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Hinterland - 9 May 2022
This week another useful report confirming what we already know about the challenges facing rural England, A&E reflections, Sport in the Countryside, who is to blame for the pressure put on care homes by the policy of discharging people with covid to them? The vital role of libraries for the older and vulnerable members of our community and a Totness focussed trespass…
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Rural areas held back by housing and infrastructure woes, report warns
I am tempted in response to this story to say, “tell me something I don’t know….” How useful these reports are when they never seem to get taken up by policy makers I am not sure but I applaud the effort to keep these issues on the agenda. Bravo
The rural economy is being held back by a lack of affordable housing, supermarket price-wars, poor public transport and broadband connections, according to a new report.
The cross-party group of MPs and peers found the rural economy was 18% less productive than the national average. If this gap was reduced it could add £43bn to the UK economy.
The government said it welcomed the report, and that it was providing £2.6bn to rural areas.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Rural Powerhouse heard evidence from over 50 rural organisations including charities, campaign groups, academics, and business leaders.
Calling it "one of the most comprehensive inquiries into the productivity of the rural economy" the co-chairman of the APPG, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said, "It is vital that government understands that rural Britain is not a museum, but instead is an important part of the national economy that deserves the chance to succeed."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61234843
NHS boss feared waiting for ambulance after stroke
This is a chilling story, especially for rural dwellers where according to this if you have stroke symptoms you need someone to get you to A&E fast and not to wait for an ambulance, when the call centre will put you in a second tier of priority.
An NHS boss who had a stroke was taken to A&E by her husband rather than calling for an ambulance because of concerns over long waits.
In a series of tweets, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Deborah Lee praised his swift actions.
She said he had "bundled her into his car", last week, after she had showed the signs of a stroke because he had heard her "lamenting ambulance delays".
She is recovering but says it may have been different if they had called 999.
Waits for an ambulance in England are the longest since new targets were introduced, in 2017.
And Ms Lee's regional service - the South West - has the longest waits in the country, with category-two calls, which include strokes, taking nearly two hours, on average, to reach patients in March.
The target is 18 minutes.
In the tweets, Ms Lee said: "Naturally, I am eternally grateful to my husband for his swift actions… but I can't get one thing out of my head.
"What if my husband hadn't been there and my daughter had called for an ambulance and I'd been put in the cat[egory]-two stack?"
She went on to say it was not the fault of the ambulance service and the whole system was "working unrelentingly to solve this but to no great avail".
Ms Lee said hospitals were struggling to discharge patients, because of a lack of social care, and so delays were building up in the rest of the system.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61259752
Number of inactive adults in England rises by 1.3m since Covid
This story goes nicely with “And Finally…”. It leads me to reflect that England with its relatively limited access to open countryside is not in its areas a green gym. Indeed in many urban places there are better facilities and opportunities to get active than in rural settings.
About 1.3 million adults have become inactive since the height of Covid, with at least 12 million taking less than an average of 30 minutes’ exercise a week, as activity levels only just begin to recover towards pre-pandemic rates.
The Active Lives Adult Survey, which is the largest study of the matter in England and has 175,000 respondents, tracked adults’ activity for a year from November 2020, with the data taking into account the impact lockdowns had on activity levels.
Just over 60% of adults (28 million) were active, achieving more than 150 minutes of activity a week, while 27%, or 12.4 million adults, were inactive, with less than 30 minutes of activity a week. A further 11.5%, or 5.2 million adults, were fairly active but did not reach an average of 150 minutes a week.
The data also showed that while activity levels dropped during periods of lockdown restriction, since coronavirus became less prevalent and restrictions were eased activity levels had begun to stabilise and were now recovering. In mid-March 2021, 61% of the population were active, compared with 58% 12 months earlier.
Matt Hancock blames Public Health England after damning High Court ruling on Covid in care homes
Do you think the NHS or Matt Hancock is to blame? We seem to live in a political environment where it is always someone else’s fault these days….. My father-in-law was discharged from hospital with covid to a care home, he lived there as a virtual prisoner before recovering only to die of heart failure due to another underlying condition. We had to liaise with him from a car park on a mobile whilst waving at him in his bedroom during all of that. Thousand had similar experiences, someone was in charge and ultimately responsible at the time…..
Former health secretary Matt Hancock has blamed Public Health England(PHE) for failing to alert him to asymptomatic transmission of Covid after a court ruled that the government policy of discharging patients to care homes during the early stages of the pandemic was unlawful.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
They also said that, despite there being “growing awareness” of the risk of asymptomatic transmission throughout March 2020, there was no evidence that the then-health secretary addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-matt-hancock-care-homes-court-b2066524.html
‘I come to the library to keep warm’: Norfolk residents battling fuel poverty
God bless local authorities and their humble libraries. I was in Mablethorpe last week and the library assistant offered me a cup of tea in return for a voluntary donation, plus biscuits and I was just waiting for some people to join me for a site visit!!! This is both a sad but a heart warming story. It tells us:
Every weekday Andrew Murkin comes to Downham Market library for books, wifi and – most importantly – warmth.
Murkin, who is 63 and receives disability benefits, lives in a bungalow in the Norfolk town and as his energy bills rose this winter he decided to heat only one room for two hours a day.
“In the winter I come to the library to keep warm,” he said. “I like to get up early. But sitting at home is miserable in the cold.”
At weekends, when his local library is mostly closed, he has few options. “In winter I just sit at home with my coat on and a duvet on,” he said. “I’ve been wearing two T-shirts, two jumpers and a coat inside. A lot of my friends do the same.”
The plight of Elsie, a 77-year-old who ate one meal a day and travelled on buses to stay warm, became emblematic of the cost of living crisis after Boris Johnson was confronted with her story in a Good Morning Britain interview. Her case has highlighted the challenges faced by older people unable to meet the cost of rising bills.
In Downham Market, near King’s Lynn, the library is a lifeline for older and vulnerable people looking for somewhere warm to pass time without spending money.
The south of the town has the ward with the highest proportion of pensioners in England and Wales, with 57% over-65. Many of them rely on the library.
And Finally
‘Access is vital’: picnicking protesters target Duke of Somerset’s woods
True to form, Totnes as the alternative leading edge heart of rural Britain, is the source of a gentle spin on the 1930s mass trespass in the Peak District, this time its some woods with music sandwiches and cake at the heart of a challenge to those who would use public money to keep the countryside for themselves – well at least according to this article which tells us:
A group of 200 Totnes residents trespassed and ate sandwiches and Victoria sponge to highlight lack of right to roam.
On a beautiful Sunday in May a spot under the trees in an ancient woodland would seem like an idyllic location for a picnic for residents of the Devon town of Totnes.
But when a group of 200 people settled down on the grass to enjoy sandwiches and slices of Victoria sponge next to the publicly funded woodland, they were actually breaking the law.
This is because the Duke of Somerset owns much of the area’s woodlands, and they remain largely off limits to the public because they are used for a large pheasant shoot.
The duke owns 1,100 hectares (2,800 acres) of land in some of the most beautiful areas of Devon, but the vast majority of it is inaccessible to the public. This is despite the fact he has received funds for the woodland the protesters picnicked in under the English woodland grant scheme, which comes from taxpayer money.
About the author:
Hinterland is written for the Rural Services Network by Ivan Annibal, of rural economic practitioners Rose Regeneration. |
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