
Ealing could face legal action over children's centres closures
Ms Welsby said: "Obviously there is a big financial implication about that [seeking a judicial review], and we need to seek advice."There are lots of things we would look at and we would focus on the process. "But also, we will continue to hold them to account, through freedom of information requests, continuing to go to public meetings, and continuing to hold protests."An Ealing Council spokesperson said the current set up "is not working".The Labour-run council said it aims to "design a service more tailored to our families' needs and move services into the community to better reach those who may need our help, while retaining the largest number of children's centres in London".The leader of the opposition on Ealing Council, Lib Dem councillor Gary Malcolm, said this is "another example of Ealing Labour holding a consultation, ignoring the results and then axing vital services".He added: "The closures will result in worse outcomes for the vulnerable children and families across the borough and reduced accessibility."They are closing the children's centres before they have thought about what they will have in place."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Times
4 minutes ago
- Times
Swinney has blown our chances of a payoff for all those turbines
Lesley Riddoch is fed up. Granted, this is not an unusual condition for the independence-supporting columnist and promoter of all things Nordic. But it is not hard to understand why she's upset that there was scarcely a murmur of discontent from the Scottish government last week after Ed Miliband scrapped zonal energy pricing. 'Where's the outcry from the SNP or Greens?' she asked, plaintively. What was so wrong about Scots getting cheaper bills? How could John Swinney have missed this opportunity to demand that Scots get direct benefit from Scotland's wind? Surely this was a slam dunk for a nationalist party which always claims that Scots were robbed of the last energy bonanza in the North Sea. Zonal pricing is the idea, promoted by Greg Jackson of Octopus Energy and backed by Jonathan Brearley of the regulator Ofgem, that electricity prices in Scotland should reflect its contribution to addressing climate change. All those wind farms in the North Sea and the towering turbines now gracing Scotland's hills are supposed to deliver cheap-as-chips energy. But Scottish bills have continued to rise, plunging around a million Scots into fuel poverty. • Rejection of postcode electricity pricing pleases energy bosses Yet Scotland could enjoy 'the cheapest energy costs in Europe', according to Jackson, if the UK government introduced zonal pricing. The cost of electricity, he says, should reflect the cost of producing and transporting it. In the past, location didn't matter much because power for the electricity grid was generated by coal, gas and nuclear plants which were dispersed across the country. But with renewable energy generated in the North Sea, location very much does matter. It is expensive to transport the electricity produced by Scottish wind farms to the south of England, where most of it is used. Huge infrastructure projects are necessary to drag the reluctant electrons five hundred miles through cables and interconnections. A lot of energy is lost on the way through heat and leakage. Allowing energy costs to fall in areas where it is generated should be more energy-efficient. More importantly, it might encourage energy-intensive industries to come to Scotland. Those footloose data centres and artificial intelligence companies, with their insatiable demand for energy, could locate in Scotland to take advantage of lower energy costs. Given the chronic overconcentration of economic activity in the south of England, this is not such a daft idea. At any rate, you'd think that this is something that would appeal to Swinney, the first minister, who keeps saying he wants economic growth brought back to Scotland. Scotland was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution largely because of an abundance of coal and other raw materials. That's why the Clyde could build a fifth of world shipping before the First World War and mills such as Ravenscraig could later turn out miles of sheet metal for the motor industry. The days of coal are over, of course, and Westminster has passed a death sentence on the Scottish oil and gas industry. So surely Scotland would have a case for demanding that the new industries of the digital age should be located where energy is abundant. Of course, zonal pricing might have had awkward trade-offs. If Scots paid less for their energy, English consumers would presumably have to pay more. Yet it would not be a massive imposition for the 65 million consumers who don't live in Scotland to finance a couple of hundred quid off the bills of the five million who do. The main reason Swinney has been reluctant to campaign for zonal pricing is that the big energy companies, most notably SSE and Scottish Power, are firmly against it. These largely foreign-owned behemoths have a material interest in the status quo. They are compensated generously by a panoply of schemes such as contracts for difference, which effectively guarantee that the profits from renewable energy are never less than the profits they make from gas. At least a quarter of domestic energy bills go toward subsidies for renewables. They claim that they would not be able to finance new wind farms if differential pricing undermined profitability. However, the energy companies also benefit directly from the mismatch between where energy is generated and where it is used. Last year they earned nearly £2.7 billion in constraint payments, largely for turning their windmills off when they generated too much energy for the grid to accommodate. A quarter of Scotland's potential was switched off last year. Well, there seems an obvious solution to that. Even more obvious is surely the propaganda benefit to a nationalist government of a situation where Scottish wind energy was actually being wasted. Moreover, communities are already being compensated for proximity to wind farms, albeit in a very limited way. RES, a renewables development company, has been setting up local energy discount schemes (LEDs) across the country since 2012. Properties near Glenchamber Wind Farm in Dumfries and Galloway can apply for a £200 discount on electricity bills. So zonal pricing is actually happening — just not at scale. And even as Miliband killed the idea of zonal pricing, he promised zonal compensation for communities facing wind farm development. There will have to be, he said, 'direct community benefits'. Perhaps it is not feasible to disaggregate the National Grid to create zonal pricing. There is a democratic argument that energy costs should be the same across the UK. But given that so much of the cost of renewables is covered by subsidies, surely this could be re-engineered to allow Scottish homes and businesses to benefit from all that wind. UK energy policy is anyway riddled with anomalies, waste and unfairness. Miliband is using punitive taxation to accelerate the collapse of Scotland's oil and gas industry. The promise of a bonanza of green jobs has been as false as Labour's promise to cut energy bills by £300. If zonal pricing isn't feasible, then what would be a sensible way of compensating Scots for the disruption to their environment and their selfless contribution to saving the planet? And why isn't the Scottish government arguing for it? For once, there is good reason here to play the Scottish card. Instead of meekly acquiescing in the diktat of the renewable energy cartel, the Scottish government should be holding Miliband's feet to the fire and making sure the dash for renewables doesn't leave Scotland on the sidelines. As Riddoch says: 'Why the heck not?'


Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The 1970s are back, but we're still waiting for our Thatcher moment
The 1970s, it seems, are back. A scorching summer and a teetering economy evoke memories of 50 years ago. A Labour Chancellor mulls how best to soak the rich; beyond Westminster, state authority crumbles. Rachel Reeves has not yet gone to the IMF like Denis Healey did. But there is a sense on the British Right that the UK is facing a fresh '1976 moment' as the old unsustainable order gives way to something new. Both the Tories and Reform are keen to embrace that narrative. Jim Callaghan's remark that 'If I were a young man, I would emigrate' is reflective of the mood of many voters today. 'Broken' is the most commonly used word to describe the country in focus groups. Yet while Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage agree that Britain in 2025 faces real national decline, they differ on who will be its saviour come 2029. In the fight for the future, a proxy war is being fought over the past. A century after Margaret Thatcher's birth, both Badenoch and Farage claim her legacy for their respective parties. The Tory leader points to Thatcher's seriousness and sense of purpose; the upcoming party conference will stress her Conservative core. Farage meanwhile is urging think tanks to work with him, publicly praising 'the great revolution that took place from 1979' as a lodestar for a Reform-led government. It is not yet clear who will win out in the battle of the Right. But there are encouraging signs that members of both parties appreciate the scale of the problems facing Britain. Some within Reform are keen to look Stateside; one senior figure dined with a member of the Trump transition team last week. Among Conservatives, there is a keen sense of 'getting things right next time.' One Tory MP likens the experience of the last parliament to that of Ted Heath's government. Past failure will, hopefully, inform future success. Both are correct to recognise that preparation and a sense of purpose will be key to the success of the next government of the Right. If national decline is to be reversed, then a clear plan is essential to succeed. An example of this is offered by the Coalition's school reforms. Consultation had been done in opposition; relevant bills drafted before entering office, ensuring last reform. A similar body of work will be necessary if issues such as Britain's creaking asylum system are to be overhauled in the next parliament. Badenoch has handed policy review to Alex Burghart, who is regularly spotted around parliament clutching a copy of Keith Joseph's The Right Approach. Zia Yusuf will perform a similar role for Reform, working with Simon Marcus, the party's head of research. Yet planning alone will not be sufficient. As the unhappy experience of this current government shows, ministers are always susceptible to being blown off course by events. Having an intellectual core will be necessary for continued renewal in office. Charles Moore's magisterial biography of Thatcher notes how her policy-making was an iterative process. Constant memos were circulated in written form. This ensured the detail of any policy, not merely the theory, was subject to scrutiny prior to implementation. A similar robustness could help the Right avoid many of the stupid fights that have plagued more recent leaders. Thatcher's success was built on a shrewd sense of her electoral coalition. In the 1980s, this was achieved by peeling off a sufficient chunk of the old working class vote with houses, shares and economic prosperity. In the 2020s, new loyalties must be affirmed. For the Right, this will likely include marrying 'Thatcher's children' – economic winners of her era – with those who lost out in her era. Strikingly, Reform is now targeting ex-coal mining areas like South Wales and the East Midlands. To bind this coalition together, a new economic model will likely have to be forged. 'Culture wars are not enough' admits one Tory frontbencher. Farage has shown a willingness to nationalise British Steel and Thames Water; members of Badenoch's team are critical of Beijing deliberately crippling Western industries. Both leaders appreciate that the sickness benefits bill – set to rise to £100bn by 2030 – is completely unsustainable. Both will have to find a way to sell welfare reform and palatable spending cuts to an electorate that is wary of both. 'We all know the state needs to do less,' says one former Tory minister. 'But where does the axe fall? Thatcher barely touched the welfare state.' She chose to privatise state liabilities; liberalising state commitments on areas like Net Zero could offer the equivalent answer in 2029. Opinions differ on the Right as to whether the challenges facing Britain now are greater than those 50 years ago. Back then, there was union militancy, the Soviet threat and IRA terror; now there is a demographic time bomb, a febrile electorate and two decades of stagnant growth. In looking to the future, the spirit, if not the means, of Thatcher will animate those wrestling to resolve the nation's problems – regardless of which party they are in.


Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Farage beats Starmer in every respect except one, poll finds
Voters believe Nigel Farage is better than Sir Keir Starmer in almost every respect, but is less honest than him, according to a new poll. The Reform UK leader is seen as being more in touch with ordinary people, paying greater attention to detail and being a stronger leader than the Prime Minister. A new survey by Ipsos asked respondents to say whether they felt certain positive characteristics applied to Sir Keir, Mr Farage or Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader. The Reform leader came out on top in every question, apart from when voters had to say which of the leaders they believed was an 'honest person'. It comes as Reform continues to surge in the polls, with Ipsos finding that the party is ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. The party exceeded expectations at the local elections in May, when they gained over 600 councillors and seized the parliamentary seat of Runcorn and Helsby from Labour. More than 50 per cent of voters said that Mr Farage had 'a lot of personality', compared to just 21 per cent saying the same of the Prime Minister. Thirty seven per cent said that they felt Mr Farage was a capable leader, and 41 per cent said they would describe him as a strong leader, compared to just 31 per cent and 26 per cent for Sir Keir. But a third of respondents said that the Prime Minister was honest, compared to 29 per cent for Mr Farage. Sir Keir suffered the biggest fall in approval rating after winning an election of any prime minister in the modern era, despite his landslide 174-seat majority. Despite the vast number of Labour MPs, ministers have struggled to pass key legislation because of the discontent on their backbenches. The largest rebellion of the Prime Minister's career meant that he was forced to back down on several elements of his welfare reforms, eradicating billions in planned savings. Other policies that have attracted particularly widespread criticism include the scrapping of the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners, which the Chancellor had to partly reverse. The new polling also found that just a quarter of people believe that Rachel Reeves will still be the Chancellor by the next general election. The number of voters who think that Sir Keir understands the problems facing Britain has fallen by 18 per cent since the general election last year. The latest poll also found that voters narrowly judged Mr Farage to be 'good in a crisis' at 27 per cent, compared to 26 per cent for Sir Keir. Mrs Badenoch received just 18 per cent.