Somerset this week: 19 July 2024
The BBC agrees to meet Independent candidate for Wells & Mendip Hills Abi McGuire, the Brewhouse gets funds, more land lost to farming and a medical self service experiment in Frome.
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Somerset this week: 19 July 2024
Council steps in to help local theatre
Taunton Town Council has endured some stick for the large hike in the precept (Council Tax) that it asked for to cover 2024/25. However it is putting some of the £6m that it raised to good use to help cultural activities in Taunton.
The Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton used to receive a grant of £132,000 from Somerset West & Taunton District Council. That is being reduced to nothing as the new Somerset Council which took over from the districts is cutting cultural funding to the bare bones as it seeks to balance its books.
The Brewhouse grant is being progressively slashed over the next two years. £13,000 was cut from the grant for 2024/25 and the remaining £119,000 will be removed for 2025/26.
So the announcement by Taunton Town Council that they will provide a total of £28,940 to the Taunton Theatre Association Ltd, which operates The Brewhouse is bound to be welcome news to residents of our county town.
The money has been provided to fund staff running costs for their LEARN educational programme.
Further grants have also been made to support the Museum of Somerset (£30,500) and the Creative Innovation Centre (£49,500) towards the cost of running its two venues at Paul Street and Belvedere Road.
Whilst the support this year is bound to be welcome, in all three cases what the cultural life of Taunton really needs, is some certainty for the future. In the case of the Brewhouse there’s also the issue of the £119,000 funding from Somerset Council it is likely to lose next year. Can Taunton Town Council be relied upon to fill that gap too?
That possibility is complicated by the fact that although it isn’t going to be funding the theatre in the future, Somerset Council actually owns the Brewhouse Theatre.
The support of Taunton Town Council for the theatre looks as if it will be vital to keep theatre and performance flourishing in Taunton. But it is that bit harder to provide financial support to a building that somebody else owns.
Might it make more sense for Somerset Council top consider passing the ownership of the Brewhouse to Taunton Council giving control of a much loved cultural institution to the local community?
Wells bias
During the election campaign for the Wells & Mendip Hills constituency we reported on the fact that the BBC had no-platformed Abi McGuire and one other independent candidate. They had chosen to broadcast a debate with the candidates in the constituency, but decided the independent candidates were not important enough to be invited.
Abi McGuire who had been one of the first candidates to declare and had by then knocked on more than 20,000 doors across the constituency, was not amused. Nor were her supporters.
Following something of an outcry, the BBC relented and included Abi in the debate.
However, the complaints have not gone away. Not just that she was excluded from the hustings, but that the BBC failed to profile her along with other candidates.
In the end, as we reported on 5 July, Abi garnered 1,849 votes and finished just behind Green candidate Peter Walsh in sixth place.
But, still, one has to ask if she would have done better, had she been better treated by the BBC.
The editor of Somerset Confidential® had a similar experience in 2017 when standing as an Independent in the Somerset County Council (as it was then) elections. Although the BBC profiled all the candidates in his division (Langport & Curry Rivel) they broadcast his profile at around 6am. The others were at more mainstream times of the day. In the end he finished second to Conservative Clare Paul.
The question for the BBC though, is how can it justify the bias against Independent candidates. Following the complaints by her supporters within and without the constituency, Abi has been invited to meet with the BBC’s Director of News Content, Richard Burgess in London later this month.
how can it justify the bias against Independent candidates
Abi told Somerset Confidential®: “Ultimately, I want the role of an MP to be accessible to everyone and for constituencies to end up with good representation…… I hope the BBC will have a role to play in this in the future as they are so influential.”
And more Independent candidates might come forward – indeed might perform well – in elections, if they were treated fairly and given the same exposure as their party political rivals.
Meanwhile in researching this article, Somerset Confidential® noted the register of personal interests for Richard Burgess was not published throughout the election campaign. For someone who is Director of News Content that seems like an extraordinary oversight. Whether it was a nil return or not hardly matters.
During an election, if not at any other time, it is surely important to know what, if any, personal interests (and hence conflicts of interests) he might have had.
On his BBC profile page there was simply a note observing: “Richard Burgess' Declaration of Personal Interests will be published shortly.”
Really not good enough.
Frome self-service
The NHS is rolling out another new service designed to take the workload off GPs. The new service provides patients with musculoskeletal (MSK) issues the opportunity to self-refer.
The service is now available to patients of the three Frome GP practices (Beckington Family Practice, Frome Medical Practice or Mendip Country Practice) and via Frome Community Hospital on a trial basis. If it is successful it will be rolled out to other parts of Somerset in due course.
Over 20 million people in the UK, almost a third of the population, have an MSK condition such as arthritis or back pain. You can see why the new service is being trialled.
Patients can self-refer to the service without consulting a GP. The only criteria that patients must meet for a self-referral is that they have to be over 16 and have an MSK condition. The new service is part of an NHS mandated programme and is not specifically a Somerset initiative.
Vicky Hier, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust’s MSK physiotherapy lead for the Frome area, explains: “As part of the new service, people in Frome and the surrounding area who experience musculoskeletal pain can get quicker access to support from our team. By offering this easier way of getting care and treatment for MSK, we’re improving the choice for patients, whether that be through their GP, MSK practitioner or physiotherapist, and it means that, unlike before, they don’t necessarily need to see their GP for previously diagnosed or recurring complaints.”
This new service, insist Somerset NHS Trust, is not the same service as the First Contact Point Musculoskeletal service. That service is also being rolled out by the NHS across England and it is relevant to mention here as it is indicative of the overall approach the NHS is taking.
First Contact Point services are where patients who in the past would see a GP, can now go directly to a different medical practitioner including Musculoskeletal First Contact Point practitioners.
GP surgeries have been moving towards employing more and more staff who are not GPs, to access services that would once have been provided by a GP.
Even the GP receptionist will now act as a quasi triage nurse, deciding who should get to see a GP and who might be seen by somebody else. In the face of rising complaints from patients unable to get an appointment with a GP, these initiatives are likely to be welcomed.
But the move to using ever more First Contact Point practitioners (the NHS now list a dozen different roles as First Contact Point providers) instead of seeing a GP must raise some questions.
it begs the question, what is the GP role for?
Fundamentally, it begs the question, what is the GP role for? Traditionally the GP was the expert medical generalist who undertook almost all aspects of diagnosis, care and case management. That tradition is being challenged by new ways of working.
The expert generalist was never intended to be able to solve all of a patient’s issues. Importantly though, they had the skill and general medical knowledge to know when to signpost a patient to a different service, to a specialist and to know where that service could be found.
What we are seeing now is, in effect, turning the approach to primary care on its head. The patient now goes straight to a nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist and the like, often without any GP input at all. Just as the latest initiative in Frome asks the patient to self-refer, no doubt aided by Doctor Google.
The medical service given by this new breed of medical staff will no doubt be perfectly good within its field. But, whilst no doubt highly competent and skilled in their field, will they necessarily know if the patient is in the right place?
For instance, if a patient who actually has bone marrow cancer self-refers to one of the new practitioners with MSK symptoms, they may get a perfectly good programme of physiotherapy. But will the actual underlying problem and the fact that they might need urgent treatment go unrecognised?
Is it not the case that a GP as first contact point and an expert generalist has a much higher chance of picking up the underlying problem and referring the patient to the right place for treatment?
Meanwhile the law of unintended consequences is at play. The latest cohort of qualified GPs are struggling to find work. In an NHS where a shortage of GPs has been recognised for five years, this is going to come as a surprise to many.
Last month the Royal College of General Practitioners pointed out: “GPs are struggling to find jobs while patients are 'crying out' for appointments. Six out of 10 job-seeking GPs have struggled to find a vacancy to apply for over the past year – at the same time as GP workloads are at an all-time high and millions of patients are waiting for appointments.”
Why?
Does it simply come down to money? Is it that the small army of nurses, physiotherapists and other practitioners that are starting to take up the workload are considerably cheaper to employ than GPs?
Suddenly the GP is at risk of becoming superfluous. But, is the quality of medical care that patients receive being compromised in the rush for cheaper and faster solutions?
Lost acres
With a new government in post and promising to rewrite the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), it is time to re-examine the state of our farmland in Somerset. All three major parties made warm and comforting noises about needing to have food security at the front and centre of the political agenda.
Unfortunately neither LibDems, Conservatives nor Labour seem to understand that you can’t have food security while building houses all over farmland.
Only yesterday Daniel Zeichner, Minister for Farming, told the National Union of Farmers that “Food security is national security.” Great words. But what will they actually mean as Labour tries to build even more houses than the previous government, almost all of which will end up being built on good grade farmland.
Noises will of course be made about needing to use brownfield sites first. Until politicians understand that developers will not bring brownfield proposals forward of their own free will, this is just so much empty rhetoric. Brownfield sites are expensive to develop, greenfield land is much easier.
Developers are looking for easy profit for their shareholders. Unless Labour finds a mechanism to refuse greenfield development UNTIL brownfield sites are built out and changes NPPF to make that a reality, it will not help the food security situation.
As we have pointed out before, neither Somerset nor Wiltshire Councils have a clue how much farmland has been lost to development – this year, last year or at any time in the past. They simply don’t keep records,
The problem is that, along with North Yorkshire, the Somerset and Wiltshire are home to some of the best farmland in the country. And yet they are also the three councils that have built more homes – nearly all on greenfield sites – than any other council in the last decade.
Somerset Confidential® has trumpeted this message before. However, we thought it would be worth looking at how much farmland we are losing. So we trawled the records of the council looking at the developments approved by Somerset Council in the first six months of 2024.
That’s not every piece of land, but all good grade farmland lost on developments of 50 houses or more. It is not simply a case of the land being lost to housing of course. In the first six months of the year vast swathes of farmland have been granted permission to be turned over to solar industrial sites, too.
While solar energy may be clean and undoubtedly should be part of the mix of energy generation for years to come, it does not therefore follow that we should cover the best and most versatile agricultural land in solar panels.
Yet this is exactly what has happened. Four sites have been given permission in 2024 already: at Rode; Creech St Michael; Milverton; and Washford – all on good quality agricultural land. Each decision flying in the face of written government advice saying good quality land should not be used.
As a result, some 140 hectares (or 246 acres) of good agricultural land have been lost – probably for 40 years (the predicted life of most of these facilities). That matters for food security.
This is not a campaign against solar, but it seems crazy to us that we should be taking good agricultural land out of production. Especially when developers refuse to build solar panel systems into new build houses and government has failed to change building regulations to make them.
There has been plenty of land lost to development too. Not least in Ilminster where back in January a totally perverse decision saw 21 hectares of land lost when the Canal Way development was approved. But worse, to provide phosphate mitigation, a further 110 hectares of good quality agricultural land will be taken out of production and fallowed.
In March, more agricultural land was lost at Mudford Road at the eastern end of Yeovil, when permission was given to build 250 new homes of 22 hectares.
It is a similar tale across the county with developments approved on agricultural land in Martock, Wiveliscombe, Wellington, North Petherton, Nether Stowey, near Bridgwater, Langport, Milborn Port, Broadway and South Petherton. In total these smaller developments will consume a further 50 acres of good agricultural land.
So as Somerset Council doesn’t know how much agricultural land has been lost, we’ll be happy to tell them. We’re looking at just under 350 hectares of land (or 865 acres) lost in just six months in one council area. Land that is now lost to food production.
You’re welcome!
And we should add that this is before decisions are made on Selwood Garden Village outside Frome which will cost 161 hectares of good quality farmland if approved, or at Bower Lane, Bridgwater which would cost a further 31 hectares. Our planners are sleepwalking into a food crisis.
And that is in just one county. The land lost to agriculture in Somerset in the first six months of this year is enough to have produced four million loaves of wholemeal bread. We simply cannot afford to keep doing this and expect to grow more of our own food at the same time. It should be blindingly obvious.
“Food security is national security” is just an empty set of words.
Government policy has yet to see it. Until it does, “Food security is national security” is just an empty set of words.
Inconsistent again
Two weeks ago James Garrett wrote a piece for Somerset Confidential® exploring the inconsistent way in which planners were applying the planning rules. Sadly, we have to report that less than a week after he wrote that, the same thing happened again, this time with a solar development which is set to all but surround the village of Rode in the north east of our county.
The application was passed by a majority of councillors for Somerset’s Planning Area East Committee last Thursday.
As is common with these applications, a variety of experts have to opine on the various aspects of the plans. Some of these will be external, such as the Environment Agency, some internal such as Highways or the Tree Officer.
Which is how Somerset Council’s Conservation Officer came to give an opinion on the plans. She offered a strong objection to the scheme on the grounds of the harm it would cause to the conservation area of Rode.
As the application rumbled on, however, the Conservation Officer was taken off the case. She subsequently left the council.
The new Conservation Officer offered no objection to the harm that might be caused to the Conservation Area. Instead suggesting that some minor adjustments be made to protect the setting of a listed farmhouse.
We are not in a position to say which of the Conservation Officers held the ‘right’ view. Only that the opinions they offered appeared to be more than a little contradictory. And that we are unable to ascertain why the original Conservation Officer was removed from the case.
We can observe that the change in Conservation Officer appears to have removed a key objection to the approval of the plans.
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Regarding GP receptionists becoming 'triage experts' it's hardly surprising given that most governments, whatever the colour, have a track record of seeking cheaper alternatives.
Just look at policing and the introduction of PCSO's in 2002, commonly referred to as 'the plastic police' as they had no meaningful powers, but they were a lot cheaper.
Regards housing, you forgot to mention one of the reasons councils are keen on approving developments, whatever and wherever the proposal, is the CIL money.
A nice little earner to be spent on 'pet projects'!