But Alliance effectiveness in the virtual world would be immeasurably enhanced if national capabilities were made ready to deploy in support of NATO operations. So having honed our own UK pioneering cyber techniques against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, I can confirm today that United Kingdom is ready to become one of the first NATO members to publicly offer such support to NATO operations as and when required. ### Conclusion
So let me say in conclusion that cyber is a serious problem. It is a growing problem. But my message to you is that Government here and Defence, in particular, is on the case. Over the next few years we’re going to be redoubling our efforts to strengthen our resilience against our adversaries, to strengthen our hand against our cyber adversaries and to ensure those who mean to do our country harm, offline or online, have nowhere to hide.