Somerset this week: 1 March
This week a Somerset School reaches for the skies, more comment on unemployment, when news is olds, funding for suicide prevention, a battery park in Frome and questions over four saved bus routes.
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Somerset this week: 1 March
Happy Huish
It is always great to be able to head up any news selection with some good news. There is let’s face it, little enough around at the moment. It’s therefore something of a pleasure to be able to report that Huish Episcopi Primary School in Langport has received a written commendation from The Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, Minister of State for Schools.
The occasion of the Minister writing to the school was the results of phonics tests carried out at the school. Phonics testing is now compulsory in all schools in England and Wales for Year 1 children (aged 5-6). Phonics is now the recommended bedrock for teaching children to read and write. Hence it is a key part of their basic introduction to education.
After the tests carried were out at Huish Episcopi the number of children that passed put the school in the top 5% in the country. Hence attracting the praise of the Minister of State.
Nor is this just a one off. The school recently had a similar result for their Key Stage 2 results – also placing them in the top 5% in England and Wales.
Mrs Doughty Davis, Headteacher of the School told Somerset Confidential®: “we are delighted with the progress and results of our phonics (testing). This means the children are in the best place possible to progress with their learning in all subjects. …….There is no secret to our success, it is down to the efforts of our families, staff and children all working together.”
Unemployment again
Last week we reported on the level of unemployment in the county. Whilst some have questioned the figures provided by the House of Commons Library (based on the Office of National Statistics figures), there’s no doubt that unemployment remains a problem in the county.
The figures published in January showed unemployment levels in Somerset were broadly the same as they had been back in 2010. Which was in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash with Britain in recession. Suggesting the local economy had barely grown over the last 14 years. A suggestion supported by the fact that GDP growth nationally, has been close to zero for the same period.
Major local employer Leonardo was able to see plenty of green shoots and offered some evidence from its own experience of looking for talent in the local jobs market.
However Somerset Council simply said the ONS figures were wrong and unemployment was lower. On what basis they reached that conclusion or indeed what the source of their figures was less clear.
We have now had some further comment from Somerset Chamber of Commerce which we thought we should share as it points to the experience of other employers “on the ground” as it were. It is also an interestingly nuanced view not just accepting the level of unemployment but giving some suggestions as to why it remains high and importantly pointing to a direction of travel that could start to solve the problem.
Somerset Chamber of Commerce CEO, Emma Rawlings told Somerset Confidential®: “Businesses consistently tell us they are continuing to have problems finding staff with the right skills but the large number of inactive workers is concerning.
To grow our economy we need more skilled, engaged and motivated people to contribute to the workforce across the county. Government must do more to remove barriers for people who want to work, including access to childcare, public transport. Health support and training.
By offering more flexible workplaces, training and upskilling, employers can make their jobs more accessible to a broader talent pool and help people from leaving the workforce unnecessarily.
Unless we get more people back into the workplace then the risk of higher inflation and interest rates will persist for longer.”
It will be interesting to see how much the Chancellor of the Exchequer is listening. When he produces his budget will there be measure that address some of the concerns and solutions suggested by Emma Rawlings?
Half and half
We were as delighted as anyone else in Somerset at the news that the four under threat bus routes provided by Buses of Somerset (part of first group) had been saved. Of the four routes, the 54 from Yeovil to Taunton and the 25 from Dulverton via Wiveliscombe to Taunton, will continue to receive a subsidy from central government via the Bus Service Improvement Grant. Meanwhile the 58 service …… and the 28 from Taunton to Minehead will be run and promoted by Buses of Somerset without subsidy.
The continuation of the service, at least until March 2025 is of course good news. Somerset suffers from poor public transport. Where it runs the service is often infrequent and the lack of connectivity between bus and train services is in places laughable. So anything that helps to keep public transport in place has to be good news.
However there are questions that arise from this and in part they arise from an answer given by Somerset Confidential® to questions about the way bus services were run and funded in the county. A Somerset Council spokesperson told us: “Bus Services fall into two categories defined by the 1985 Transport Act – commercial services where the operator makes a profit from the revenue received from passengers and local authority funded services, which are not commercially viable from revenue taken from passengers but deemed to be socially necessary by the Local Authority.”
This was also a view shared with us by former Lead Member for Transport and Digital, Mike Rigby.
So why is this new arrangement a problem? It all hinges on the two categories of bus service. Those that are commercially viable, and those which need subsidy. Which all sounds simple enough.
Yet what we do know is that all four services, 54,25,58 and 28 had received subsidy for much of the past 12 months.
Somerset Council have regularly told us the services are subsidised, under threat and will be lost if more people do not use them. All of which sounded reasonable.
However now we learn that Buses of Somerset are taking two services forward that were previously subsidised, the 28 and the 58. For them to be taken forward by Buses of Somerset, they must be, presumably, commercially viable to meet the requirements of the 1985 Transport Act.
That means:
either two services that for the past year we have been told have needed subsidy and public support, have miraculously and suddenly become commercially viable or
the two services were in fact commercially viable previously and were nevertheless in receipt of a public subsidy….
We asked Somerset Council to explain this apparent conundrum. In response we received the terse statement: “we are satisfied that the arrangement complies with the relevant legislation.”
we hope a Somerset Council scrutiny committee will be asking for reassurance
Which did not make us feel hugely reassured. What we hope a Somerset Council scrutiny committee will be asking, is for reassurance that the council has not been using public money to subsidise a commercially viable bus service.
We should also stress we are not pouring cold water over a good news announcement here. We welcome the fact that the four routes have been secured for a further year.
What we are doing is questioning whether or not public money has been used where it did not need to be. Which given the state of Somerset Council’s finances, seems to us to be a relevant question to be asking.
News, news or olds?
How many times can you release the same information and get a media buzz out of it? In the case of Tata building a gigafactory at the old Royal Ordnance site (now grandly renamed Gravity) at Puriton, the answer is as often as you can get away with it.
On 23 July last year Tata announced it was going to build a new gigafactory to make batteries for electric cars in Somerset. The plant will be run by Tata subsidairy Agratas.
On Wednesday this week Somerset Council and Gravity called a press conference to announce that Tata was going to build a new giga factory in Somerset.
Let’s turn to the BBC for clarity. This is how they reported the 2023 announcement: “Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata has confirmed plans to build its flagship electric car battery factory in the UK. The new plant in Somerset is expected to create 4,000 UK jobs and thousands more in the wider supply chain.”
And this is how faithful BBC newshound Ruth Bradley rushed out copy this week: “Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata says it will invest £4bn in a brownfield site near Bridgwater in Somerset…. The new plant is expected to create 4,000 jobs”
Which to the uninitiated looks astonishingly similar to the same headline the BBC trotted out in July 2023. What had changed?
The honest answer is virtually nothing.
Well to be fair what has happened according to the press release is that: “Agratas…has today started writing to thousands of local residents to confirm its plans to build a gigafactory producing EV batteries at the Gravity Smart Campus site in Puriton, near Bridgwater”
We at Somerset Confidential® are no experts on these things, but announcing a letter writing campaign, even by the subsidiary of a large Indian corporation, did not feel a lot like news.
True enough the embattled Leader of Somerset Council, Bill Revans could do with a bit of good news. Cllr Revans has had a rough few months trying to make an unbalanced budget for Somerset Council look balanced. He has pulled it off, but only until the same process starts again next year. So it is hard to begrudge him some time in the spotlight with happier news.
He was making the most of it, telling the press: “We are committed to making this work for Somerset, its residents and our business community. We know how to deliver significant projects and work with communities to maximise the benefits of investment into our County.”
One thing though definitely has not changed since last July. Every political party is keen to claim it was all down to them that the gigafactory is coming to Somerset. Every politician in Somerset, especially those whose constituencies are nowhere near Bridgwater, is vocally praising the project and hoping you might infer that somehow they had something to do with bringing it home. Twas ever thus.
What is of real interest though (and hence hasn’t been reported at all) is the announcement by Cllr Revans that Somerset Council would be at the forefront ensuring the skills set and support needed for the project would be built up to meet the needs of the news factory. That means training and courses in our further education colleges and work on supply chain management.
It all sounds very sensible except for one fact. The cash strapped council has no money.
How will it finance this work?
Apparently from business rates generated by the Agratas facility. Except that it won’t get hold of the money until Agratas are in situ, by which time it will be too late to build up a support network and reskill the local population.
This stuff is so dull that obviously neither national nor local press thought it was worth picking up. But to some of us, not actually having the money to deliver a plan that is critical to the success of a £4bn plant, did actually feel like a thing worth examining.
not actually having the money to deliver a plan ……did actually feel like a thing worth examining
Happily it seems that Somerset Council does have a plan. Though even they admit it is not free of risk.
They will be taking the outline of their plan to the Corporate and Resources Scrutiny Committee next week. Essentially they intend to invest £150m that they don’t currently have into the project.
The first part of the plan revolves around winning a £55m non repayable loan from central government. This we are told is close to be finalised. It is critical as it is how Somerset Council will be able to set in motion the infrastructure needed before the plant is open, so it is ready and waiting for the new facility when it needs it.
The next part of the plan is to extend by a decade the Enterprise Zone that comprises the Gravity site. The Department of Housing, Levelling Up and Communities (DLUHC) have been asked for an extension of that Enterprise Zone status from 2042 to 2052.
As long as the Enterprise Zone is in place, the Council will fully retain all Business Rates from the whole Gravity site. That gives them the opportunity to borrow the rest of the money needed to deliver the plan (£95m) which can then be repaid from the business rates collected.
All good stuff but still dependent on central government delivering the goods. Fingers crossed.
Any uncertainty points to plenty of potential further opportunities to reannounce the fact that a £4bn gigafactory is going to be built in Somerset.
Maybe with our ageing population and the increasing prevalence of dementia, they hope they can reannounce the deal every 9 months and no-one will notice?
Suicide prevention money
Concerns have been raised by the Samaritans, that funding for suicide prevention services is likely to be cut in the spring budget.
Suicides in Somerset have been up and down over the past few years. Sadly, inevitably, they were higher during the pandemic, with 68 recorded in 2020 and 78 in 2021. However the 48 recorded suicides in 2022 is more or less the “normal” level for the Somerset Council area. From 2005 to 2019 the average rate was a shade over 50 a year.
That said, it is clear that in Somerset as in the rest of England, the number of suicides has remained stubbornly stable over the past two decades. This say Samaritans is not good enough. With more work and more funding we should be expecting suicide rates to fall.
The next issue at stake here is that, with the best will in the world, each suicide represents a failure of the suicide prevention services. That is at their current level of funding. Imagine what the numbers might be if those services were slashed as a result of budget cuts?
each suicide represents a failure of the suicide prevention services
The last funding settlement for suicide prevention services was in 2019 and offered £38m for England over three years to be spent by various local budget holders (at the time sustainability and transformation partnerships) around the country.
This ring-fenced local suicide prevention funding has been used to deliver suicide prevention training in communities – so that people in roles like employment and housing services, even postal workers, are trained to support and signpost people who they are concerned about in real time.
It also funds vital suicide prevention coordination roles - so one person oversees the approach for the whole community – understanding where action needs to take place and what prevention will be most effective to reduce deaths by suicide in their area. It also helps local authorities try new innovative projects grounded in their local community. So there really are multiple ways in which communities up and down the country will be affected if the funding’s not renewed.
The funding has not been renewed since and unsurprisingly has run out in many places. All of that funding will have ended by next month.
To date there is no hint from the Treasury that any new money will be offered for the service.
Communities that have relied on this funding will have to scale back or completely stop certain suicide prevention initiatives in their area if they can’t find the money elsewhere. This is why the Samaritans ares calling for it to be renewed in the Budget Statement.
What they are asking for is a five year strategy with a total fund increased (to allow for inflation) of £77m. Samaritans point out that this would amount to around £1.40 per person in England.
Meanwhile the Samaritans have organised a petition called Saving Lives Can’t Wait. In it they: “call on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Victoria Atkins, to commit to taking the strong, decisive action that will achieve the lowest national suicide rate ever recorded in England.”
You can read more about the petition and sign it if you wish by following the link here:
Frome objects to energy storage facility
With the green agenda increasingly to the fore of people’s minds, one of the key elements of the infrastructure needed to support green energy is battery parks. Green energy is by its nature intermittent. Storing energy on days when the wind is blowing or the sun shining is important, so it can be released to the grid on days which are either overcast or breeze free. Hence the importance of battery parks. These are often located, for convenience, next to electricity sub stations.
Which is no doubt how the site north of Styles Close near Frome came to be chosen by applicant Trina Solar for a battery energy storage system (BESS).
On the other hand a BESS is not an ideal facility to place next to built up areas or a watercourse and the proposed site is in a patch of land surrounded on three sides by housing and with Rodden Lake Stream on the site edge.
It is not a surprise therefore that the plans have not gone down well with local people. The last 6 months of last year were full of objections, petitions and a rallying of the local population against the idea.
Of the 65 responses to the plans to date, 64 are objections. Frome Town Council submitted a strongly worded objection to the plans too. The town council express concern about the design of the facility with insufficient gaps between each battery unit and suggest the loss of residential amenity makes the site unsuitable.
Strange to tell, had the site been located on the east side of the A361, it would still be relatively near the sub station and yet completely separated from local housing. No doubt that land was not available.
Local MP Sarah Dyke has also had her say, noting that: “Unfortunately, current legislation does not require fire services or the Environment Agency to be statutory consultees for planning applications involving solar farms or battery storage facilities, even though their expertise would help to ensure fire safety and prevent groundwater contamination.”
The applicant’s note that the site has easy access from Styles Close will have done little to reassure residents that this will not be an intrusive operation especially when it is being constructed. The fact that the applicant is proposing to screen the new development with either vegetation or a timber fence may sound appealing.
Excepting only that one of the significant concerns with a facility of this nature and scale is the fire risk. CPRE, the countryside charity have weighed in, over the course of the last week with another substantial objection to the plans that hinges around the fire risk. Although submitted on Monday 19th, by Friday the objection had still not been posted on the Planning Portal website.
CPRE told Somerset Confidential® that the National Fire Chief guidelines state that information should be provided to the fire service via the local planning authority in the first instance to allow an initial appraisal to be made. CPRE complain Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service (DSFRS) has allowed the applicant to provide minimum information.
CPRE conclude: “It is not clear to us why DSFRS appears not to be following NFC guidance, when other fire services are doing so.”
The proximity of the Rodden Lake Stream is also problematic in the event of a fire given that the northern border of the site runs along the bank of the stream. Wherever water is sourced from to extinguish a fire in the first place, the runoff from a BESS fire is inevitably toxic containing elements such as lithium and highly corrosive substances such as hydrofluoric acid and copper oxide. With the risk of that getting into Rodden Lake Stream which in turn flows into the River Frome, that would be to say the least unwelcome.
Over the last couple of months the applicants have been doing plenty of firefighting of their own, trying to reassure residents that the noise of the site will not be a problem as it will only be operated a few hours each day. Though to date they have been unable to say which hours. And reassuring them that the screening of the site will not result in a loss of visual amenity.
But the application has fallen strangely silent. A determination deadline was set for September 2023, but these days determination deadlines are all but meaningless. And here we are 6 months later with no further signs of activity.
these days determination deadlines are all but meaningless
No date has yet been set for a hearing on the planning application. The next Area East Planning Copmmittee agenda is for 5 March and the plans are not scheduled for discussion then. The ball seems to be firm;ly in the court of Somerset Council’s planning team. And for now at least, they aren’t playing…..
And Farleigh
On Monday the government “rolled out” plans to designate 27 new bathing water sites across England. The plans are subject to a two week consultation which ends on the 10 March. Among the sites chosen by the Water Minister, Robbie Moore MP, eight are in the south west and they include the River Frome at Farleigh Hungerford on the eastern extremity of Somerset.
It is a picturesque spot with a series of ancient bridges crossing the river. Given that the River Frome has had a number of pollution incidents upstream from Farleigh Hungerford, the fact that if designated, the site will receive regular water monitoring from the Environment Agency will be welcome.
The EA can investigate pollution sources and identify steps to be taken in response, which could include actions by water companies, farmers, industrial businesses and others.
However in order to ensure the site is designated, residents are encouraged to give feedback to the survey. If you’d like to take part you can do so here. Then just read down to the bottom of the page and then follow the link to the survey.
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Regards the buses item. It is also likely that ridership on the 28 is much increased since fares were cut to £2, or £1 within Taunton. The bus looks very well used every time I see it. I occasionally use it, which I didn't when it cost around £4 for less than 2 miles from the edge of town. So it may well be that this service has become viable recently. Not that I would trust First Bus!