Despite a record number of police officers in England and Wales, 16 forces reported a drop in the number of police officers over the past 12 months.

Home Office figures show there were nearly 2,000 extra full-time police officers in 2008-09, making a  total complement of 143,770.

There were an extra 1,911 police constables, but also a higher proportion of police community support officers (PCSOs) in the 43 constabularies, with the total number now 16,507, which is an increase of 4.4% on the previous year.

The largest drop in police officer strength among the 16 forces was reported across the Yorkshire and Humber region, with North Yorkshire down 121 officers, Humberside 133 and South Yorkshire 148.

Those forces said that an increase in the number of PCSOs, efficiency drives, workforce modernisation and budget restraints were among the reasons for the reported falls in officer numbers.

Ian Watson, assisting chief officer in the HR section of Humberside Police, said the force’s reduction is part of a “long-term innovative plan of business and workforce modernisation”.

The change in police officer numbers includes only jobs that do not require the full expertise, training and warranted powers of a police constable, such as custody detention officers and investigating support roles, as well as a relatively small number of back office support roles.

“Indeed, due to these changes in the skill mix, we have been able to put in additional capacity to strengthen the service to frontline officers and to free-up police officer time to focus more of their time on frontline duties.”

Residents of the Ridgeway area of the ward have been asking for an update on progress towards the provision of a safe crossing for pedestrians on the A46.

Over the next few days, if you live in the area, you should receive a news sheet through your door which gives the latest information.  A copy of the leaflet is below:

Dear Resident

I thought that it is time that I gave an update on the results of the recent consultation and let you know about progress towards the provision of the pedestrian crossing

The video survey conducted in this area showed that a large majority of pedestrians choose to cross the A46 close to the roundabout at Bradley Crossroads, and the results of the recent consultation confirmed that this would be the preferred site for the crossing.

The Highways Department have informed me that the money to pay for the work has been included in the budget for the current financial year, and has been ring fenced for this project. The crossing has also been included in the work programme for this year, and the work will commence following a technical investigation into the site that will ensure that the crossing ends up as close to the roundabout as is practical.

I have been assured by the Highways Department that that the work should be completed by the end of this financial year at the latest

Yours Sincerely

Cllr Les Bonner

Details of people who want to swap their homes are shown in the Mutual Exchange Register at Shoreline Housing Partnership and North East Lincolnshire Council offices – click here for details of where you can find these offices.

It is easy to register your interest in the scheme, by completing the application form and your details will be displayed in the Mutual Exchange Register which is available to all interested tenants.

It is up to you to find someone to swap with you. You may place adverts in shop windows, local press or in one of Shoreline Housing Partnership’s offices.

If you find another tenant to exchange with, you will need permission from Shoreline.  You will both be visited and any conditions of your move will be discussed with you.

HomeSwapper is a UK-wide scheme for social tenants who want a house swap.  If you live in a council house or housing association property you can use this scheme, which is free to use for Shoreline tenants.

HomeSwapper members cover the whole of the UK.  It is often the case that people want to move  to find a new job or to be closer to their family. HomeSwapper provides a service that allows tenants to move anywhere across the UK.

Visit the Homeswapper website for more details

A property in Grimsby which had previously been derelict for three years has undergone a major refurbishment which has transformed it into individual housing and support accommodation for people with mental health issues.

The building, which has been renamed Hope Court by local school children, offers seven bedsits, six flats, office space and communal areas.

Shoreline Housing Partnership have transformed the building in partnership with the North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus so that people needing some support to be independent, will live in bedsit and communal accommodation on the first floor of the property while receiving the appropriate support and advice they need, and then when both the CTP and the resident are happy will they move to one of six one-bedroom flats on the ground floor and become a Shoreline tenant.

After an agreed period of time, the tenant will have the opportunity to move into other Shoreline properties across the borough where they can continue to receive support if it is required.

Shoreline neighbourhood investment officer Mel Beacock, who has been heavily involved in the partnership said:

“We wanted to involve the local community in renaming the building because it is an important local resource and part of this neighbourhood.

“They’ve embraced this opportunity and worked really hard to design a new name.  We think it is the first sign of this building’s rebirth and represents our high hopes for a promising future for this service which enables better quality care to be provided in a homely environment.”

North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus head of adult community mental health services Alastair Penman added:

“The service will provide localised amenities to residents and will aim to embed itself within the local community.”

The former sheltered scheme, which was previously known as Berrett House, has been empty for three years and has been a target for vandalism and anti-social behaviour.

It has been claimed that the government’s controversial children’s database ContactPoint has a number of security failings.

Overtis Systems, a threat management company, claims that due to the size of the system, malicious software will be difficult to detect.

The company also suggests that, although safeguards are in place to prevent information being saved on to removable disks from computers hooked up to ContactPoint, it is still possible to copy information.

“Why the government has created this security headache for itself, particularly when its track record on data handling raises serious questions, is something of a mystery,” said Richard Walters, product director at Overtis Systems.

According to official statistics, the government gave away £315m in childcare tax credits by mistakelast year.

An error and fraud statistics report on child and working tax credits was released last week, which showed that 260,000 claimants benefited from error and fraud in the the childcare part of the working tax credit in 2007/08, which amounted to a sum of £315m.

The financial secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms said the government has already introduced additional checks to prevent error and detect abuse, but he said that HM Revenue and Customs will use the analysis to refine its strategy.

Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, said the figures underlined the need for the system to be changed.

“These figures do illustrate the benefits of direct payments to providers of tax credits,” she said. “Not only would this eliminate fraudulent claims, it would also help vulnerable families who could be confident of taking up their entitlement.”

A spokesman for the Daycare Trust, a child care charity, said:

“These estimated overpayments reflect the complexity of the current tax credits system, which can be hard for parents to navigate.

“Of course, any proven fraud must be answered for, but clawing back overpayments from poor families, who are already struggling to make ends meet in the recession, will harm that family and discourage other families from making a claim for fear the same thing could happen to them.”

Two million pensioners still live in poverty, despite Government claims to have tackled poverty among elderly people.

MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee will call for an end to the discrimination which compels many workers to retire at 65 whether they want to or not.

The Government recently announced that it would bring forward plans to review compulsory retirement, while also insisting that no employee should be forced to work beyond the age of 65.

Terry Rooney, chairman of the committee, said

“The default retirement age is discriminatory, is bad for society, bad for older people, and bad for the economy. It has to go.”

Other recommendations from the committee include a call to rename council tax benefit the “council tax rebate”, in an attempt remove the stigma that many elderly people feel at asking for financial help from the state.

The MPs want councils to focus on making it easier for the elderly to claim different benefits, including the introduction of a single phone line for all claims, and they demand a pledge from the Government to eliminate pensioner poverty.

Andrew Harrop, of Age Concern and Help the Aged, welcomed the report.  He said:

“As part of a strategy to prevent pensioner poverty, the Government should … follow the Committee’s recommendations to scrap ‘discriminatory and unnecessary’ forced retirement legislation.

“To underpin this strategy, the Government should also heed the Committee’s call for a formal commitment to eradicating pensioner poverty, which would match the current manifesto pledge to ending child poverty.”

Chris Simpkins, director general for the Royal British Legion, said:

“This is exactly what we have been asking Government to do because it would make a real difference to older veterans.”

Dot Gibson, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, said that the Committee had failed to recommend an increase in the state pension.

 ”A simple and logical solution to lift pensioners out of poverty would be to bring in a living state pension.”

Government research into the ”nappy curriculum”, which covers children in reception classes, found that boys fall behind girls in their educational development before they start primary school.

25% of boys are unable to write their own name after a year at school, compared to only 15% of girls, and almost one in four boys even struggle to hold a pen properly.

The biggest difference between the sexes were in writing, but girls also perform better in using their imagination in art, design and story telling, but in comparison, boys are better at building and constructing and learning how simple, everyday technology works.

The statistics, which were published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), showed how many five-year-olds were reaching specific targets for learning  in the Early Years Foundation Stage. 

The results were based on a sample of 230,000 children aged five in England (around 42% of the total) at the end of the “foundation stage” of their education last year.

It found three in 10 boys have trouble reciting the alphabet, while nearly one in five cannot count to 10, compared with only 23% and 15% respectively among girls.

While three in four girls (74% ) could write a simple shopping list, or a letter to Santa, only half of boys (54%) could do so at the same age.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said girls tended to be “born with an advantage” over boys when it comes to verbal skills.

He added:

“Policy makers need to be aware that the gap opens up in the years before formal schooling and they have to think how best to intervene.

“It could well mean that a lot of young males are not getting as much out of their lives as they could because we haven’t found the ways to enable them to develop fluency.”

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: “The gender attainment gap clearly opens when children start school and remains until they leave.

“There must be a concern that the new curriculum is not working well for boys and is leaving too many of them behind.

“It’s worrying that so many children fall behind so early in their education. Ministers need to be cutting our huge infant class sizes so that all children can get the individual attention they need.”

This study was carried out before the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) became compulsory last September.

A group of MP’s has said that the strategy to combat alcohol abuse in the UK is poorly coordinated and likely to cause drinkers to relapse into former habits.

The public accounts committee said that as the number of alcohol-related incidents in hospitals was increasing, services were being “ill-coordinated”.

The committee noted that more than ten million people now regularly drink more than the amount set out in government guidelines,  with alcohol misuse causing a “considerable burden” on the NHS, and costing an estimated £2.7 billion a year.

Chairman Edward Leigh said:

“Too many people are drinking too much.  In England, nearly a third of all men and a fifth of all women are regularly drinking more than the official guidelines say they should.

“The responsibility for addressing alcohol harm has been handed to the primary care trusts, but many have not devised a strategy to reduce the effects of alcohol in their area, and do not even have much idea what they are spending on the relevant local services.

“These services are often ill-coordinated, increasing the risk that dependent drinkers, after immediate medical care, will simply relapse into their former drinking habits.

“None of this is helped by poor coordination between Whitehall departments on such relevant matters as licensing, taxation and glass sizes.”

The Department of Health admitted between midnight and 05:00 at weekends, nearly three-quarters of all attendances at accident and emergency (A&E) departments are alcohol-related.

The report said:

 ”The department has, however, yet to demonstrate its ability to effectively influence local commissioners, the drinks industry, and people’s drinking behaviour.” 

Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians said:

“It clearly demonstrates that the delivery of alcohol policy locally has been uncoordinated and muddled, and the effect on those particular interventions left unevaluated.

“The government must now focus on better policy coordination and a clear mandatory framework rather than voluntary partnerships with industry.

“Above all it must prevent harm and drive down overall consumption through introducing a minimum unit price for alcohol.”

In further comment, Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said the government “has no idea how to tackle” the problem of alcoholism.

“People who suffer from alcohol problems need more support and the government must invest in treatment services,” he said.

“We are only going to tackle this problem in the long term by putting an end to alcohol being sold at pocket money prices and educating our children.”

Councils across England and Wales have warned new flooding laws which will give them responsibility for managing flood risk in their area could cause a black hole in their funding.

The Draft Floods and Water Bill will give councils the lead role in managing surface water in their area which will mean local authorities are required to coordinate water companies, the Environment Agency and other local partners to ensure that drainage systems work properlyin their area, and homes are adequately protected.

In its response to the consultation on the Bill, the Local Government Association, which represents over 350 councils in England and Wales, criticised the Government’s calculations and rejected the notion that local authorities can to finance their new obligations through the savings made by spending less on clearing up after floods.  The LGA also warned that more needs to be done to ensure additional training courses exist to enable councils to recruit the specialised engineers, inspectors and planners they need to manage local drainage systems. 

Cllr Paul Bettison, Chairman of the Local Government Association Environment Board, said:

”Climate change could mean extreme weather such as flooding happens much more frequently in coming years. If households are to avoid the impact of potentially devastating downpours, better management of local flood risk is essential.

“Councils, water companies, the Highways Agency, the Environment Agency and landowners all need to cooperate to make sure drains are working properly.  Town halls are ready to take the lead on improving flood risk management but it should be clear that they will have the funding they need to properly protect people’s homes.

“Improving local flood preparedness and ensuring we do not see a repeat of the devastating floods that occurred in the summer of 2007 is a big priority.  Investment now will save the taxpayer more in the future and help create scores of new jobs.  There will need to be additional training courses to develop the new skills needed to manage local flood risk.

“The government needs to take another look at its calculations.  When councils spend money clearing up after floods it comes from budgets for other services, so it is wrong to say that councils can pay for this new role by cutting spending on flood clear up.”