Councils in England face clampdown on four-day working weeks

The local government secretary, Steve Reed, is seeking to clamp down on councils introducing four-day working weeks after writing to South Cambridgeshire warning that the policy had damaged performance.Reed told the council, which is the only local authority to formally trial a four-day week for staff, that they risked worsening public services and value for money.His letter, first seen by the Telegraph, marks the first intervention by the Labour government on shortened working weeks in local government in England.Reed wrote to Bridget Smith, the council’s Liberal Democrat leader, noting there had been a deterioration in rent collection and repairs by the council.“The independent report shows that performance declined in key housing-related services including rent collection, reletting times and tenant satisfaction with repairs, especially where vulnerable residents may be affected,” he wrote

HMRC pauses child benefit crackdown after 23,500 families caught up in data error

The UK tax authorities have announced they will no longer cut off parents’ child benefit payments after a new crackdown on overseas fraud backfired due to incomplete Home Office travel data.The flawed data led to HMRC suspending 23,500 payments in recent weeks, including for many families who had simply gone on holiday without the Home Office recording their return.New mistaken suspensions reported in the last 24 hours included that of a woman who travelled to Amsterdam for work in June 2023 – long before she became a mother.She said: “I have one biological child. I received a letter from HMRC stating that I went to the Netherlands in June 2023 and never returned

Hundreds of hospice beds and staff cut in England amid funding crisis

Hospices in England are cutting hundreds of beds and staff because of a funding crisis, despite a sharp rise in demand for palliative care, a damning report warns.People needing end of life care faced a postcode lottery because access to services was so patchy, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported.A lack of government oversight meant ministers were unaware of how reliant they were on independent hospices, its 52-page report found.The NAO said nearly two-thirds of independent hospices in England reported a deficit in 2023-24. Overall expenditure was £78m more than income generated

‘No more children are going to die like you’: how Sheffield mother kept her promise to boys killed by father 11 years ago

When Claire Throssell held her dying son Jack in her arms, she made him a promise: that no more children would die in the circumstances he had – at the hands of a violent parent, on a court-ordered unsupervised visit.Jack and Paul, then aged 12 and nine, were killed by their father 11 years ago, when he lured them into the attic with a new train set, barricaded the house shut and used Throssell’s possessions to set 14 separate fires.“When I held him in my arms, just like I did Paul,” she said, “I made him one last promise. I said to him: ‘No more children are going to die like you.’”Last week, on the anniversary of the fire, she was invited to meet the prime minister in Downing Street, as the government announced that it planned to repeal the presumption that children should have contact with both parents, under which decisions are made in the family court

NHS makes morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England

The NHS has made the morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England in an effort to reduce a “postcode lottery” of access to emergency contraception.Almost 10,000 pharmacies are now able to offer the pill without charge, saving those in need of free emergency contraception from having to visit their GP or to get an appointment at a sexual health clinic.Some pharmacies were previously charging as much as £30 for emergency oral contraception.The NHS’s national clinical director for women’s health, Dr Sue Mann, said the expansion was “one of the biggest changes to sexual health services since the 1960s” and “a gamechanger in making reproductive healthcare more easily accessible for women”.“Instead of trying to search for women’s services or explain their needs, from today women can just pop into their local pharmacy and get the oral emergency contraceptive pill free of charge without needing to make an appointment,” she said

Five more prisoners freed in error after sex offender’s release from Essex jail

Five other prisoners have also been released by mistake in the same week a convicted Ethiopian sex offender was allowed to walk free from an Essex jail, says the prison officers’ union.The disclosure of further mistakes highlights the intense pressure on prison staff, according to the Prison Officers’ Association (POA).Last Friday, Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford after being sentenced to 12 months in jail in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl while living in an asylum hotel in Epping.After a two-day manhunt he was tracked down in north London and returned to detention.His mistaken release inflamed public anger, given his case had already caused unrest across England and Wales over the summer, with many demonstrators rallying against asylum accommodation and voicing anti-immigration sentiments