“Student nurses are burnt out and exhausted. We’ve had to pay out of our own pocket for accommodation to be able to work safely and give up part time work that would help us make ends meet. It’s time to pay us properly” - Nathan, Student Nurse If we get behind the student nurses in our thousands, we can put pressure on Robin Swann to pay the student nurses properly. Student nurses in Northern Ireland are on the frontline of the pandemic. They’ve been working night and day in our hospitals and wards, keeping the NHS from being overwhelmed. And right now, they are not being paid properly for their work. After ending payments for students working on COVID-19 wards, Health Minister Robin Swann was pressured into offering a one-off "special recognition" bonus. We don’t think that’s good enough. Right now, the NI Executive is looking for views on next year’s budget, and the consultation closes on Friday.

Scotland is the only nation in the UK that is not offering full time places at special schools. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, special schools returned as normal after Christmas and have been kept open. It seems that the Scottish Government does not understand the needs of children with disabilities. Only a small percentage of children (3.5% in Scotland) meet the criteria for special schools. There is no question that all of these children are extremely vulnerable and cannot be left unsupervised. Most need constant care and attention. Some have a high level of medical need including tube-feeding, pain management, frequent seizures and/or require assistance with breathing. Others have challenging behaviour and need a high level of routine as well as exercise. The Scottish Government can protect our highly valued special school staff by offering them priority for the vaccine. Our children are missing out on therapies such as physiotherapy, speech therapy and hydrotherapy. Parents are reporting increased violence towards themselves and towards siblings. The mental and physical health of these children is deteriorating. Some parents are routinely getting as little as five hours broken sleep a night. This is a tragedy waiting to happen. We are calling on the Scottish Government to follow the good example of the rest of the UK and offer full time places to children in special school.

This is discrimination against a whole sector of our economy, vital to the tourism industry, particularly in rural areas across the entire country.

Blossom Tree Nursery Rhiwbina Ltd plan to expand our current capacity by opening an additional site to cater for more families in the area and meet the demands of the local community; thus contributing to the local economy, offering job opportunities, supporting local businesses and providing high quality childcare for local families. Rhiwbina is predominately a residential area with a large number of families living in the vicinity of the proposed nursery site. The current day care shortage and lack of availability significantly impacts on parents who want to return to work or those who are in work but are restricted by the childcare options available to them. Blossom Tree Nursery aims to alleviate this problem by creating additional space to support working families with quality childcare and wraparound care, thus giving them the freedom to work the hours that they choose. Please sign our petition to allow Blossom Tree Nursery to offer 40 crucial child care places to local families in Rhiwbina. If you would like to express your support, we would appreciate it if you could spare a minute or two to write a few lines telling the Planning Department why you want to see our nursery offering more childcare places in Rhiwbina. Please forward any supporting information to the Blossom Tree Nursery email address [email protected] Please include your name and address by Friday 29th January 2021

The NLWA, on behalf of the seven north London boroughs, plans to replace the current incinerator with a new, much bigger version which will burn rubbish that could otherwise be recycled. This is deeply concerning for several reasons: The toxic pollution, including tiny particle pollution, from this new incinerator will harm everyone who lives, works and studies nearby, in one of London’s most deprived neighbourhoods. Incinerators in the UK are three times more likely to be built in deprived and diverse areas such as Edmonton; deprivation and diversity are two factors that have been proven to INCREASE the health risk factors associated with air pollution – indeed, as the recent inquest into the cause of death of Ella Kissi-Debrah has proven – air pollution can KILL. I am therefore deeply concerned the emissions from this new incinerator will cause serious harm. The area covered by the NLWA includes much higher income areas such as Islington, Highgate and Barnet. Yet Edmonton has been selected for this development, an area least likely to be able to cope with the additional damage to the health of its community. The incinerator is also an environmental disaster; it is predicted to emit 700 thousand tonnes of CO2 into our atmosphere every year. If this waste was recycled instead of burnt, this could simply be avoided. Currently less than 30% of north London rubbish and only 10% of recyclable plastic is recycled compared to over 60% in the rest of the country. Nearly 90% of our black/orange bag rubbish is burnt as “skyfill” in the present old Edmonton incinerator. Most of these councils, and the UK government, have declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency, and are committed to halting and reversing carbon emissions. The decision to increase emissions, instead of recycling better, is impossible to understand. The NLWA’s consultation on the incinerator rebuild was conducted in 2015 and only within one mile of the incinerator. The consultation was completely inadequate. Most local residents are unaware of the plans to rebuild the incinerator, and meanwhile we have learned a lot more about the harm it will cause. This unwanted incinerator will cost £1.2 billion of taxpayers’ money. The NLWA must carry out a full, statistically reliable, independent environmental and social impact assessment of the proposed new Edmonton incinerator taking account of: a. individual local councils’ climate emergency commitments; b. the UK government’s 2050 net-zero commitment; c. the European exclusion of waste-to-energy incineration from a list of economic activities considered ‘sustainable finance’; d. the expected change in waste streams due to increased recycling rates; e. the potential to use renewable energy rather than burning waste to generate electricity and/or heat; and f. alternatives to incineration and landfill, through a review of best practice from other cities. Any environmental and social impact assessment that has already been carried out is insufficient unless it has taken all of the above points into account. Time is running out as the site is already being cleared in preparation for the build. Withdraw your support for the incinerator and demand that the NLWA pause and review the re-build before it’s too late, and even more irreparable, deadly damage is done to the local community and the planet.

Tower Hamlets Council seems to think libraries are a thing of the past. When I talked to my 10 year-old granddaughter about this recently. She was shocked when I told her Bethnal Green library is under threat. Before COVID, she used to go there regularly with her school, as her mum did before her. She says children need real libraries and real books. Libraries are vital to the future of our community, now more than ever. Many people don't have access to the internet, or space to do homework and not everyone wants to read a book on a screen. Our libraries also play a vital social role, for children, schools, older people or those who are isolated or lonely. COVID has also reminded us that not all children have access to remote learning. That's compounded in Tower Hamlets, where hundreds of children live in cramped, overcrowded homes. Tower Hamlets Council should join with other local authorities to demand the government provides the money to keep our libraries open.

The new Otley East development will bring an extra 550 houses to Otley. This makes it even more important that we have adequate infrastructure. We realise that Leeds City Council have had severe budget cuts but Otley cannot afford to lose this vital resource.

There was a Post Office at this site until December 2019 as part of the Waitrose shop. When it was sold to Lidl a commitment was made to open a PO as part of the complex. Agreement was reached between Lidl and a newsagent but the Post Office has blocked the plan. We want this changed.

In a recent document, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP wrote, “Every Member of Parliament will be aware of the deep unfairness inherent in the country’s health and social care provision.” This unfairness has been thrown into sharp contrast during the Coronavirus pandemic, but may be traced back to 1948, when the NHS was founded to provide comprehensive healthcare, free at the point of care, for everyone in the country, funded through general taxation. In distinction, social care remained the responsibility of Local Authorities, funded through local taxation, but heavily means-tested and subject to eligibility criteria. Like other parts of the care systems, social care has been significantly underfunded and not fit for purpose. The provision of social care in England is failing on many counts. • It is profoundly unfair. o Nobody can tell when they might require support to live as independent a life as possible, and the cost of such support is unpredictable. o Cancer sufferers receive care that is free at the point of need, but dementia sufferers are means-tested. People sustaining a stroke resulting in disability are not considered to have a medical problem but a social one. o Privately funded service users are subsidising state-funded users • It is inefficient in its use of resources. o Hospital beds are inappropriately occupied while wrangling takes place over the funding of the ongoing care, rather than the setting that will best meet their ongoing needs. o There is heavy reliance on informal care, imposing costs on families and the wider economy. o Transactional costs of the fragmented market eat into resources for actual care. • It often does not meet the needs of the individual. o The goal of social care is to allow people to participate as fully as possible in community life, with security and dignity. Too often this is not achieved. o Care does not always allow people to maximise their potential or exercise the life choices that most of us take for granted. • It struggles to recruit and retain sufficient carers for the needs of the service; o Despite the recognition of care workers as being key workers in the response to the pandemic, there is a lack of recognised training standards, qualifications, and career progression. o Pay and conditions do not reflect the value that society places on those who care for their loved ones and require public subsidy through the benefit system. • It poses a serious risk of financial collapse of major care home providers, with consequent insecurity for residents and a short-term approach to investment in staff and facilities. There has been much talk of integrating health and social care, spanning many governments, but paradoxically, successive governments have created divisions rather than integration; the creation of the provider purchaser concept, the internal market, the continued fragmentation of the NHS and the 2012 NHS and Social Care Act are some examples. These have led to increasing lack of coordination between the hospital and primary care. Significantly, the changes have resulted in multiple bodies rather one authority providing the services, resulting in a disorganised service. The changes we propose would ensure that all parts of the care service would be obliged to collaborate with each other to provide what would be best for the individual and to redress the increasing lack of continuity of care, in addition to producing a fairer, less complex, and more cost-effective service. Note 1 Local Care Authority (LCA) This would replace the local CCG. This would bring together all relevant provider units (hospital care, primary care. community care, social service, mental health and ambulance service) within the influence of the LCA. Each provider would be expected to provide a set of agreed services according to the needs of the local community and avoiding duplication of services. It would be a requirement that representatives of providers include a senior clinician, a member from front-line staff, where these would be relevant. LCA would ensure that the agreed services are delivered efficiently. It would also liaise with the relevant Local Authority in addition to charitable bodies and private providers. Each provider unit would keep its own administrative structures unless they wish certain aspects to be given to the LCA. LCA would establish agreed governance structures and annual audits readily available to the public. LCA would liaise with local trade union bodies LCA would receive allocated resources from the regional authority. LCA would be expected to establish a confidential and independent office for Freedom to Speak Up. Note 2 Regional Care Authority (RCA) This would replace current structure at a regional level. This would include representatives from each LCA within the region in addition to those from large providers across the region and tertiary centres, universities, government agents and the Colleges. It would be responsible for seeking resources from the government on behalf of the LCAs and capital costs. It would liaise with other relevant RCAs It would ensure the government policies are understood and delivered throughout the region It would receive annual reports from LCAs Commissioning services for those services not available to the National Care Service (ICS) would be carried out by the central government.

In this climate of Covid we are asked to work extra hours but feel us a Nurses/Midwives get taxed to the hilt. Our pay is rubbish and we work extra hours to make ends meet yet we are living some of us on the bread line. Extra support needs to provided for childcare .

As per NHS and midwifery guidelines bumpers in cots can cause choking, suffocation and strangulation. The only things in a cot should be a correctly sized mattress and a fitted sheet. Some people are not aware this and sadly there are still related incidents and fatalities in the UK. The Lullaby Trust state “New parents now have a massive range of baby products to choose from and it can be really confusing to know what is needed. Babies need just a few basic items for sleep: a firm flat surface and some bedding. Our advice is simple: the safest cot is a clear cot.”

If the Government are serious about levelling up then this project must come to Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool. Swapping one metropolitan city, like London, for another, like Leeds, is not going to lead to more investment and better policy making for towns, villages and rural areas. The centre of power needs to reflect and be based in communities that are most affected by lack of investment and locating it here will lead to more investment and better outcomes for local people.