Dry weather: Why drought is hitting parts of the North
Parts of the UK have seen the driest start to a year in close to a century.The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) said north-east and north-west England had not experienced as dry a period between January and April since 1929.Other parts of the UK have also faced particularly dry springs, but the North also saw below average rainfall in winter, according to Lucy Barker at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)."This has resulted in exceptionally low river flows and reservoir levels," she said.Meanwhile, nationwide it is believed this spring could be one of the driest on record.
Due to the drop in water supply, the Environment Agency officially declared a drought across the North West on 21 May.This means United Utilities, the water firm which supplies millions in the region, will have to forecast potential timescales for introducing hosepipe bans.The firm previously told the BBC it was bringing extra water into the system.
Dr Gemma Coxon at the University of Bristol said the North West was particularly susceptible to water supply issues during periods of low rainfall.This is because it has fewer groundwater aquifers than other parts of the country such as the South East, she said.Aquifers act like "big sponges" which sit under the soil and soak up rainfall then slowly release it, she explained.With fewer of these, river levels in the North West can drop more quickly during dry spells.Recent rain has boosted river flows and soil moisture in the region, Ms Barker confirmed, but this had still not made up for the "long term dry period".
No such drought has been declared in the North East.Prof Hayley Fowler at Newcastle University said the "robust" water supply provided by Kielder Reservoir in Northumberland meant it would take much longer for the region's water supply to be affected by dry weather.Dr Coxon said climate models predicted drier summers and wetter winters on average in the UK, but how the weather may look in future springs and autumns was much more "mixed"."We're currently in a dry spring but next year it could be much wetter," she said.Meanwhile, despite a wealth of weather data, the effect of human activity can also be difficult to ascertain or predict."It is challenging to disentangle exactly how much drier this spring has been due to climate change," Dr Coxon said.
'Water gauge stolen'
Rain data has been collected in the UK for centuries, all the way back to 1767 in Oxford.The Met Office has rainfall figures for the entire country going back to 1836, with recent efforts being made to transcribe historical handwritten statistics. As part of that project, scientists listed some very specific additional comments left behind by data collectors of the day. This included one person in Middleton-in-Teesdale who wrote in November 1876: "No readings as gauge stolen."Another individual in Sunderland wrote in 1869: "Rev Iliff had his right arm broken in June so was prevented from taking his observations regularly and a few weeks afterwards a road was made through his garden and his instrument meddled with."
Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
People Fixing the World Shipping containers fixing the world
Shipping containers are a staple of global trade, helping in the transport of all sorts of goods by sea across the world. But their relatively cheap cost and sturdy structure lends them to many other purposes. In this episode we look at a start-up business in the UK that uses shipping containers to store carbon captured from the air in the production of building materials. And we visit a school for poorer children created out of shipping containers that sits in the middle of a busy intersection in Mumbai, India. People Fixing The World from the BBC is about brilliant solutions to the world's problems. We'd love you to let us know what you think and to hear about your own solutions. You can contact us on WhatsApp by messaging +44 8000 321721 or email peoplefixingtheworld@ And please leave us a review on your chosen podcast provider. Presenter: Myra Anubi Producer: William Kremer India reporter: Chhavi Sachdev Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound mix: Hal Haines (Image: Myra with Nicholas Chadwick from Mission Zero outside a shipping container in Norfolk, BBC)
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Reform-linked thinktank hires YouTube star in policy and PR push
A YouTube star has been hired by a thinktank supportive of Reform UK as it looks to strengthen Nigel Farage's policy agenda, Sky News can reveal. Archie Manners, a comedian and magician who has performed high-profile pranks on celebrities and Just Stop Oil activists, has been hired by Resolute 1850, which is planning to change its name to The Centre for a Better Britain. It is understood the 32-year-old, whose YouTube channel with fellow influencer Josh Pieters amassed more than one million subscribers, has been hired full-time and will provide social media and communications advice. The hiring of Mr Manners, who worked for Mr Farage during the general election campaign, indicates Reform is hoping to expand its already significant reach with young men. While most of Reform's supporters are still older white men, post-election analysis by YouGov found Reform was the third most popular choice for men aged 18-24, alongside the Green Party. Reform has also been quick to engage with social media platforms, including TikTok, which are popular with Gen Z. The party now boasts nearly 400,000 followers - more than any other major political party - while Mr Farage's own personal TikTok now has over a million followers. While independent of Reform, Resolute 1850 has strong links to the party through leading figures, including Jonathan Brown - the thinktank's chief executive and former Reform chief operations officer - who will also seek to raise funds through UK, and possibly, US donors. In its first guise as Resolute 1850 - which the Financial Times reported is a reference to the HMS Resolute Royal Navy ship whose timbers were used to make the US president's desk in the Oval Office - the thinktank said its mission was to "foster stronger transatlantic relationships and more effective governance". Mr Brown told Sky News that Resolute 1850, which is due to launch formally by the autumn, was changing its name to the Centre for a Better Britain because "we wanted to be clear on what it did on the tin". "What we hope to do is set a policy agenda for the centre right which acknowledges the dire financial state the country is in and the errors that have been made around net zero and pretty much every policy the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are pushing forward, and actually have a desire for a radical break with the consensus of the last 20 years," he added. "Our desire is to build up a proper policy base and not be fixated on culture war issues - but to actually look at proper economic fiscal policy, foreign affairs and defence. "There's been a lot of enthusiasm around it." Mr Brown sought to downplay comparisons between his outfit and equivalent US thinktanks that are independent but supportive of US President Donald Trump, saying the UK had its "own challenges and political climate". He said calling Resolute 1850 a British version of MAGA (Make America Great Again) was "easy" but that he "disagreed" with the comparison. 2:22 "The idea that we are some sort of UK branch of a US organisation is not true," he said. "We are independent." Mr Brown added that Resolute 1850 currently had no US donors and that most of its fundraising - understood to be in the region of £1m - had been secured domestically, but that he was open to donations from across the Atlantic. Rumours of US donations to Reform began circulating last year when it was reported that Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and X, who has just left his role at the White House, was considering offering $100m (about £80m) to the party. However, the donation has not materialised and the relationship between Mr Farage and Mr Musk appears to have fractured after the tech tycoon called for Rupert Lowe, the ousted Reform MP, to replace Mr Farage as leader. The impending launch of the Centre for a Better Britain comes as Mr Farage looks to build his policy platform following his success at the May local elections, where Reform won control of 10 councils and picked up more than 670 councillors. At a speech on Tuesday, the Reform leader vowed to reverse cuts to winter fuel payments and scrap the two-child benefit cap while also outlining his ambition to increase the personal allowance from the current £12,750 to £20,000 year - something the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggest could cost between £50bn to £80bn a year. Mr Farage has argued such policies can be paid for through scrapping net zero commitments and by ending the use of asylum hotels - but Sir Keir Starmer said they would be "Liz Truss all over again". "He set out economic plans which contain billions upon billions of completely unfunded spending," the prime minister said last Thursday. "Precisely the sort of irresponsible splurge that sent your mortgage costs, your bills and the cost of living through the roof."
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The travellers' tactics: How travellers are obliterating Britain's prized countryside to turn them into concrete carbuncles for their caravans in illegal landgrabs
Travellers are using 'military' shock and awe-style tactics to obliterate areas of idyllic British countryside and turn them into concrete 'carbuncles' for their caravans, it can be revealed. Groups across the UK have been accused of carrying out brazen bank holiday 'landgrabs' to rapidly build camps under the noses of council chiefs while their offices are closed. Allegedly weaponising the national breaks, industrial diggers, excavators and lorries carrying gravel, are mobilised to rip up and pave over fields in protected green belts during 'deliberate and meticulously planned' operations. Cynically, the 'illegal' conversions are done without any planning permission, flouting development rules - with 'retrospective' applications later submitted to councils to allow the newly-constructed sites to remain. In the past month, at least two new encampments have been set up in West Sussex and Cheshire during the two May bank holidays, with fuming locals accusing travellers of making a 'mockery' of building laws. The latest unauthorised works took place in the quaint village of Burtonwood, near Warrington, in Cheshire, during last week's bank holiday, with travellers taking less than 72 hours to convert a field into a gravel car park. They covered half the open space in hardcore and also built a 10ft-high wooden fence around the boundary, with groups allegedly working through the night - much to the fury of dismayed locals. 'I have never felt so impotent as a councillor in not being able to do something,' local politician Stuart Mann said last night. 'The neighbours suffered for 36 hours solid that went through the night. It was a military operation in terms of how [the travellers] achieved it.' The works on the land appear to mirror a similar incident weeks earlier near the West Sussex town of Petworth, in the heart of the protected South Downs National Park, during the VE Day bank holiday at the start of May. A tranquil plot in Blind Lane, Lurgashall, was transformed into a building site as heavy machinery ploughed through the field without planning permission, turning it into gravel car park, with 10 caravans later appearing there. Local MP Andrew Griffith was left horrified by the unauthorised development and now fears travellers elsewhere could launch similar landgrabs if planning rules aren't tightened up. 'These are clearly deliberate and meticulously planned operations,' Mr Griffith, the Conservatives' Shadow Business and Trade Secretary, told MailOnline. 'In the Lurgashall case it took far too long for the local council to act leaving ratepayers and residents at the mercy of this devastating planning blight. 'It is clearly foreseeable that bank holiday weekends are the moment of maximum danger and yet that's when town halls fail to ensure staff cover.' Work at the six-acre Burtonwood site in Cheshire reportedly started at 6pm on Friday, May 23. MailOnline understands it came after travellers legitimately purchased the plot of land. Within hours, villagers reported excavators and tipper trucks working through the night to remove soil and replace it with concrete, completing the job in less than three days. Before and after aerial photographs show the extent of the destruction and more than a dozen caravans and other vehicles have since moved onto the site. Although a retrospective planning application has now been submitted to Warrington Borough Council, Cllr Mann said an investigation had been launched after complaints from locals, who say the land is green belt and should be for agricultural use only. He claimed to have been bombarded by 'hundreds' of emails from worried locals, with more than 50 people turning up at his surgery to express concerns. Speaking to MailOnline yesterday, Cllr Mann said the community had been left feeling 'helpless' and angry at the development. But it has also led to questions about how the local authority could have reacted to the issue, which could now take weeks to resolve despite an enforcement notice being issued. 'In my head, why was there nothing that could be done to at least put a pause on what was happening?' he said. 'Why couldn't someone turn up and say stop let's work something out.' Other residents have reportedly had applications for their own developments on neighbouring land refused by the council, according to Cllr Mann. 'We have to have a level of faith in the planning process but it needs to be fair for anybody to build something,' he added. Nigel Catlow, vice chairman, of Burtonwood and Westbrook Parish Council, described it as a 'very serious and fast-moving issue'. In a letter to the council, he said: 'The landowners appear to be in serious breach, making the most of the Bank Holiday and the council being on a long weekend. 'This is of great concern to many residents and council taxpayers in Burtonwood and the wider area of Warrington West.' Locals took to social media to express their anger, with one saying: 'The transformation is shocking.' Another, Jacqui Worrall, wrote: 'Breach!?.. it's a s****** concrete jungle!!!!' While Ray Houghton added: 'Blame the person who sold the land to them in the first place. The people doing this have no respect for the laws.' At the West Sussex site, efforts made to stop the development from going ahead appeared to fail. Builders arrived at the site on Friday, May 2, and work continued over the Bank Holiday weekend despite council notices and visits from Sussex Police. By Sunday afternoon, a septic tank was seen being delivered to the site as well as more gravel - with caravans later occupying the plot. A female council planning officer posted a second notice on the gate to the site on the Monday as three men carried on working. An earlier order to stop work was ignored. It's unclear who was responsible for the unauthorised development. However, Mr Griffith said locals had been left appalled by it. Speaking at the time, the MP for Arundel and South Downs said: 'I completely share the outrage and concern of residents about this illegal breach of all respected planning standards and behaviour. 'It makes a mockery of a system where we all jump through lengthy and costly hoops to install a dormer window when such brazen breaches happen unchecked.' The MP added the incident came 'almost a year to the day' that Chichester District Council's Lib Dem administration 'advertised a £50,000-a-year traveller liaison role which many felt sent precisely the wrong signal'. In May 2023, a beauty spot in the Cotswolds was ruined by travellers, who bulldozed their way onto a site they had not got permission to live on, despite the council trying to stop it happening for 17 years. People in Kayte Lane, a rural community below Cleeve Hill, in Southam, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, feared for years the unauthorised occupation of the land would happen before it finally did two years ago. Sixteen caravans plus several cars and vans entered the site, which the travellers moved onto over the late spring bank holiday. Travellers laid down hardstanding in the field, put up a high wooden fence along the edge of it and installed CCTV cameras, some of which overlook their neighbours. One local resident, who did not want to be identified, said the group used a bulldozer to clear vegetation from parts of the site when they moved on to it. It sparked a legal row, with locals last year accusing the authorities of not doing enough to prevent it from happening. Tewkesbury Borough Council first obtained a court order in 2007 to try to protect the greenbelt land, which is close to Cheltenham Racecourse, from being developed. It refused a retrospective planning application from the travellers in November 2023, after receiving more than 200 objections. But the unauthorised development still went ahead, sparking local fury. 'Tewkesbury Borough Council don't enforce anything. We're fighting against a brick wall,' one resident raged at the time.' Speaking last night, Mr Griffith urged action by Labour to clampdown on groups brazenly flouting planning laws nationally. 'The government must use the Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently going through Parliament to remove what increasingly feels to many like a 'two-tier' planning system,' he District Council has already secured a High Court injunction to halt further activity on the two-hectare field near Lurgashall. The injunction prohibits any further unauthorised works or vehicles and caravans entering the site. If a person fails to comply with the order, it could result in a jail term. Council leader Adrian Moss insisted the authority would 'not hesitate to take action' when planning rules are broken. 'We want to assure the community that we are doing everything in our power to respond to this. We will also be working with those on the site, local parish councils, and the local community, to offer support,' he said. A spokesman for Chichester District Council added: 'We take these matters incredibly seriously. We have planning rules in place to protect areas of countryside in our district, including the South Downs National Park, and if harmful development is carried out then we will take appropriate enforcement action. 'We want to assure the community that we are doing everything in our power to respond to this. We will also be working with those on the site, local parish councils, and the local community, to offer support.' Sussex Police told MailOnline it was aware of the traveller site but said it was a 'civil matter'. A spokesman for Warrington Borough Council confirmed it had 'established a priority enforcement case' over the situation in Burtonwood. 'We have received a report about a potential breach of planning on land off Farmers Lane in Burtonwood and are currently investigating the issue.'
