Latest news with #Darwen
BBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Blackburn with Darwen drops council tax for terminally ill people
Terminally ill people in a Lancashire borough who have less than a year to live will no longer have to pay council across all parties in Blackburn with Darwen approved the decision, making it the second local authority in England to take the step after Manchester introduced the scheme in June. End-of-life care charities Marie Curie and Hospice UK said they wanted other councils and devolved governments to follow suit. Labour council leader Phil Riley described it as a "worthy idea" but said he had concerns about potentially "intrusive conversations". "There are some practical issues but I am absolutely clear we can look at this," he said."It helps people at a very serious moment in their lives."My over-riding concern is that, if we are not careful, it gets some of the council officers into some fairly intrusive conversations which will be uncomfortable."He said the "very obvious one is that what do you do if someone believed they were going to die and then didn't and whether you go back". Council tax worries Speaking earlier this month, Marie Curie senior policy manager Jamie Thunder said a terminal diagnosis could mean an individual or their partner having to reduce their working hours, or stop altogether."Council tax is one of the larger bills that you might have to pay," he said."It's also one people are very worried about missing particularly because the enforcement of council tax can be quite sudden and ramp up quite quickly."So taking that bit of pressure off is a really valuable thing."The Local Government Association, which represents English councils, said some discretion and support for terminally ill people was already available but there was interest in the new steps being taken. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The Daily T: Jake Berry — Kemi Badenoch is toast, Nigel Farage should be PM
He is just the latest in a growing number of disaffected Tories turning to Nigel Farage's party. Former Conservative chairman Sir Jake Berry tells The Daily T why, after 25 years of Conservative Party membership and 14 years as the Tory MP for Rossendale and Darwen, he has joined Reform. As well as acknowledging his role as a senior Tory in the failure of 'broken Britain', Berry attacks the Labour Government, accusing Starmer of gross incompetence: 'the Conservative Party failed to sort it out over 14 years. I think the Labour Party 's done a worse job in 14 months.' Berry also explains why it took him losing his seat to realise that Nigel Farage is the only man who can fix Britain and why Kemi Badenoch is 'toast'. The former MP also weighs in on Essex police controversially escorting protesters to a migrant hotel in Epping, as the county's police chief refuse to resign.
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Serious injury curtails Atherton LR's friendly at Darwen
Atherton LR's penultimate pre-season game on Saturday came to an early end following a serious injury to Darwen's Nathan Emery. Prior to the game, former LR players Ryan Talbot and Akim Samms featured in the Darwen team news with Samms contributing during a small stint late last year, while Talbot was a crucial player during the 2024/25 treble campaign for the Yellows. The LR team news saw the return of Joe Bickerstaffe following a back injury during the Bury game two weeks earlier. LR put in a strong opening 30 minutes, with Lewis Adams and Abiola Obasoto commanding a good defensive shape showing a marked improvement from last Tuesday night's draw. Tom Lawless and Cal Hunter combined well with some early breaks with the help of Joe Bacon and Kieran Nolan - with manager Dave Jones later claiming it to be a 'much more structured performance.' A sign of bad things to come came following an off-the-ball incident which saw Adams receive a ligament injury after a collision with the pitchside barrier - the captain had also had issues in the previous game which was certainly made worse by this incident - leading to an early substitution for LR. The game came to a close early following a 50-50 challenge which unfortunately caused Salmoners player, Emery's leg to break - forcing the referee to stop play and eventually abandon the game - a decision which was supported by the LR backroom staff. The fixture will not be replayed and everyone at Atherton LR wished Emery a speedy recovery, with the player later posting on social media, 'Ill be sound. I've come back from it before, ill do it again.' Boss Jones said: 'We were competitive, looked good in our defensive shape and dangerous on the break - a much more structured performance than Tuesday night.' Atherton LR's final pre-season game will be against Cheadle Heath Nomads at Crilly Park tonight.
BBC News
13-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Plan to scrap some school buses in Blackburn and Darwen
Blackburn with Darwen Council's education boss has promised to monitor the impact of changes to its support for dedicated buses to four of its biggest secondary Julie Gunn made the pledge as the authority's executive board confirmed proposals to scrap some services and increase fares for pupils on those that council had historically provided dedicated buses for St Wilfrid's Secondary Academy, St Bede's Roman Catholic High School, Our Lady and St John's Catholic Academy and Darwen Aldridge Community said: "Those pupils entitled to free transport to school will be entirely unaffected." Cashless system The cost of tickets for borough schoolchildren attending secondary schools in Bolton will also changes were set out in a report by Gunn earlier this week, in which she said the council had subsidised a shortfall for the four schools in the short this was not financially sustainable or fair to other schools in the borough, or the parents of their pupils, she the meeting borough growth boss Quesir Mahmood welcomed a plan to move to a cashless also said: "We will need to monitor any effect on pupil attendance."Gunn said: "We will keep an eye of school attendance as a result of these changes."Pupil attendance is really important to us."It is really important to pupils as well in terms of their life chances after school."The fare increases are the first for dedicated school services for 10 years, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Berry's defection to Reform is the latest sign it is a joke party
What shall we make of Sir Jake Berry's defection from the Tories to Reform UK? It is an interesting culmination of a political career that has taken Berry – in no short amount of time – from serving in David Cameron's Number 10 Policy Unit, to performative Boris Johnson loyalism, to a blissful seven weeks as Liz Truss's Party Chairman. Not to mention losing his seat after two years of backbench mildewing, backing Tom Tugendhat for the party's leadership, and then plonking himself in that natural berth for the politically exhausted and terminally irrelevant: TalkTV. Apropos of nothing, online swingometers now have Berry's former seat going to Reform by quite a healthy margin. In fairness to the voters of Rossendale and Darwen, they have obvious reasons to want to put a plague on the houses of both major parties – reasons that Berry sharply identified in his article announcing his defection. He was blunt: 'If you were deliberately trying to wreck the country, you'd be hard pressed to do a better job than the last two decades of Labour and Tory rule'. Our streets are lawless, migration is out of control, and taxes are going through the roof. Britain is broken, it needs reform, and Nigel Farage is the man to deliver it – just as, erm, one assumes Tugendhat was last summer. With Berry's defection, Reform gain a former MP with several years of ex-ministerial experience at a junior level – as Minister of State for the Northern Powerhouse (remember that?) – and over a decade in the Commons. They get someone with considerable organisational experience, brio, and a suitably firm line on the culture wars. But it is hard to get too excited about Berry's switch. He is not a political heavyweight. His loss from the Commons was not mourned by many. And his post-parliamentary career has suggested little more than a desperate desire to remain relevant. In Berry's defence, he has never been anything less than enthusiastic. He set up the party's Northern Research Group to support MPs in the North and Midlands – areas that deserted the party at the last election. He was vocal in trying to bridge the gap between the party leadership and its members, and in trying to reclaim a reputation for being the party of lower taxes that we never should have lost. He swung back and forth on Rishi Sunak, depending on how much attention the former Prime Minister paid to him. But like so many, he will be forever devalued by his association with Truss. Let me be plain. Berry's career has been a combination of shameless careerism with an unfortunate tendency to throw his toys out of the pram. Berry is one of those ex-Tory MPs – like fellow defector Andrea Jenkyns – who never got over the fact that the leaders they put so much stock in – Johnson, the 49-Day Queen, or both – were hopeless at the job. He rated his political nous rather more than quite a few of his colleagues did; his knighthood was the latest depressing sign that the honours system is becoming a joke. His defection will generate a little heat, and no light. I am far from being Kemi Badenoch's biggest fan. But the Tory leader and myself would both agree that Berry's defection is no great loss. If the choice was between having Berry sniping from the sidelines and descending into ever-greater irrelevance while still nominally a Conservative, or sniping from the sidelines and descending into ever-greater irrelevance as a Farage fanboy, the latter is much easier to handle. When Reform have been taking Tory defectors, they have not been taking our best. Berry's defection is the latest sign that they are a joke party, populated by loudmouths and attention-seekers. That they are leading in the polls is no accident. Berry is right to suggest that Britain is broken, that the public are fed up, and that radical change is needed. But someone so associated with the last fourteen years – and so tarnished by his indelible association with our worst ever Prime Minister – is hardly the man to deliver it. Until you have current and former Tory MPs of genuine stature going teal – and I won't embarrass them here by naming names – it is hard to take Farage's motley crew seriously as a vehicle for fixing the country. Like Farage himself, Berry is yesterday's man.
