Latest news with #DepartmentforEnvironment
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Cumbrian man recognised for work on King's Birthday Honours list
A Cumbrian man has been recognised for his services to neurodiversity in The King's Birthday Honours list. Robert Walker, from Penrith, has received the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his support. He is the Neurodiversity Network Founder within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. READ MORE: Family set up free heart screening weekend in memory of son On receiving the reward, Robert said: "I'm very proud to be recognised for services to neurodiversity in Defra. "To me, this award is about the brilliant people in the Neurodiversity Network. They have worked together to make Defra more inclusive for neurodivergent colleagues, helping them feel more empowered, understood, and supported. "Since founding the network, I have seen it grow into a vibrant community of over 1,100 members. It's been a privilege to lead its evolution, whilst working alongside many passionate, brave individuals, to make change happen. "Thank you to everyone who has championed this work so far. I truly believe the best is still to come." The network was set up in 2008 to cultivate and integrate a workplace culture that embraces and celebrates all neuro-differences, with the aim of creating a collaborative work environment where individuals can thrive. Robert has worked for Defra for over 33 years, first joining the Animal and Plant Health Agency.
Agriland
12-06-2025
- Health
- Agriland
Defra: Badger TB vaccinations up 24% across England in 2024
In a significant drive to end the UK badger cull, tuberculosis (TB) vaccinations administered to badgers in England increased by almost a quarter to reach a record high in 2024, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Defra said that 4,110 badgers were given the TB vaccine in England last year, an increase of 1,000 vaccinations in comparison to 2023. That is up 24% on vaccinations in 2023. The department added that a new Badger Vaccination Field Force is set to come into force next year in attempts to increase badger vaccination and drive down TB rates. The latest figures published by the department suggest there was a significant reduction in the culling of badgers in 2024 (down 12% compared to 2023), That brings the numbers down to half the amount culled during the peak of the policy. However, the department added that bovine TB (bTB) remains of the most challenging and costly animal diseases across the UK. According to Defra, bTB has led to the compulsory slaughtering of over 278,000 cattle and the culling of 230,000 badgers since 2013, costing taxpayers £100 million yearly. Positive outlook Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Daniel Zeichner said; ''Bovine tuberculosis has devastated British farmers and wildlife for far too long. 'It has placed dreadful hardship and stress on farmers who continue to suffer the loss of valued herds and has taken a terrible toll on our badger populations. 'We promised a comprehensive TB eradication package, which will allow us to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament, and that this what we are delivering – with today's figures showing the clear progress we are making.' UK chief veterinary officer (CVO), Dr. Christine Middlemiss said; 'Bovine tuberculosis is one of the most difficult and prolonged animal disease challenges we face, causing devastation for farming communities. 'The disease is on a very positive downward trajectory following years of hard work.' On going herd breakdown across the UK. Source ibTB The government announced their plans for this TB eradication programme last August in an attempt to end the badger cull across England and Wales. Since then, a substantial badger population survey took place in February, the first in over a decade. More surveying is scheduled later this year. As well as this, the government is field-trialling cattle vaccination against TB in areas of England and Wales where there is a low incidence of bTB, with the next phase set to take place this summer
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
UK confirms case of bird flu in poultry in northern England
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain has detected a case of the H5N1 bird flu in poultry in West Yorkshire, northern England, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said on Wednesday. "All poultry on the premises will be humanely culled," a notice on the department's website said.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Winners and losers: Who got what in the spending review?
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced the government's Spending Review, which outlines the day-to-day budgets for departments over the next three years. The review will see NHS funding increase by 3% a year as well as more money for defence and housing. But other departments will see their budget cuts - including 1.7% at the Home Office, 2.7% at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and 6.9% at the Foreign Office. Here BBC correspondents analyse how some key services have fared and what the decisions may mean for you. The education sector will see one of the largest funding boosts. There is money for England's schools - especially crumbling ones - as well as for training and upskilling. Those key takeaways are nestled among rehashed pledges like expanding free school meals and introducing free breakfast clubs. The core schools budget will rise by £2bn in real terms by 2029, the Department for Education says, but much of it will go on those previous commitments. Falling pupil numbers means the department can make some savings, but that money still has to pay for an awful lot. The government is staring down the barrel of ever-growing demand for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support. The Spending Review does not seem to address deficits racked up by councils supporting those children, but it does appear to have set aside around £700m to reform the system. Leaky schools on the government's rebuilding programme - many still waiting for builders - will also be wondering if a £2.4bn annual cash injection will suffice. The 3% annual real-terms increase in NHS spending announced by the chancellor will look generous to departments with low or no increases. That number covers day-to-day spending by the NHS, for example staff pay and the costs of medicines and patients care. The overall annual increase for the Department of Health is 2.8% - one of the highest departmental increases in the Spending Review - and includes other areas like medicines regulation and pandemic preparedness, as well as the NHS. It is worth pointing out that the health service needs real-term spending growth every year to cope with an increasing and ageing population alongside rising bills for medicines and new treatments. The long-term trend for annual UK health spending in recent decades has been around 3.5%. Aside from day-to-day funding there is also capital spending, which covers investment in buildings and equipment. In real-terms there will be no increase each year. The big question is whether that will be enough to enable staff to deliver more operations and procedures. One of Labour's pledges is to ensure more than 90% of patients in England start treatment within 18 weeks of referral. Currently it is less than 60%. Hitting that target is a big ask with all the other claims on spending. "We are happy bunnies" is how someone from the Department for Transport (DfT) reacted to the Spending Review. That is despite the department seeing its annual day-to-day budget decrease by 5% - the largest cut in the review. That hit is mostly down to a big drop in the subsidies the government has been paying to train companies since the Covid-19 pandemic. Capital expenditure - meaning money for long-term infrastructure investment – on transport is actually going up by 3.9%, among the highest. Long-term investment in transport infrastructure is clearly central to Labour's plan for "national renewal", so a good chunk of the chancellor's speech was devoted to various upgrades. Some we already knew about, some we didn't. They include a new Liverpool to Manchester rail line, a freeze on the £3 cap on bus fares in England until March 2027 and more than £15.6bn on new trams, trains and buses outside of London. The Conservatives say a lot of this is just rehashing of old announcements with little detail attached. The government says it will lay some meat on the bones of these plans next week in its so-called "infrastructure week". Apart from bus fares, which is a continuation of an existing policy, Reeves' plans are in keeping with the general theme of this Spending Review: ambitious but ultimately not materialising for quite some time - until the 2030s at the earliest. Seven ways the Spending Review affects you What has the chancellor has announced? The key points Watch: Where the money is being spent You could almost hear the sigh of relief from social landlords when £39bn was announced for social and affordable housing. Many had warned that without significant funding and certainty, the government would never reach its target of building 1.5 million homes over this parliament. But they've called Wednesday's announcement a "game changer". Guaranteeing how much social landlords will receive in rents over the next 10 years means that housing associations can plan how much they have to invest in building. Housing charity Shelter called the investment a "watershed moment". The charity's head of policy, Charlie Trew, said the amount was 70% more than the previous government invested but it was still not enough to end homelessness for good. The charity called for a "clear target" for exactly how many social rent homes are planned. A 2.3% real terms yearly funding increase for policing in England and Wales is slightly better than senior officers had feared, but forces are already warning of "some ruthless prioritisation", arguing that most of the money will be "swallowed up" by police pay rises. The chancellor stressed that an increase of "more than £2bn" will mean government pledges on cutting crime and increasing police numbers can be kept. On immigration, there is more money for the Border Security Command, rising to £280m extra a year, with promises of new kit including an army of drones to improve surveillance. Reeves also promised that the use of hotels for asylum seekers would end by 2029. But with overall Home Office spending being cut by 1.7% a year, there are knotted eyebrows at how this is all going to add up and be achieved while managing a sizeable squeeze to the department's budget. Just recently we were told that offenders recalled to prison would be let out earlier due to overcrowding. We know the government is planning on building three more prisons to deal with the capacity crisis. The chancellor said £7bn would be spent on that building project - that's more than we were told earlier this month, when the figure stood at £4.7bn. The increase in funding - an extra 1.8% each year is the second highest rise in the review - indicates the severity and urgency of the problem. But building more prisons will take years. Also announced was £700m to reform the probation service - that cash will fund further recruitment on top of the 1,300 officers the government had already said it will employ this year. Several probation officers welcomed the investment but raised concerns about their "increasing workload" and when the new hires will be functional. The chancellor has made full use of the extra £113bn in capital spending available as a result of changing her own borrowing rules. There are some big ticket items on the list, most of which were announced before Wednesday, but these large projects will take many years before people will notice the difference. An extra £14.2bn for the new Sizewell C nuclear plant will be spent over at least a decade. The same is true of an extra £39bn for affordable and social housing. New announcements included £10bn for making homes more energy efficient and a new carbon capture project in Scotland. Connecting people and places is also growth-enhancing, but again the £16bn on transport links outside of London will not see quick returns. Business groups are largely supportive of these ambitious plans and the chancellor will hope it persuades firms to spend some of their own money to boost business investment, which has been chronically low. They may want to see the detail of the upcoming infrastructure and industrial strategies. There is jam in here but it will take time to spread and the results will take longer than tomorrow. The chancellor announced that funding for science - or research and development (R&D) - would increase to just over £22.6 billion per year by 2029/30. That funding pays for scientific research across government departments such as health, defence and energy. That overall figure also includes the budget for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) itself, which has been given £16bn per year and will use it to fund research for everything from drug development to materials science to AI – £2bn has been earmarked for the latter from 2026/27 to 2029/30. While the chancellor called this a "record", it is broadly in line with projected inflation. But the UK's Campaign for Science and Engineering said it was welcome confirmation that the R&D budget was being "protected in tough fiscal circumstances". Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said the UK continued to lag behind competitors in the G7 on research and innovation investment. "We should be looking to lead," he added in a statement. "We must also go further to attract and retain global talent. "The UK's sky-high upfront visa costs are an unnecessary deterrent at a time when our competitors are rolling out the welcome mat for the brightest minds."
The Irish Sun
11-06-2025
- Health
- The Irish Sun
Bird flu outbreak spreads to farm in new UK region as chickens set to be culled & study finds chilling virus feature
BIRD flu has been detected in an English farm, it's been announced. A case of the H5N1 bird flu was found in poultry in West Yorkshire. 3 A protection zone has been set up around the site Credit: Getty 3 The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "All poultry on the premises will be humanely culled." A 3km protection zone and 10km surveillance zone has been declared around the site near Ravensthorpe, Kirklees. It comes after a new animal study from the US Centres for Disease Control found that bird flu is capable of spreading through the air. In January, The government said all poultry on the infected site, in East Yorkshire, was humanely culled after a strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus was detected. It was the 16th outbreak of the HPAI H5N1 strain in kept birds in 2024, according to the Nation Farmers Union (NFU) In December, the Bird flu, or avian influenza, has killed millions of birds worldwide. Most read in Health The highly contagious bug is now spreading to mammals, raising fears it could trigger another pandemic through potential human-to-human transmission. In December, an animal sanctuary in Shelton, Washington, announced that twenty exotic cats, including a Bengal tiger, four cougars, a lynx and four bobcats, have died after contracting bird flu. What you need to know about Avian Influenza or Bird Flu So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 can spread between humans. But this increase in transmission gives the virus lots of opportunities to mutate - a process where a pathogen changes and can become more dangerous. Experts Scientists at Scripps Research in San Diego tested various genetic mutations on virus material from infected cattle. Bird flu: Could it be the next human pandemic? By Isabel Shaw, Health Reporter The H5N1 bird flu is running rampant in wildlife around the world and is now spreading in cows. In recent months, it infected people in Canada and the US leaving them severely unwell. This increase in transmission has given the virus lots of opportunities to mutate - a process where a pathogen changes and can become more dangerous. Scientists fear it's only a matter of time before one of these mutations makes it better at spreading among mammals - and Experts recently discovered that H5N1 is already just one mutation away from developing the ability to transmit person-to-person communication. So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 can spread between humans. But in the hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, the mortality rate is high. From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 have been reported worldwide from 23 countries, according to the World Health Organisation. This puts the case fatality rate at 52 per cent. Leading scientists have already warned an The prospect of a flu pandemic is alarming. Although scientists have pointed out that vaccines against many strains, They found that the Q226L mutation enhanced the virus's ability to attach to human-like cell receptors, giving bird flu the potential to behave like other human flu viruses. A recent case of bird flu suggests the virus might have already mutated to better spread among humans. The case, spotted this month in a hospitalised Louisiana man, is the first "severe" bird flu case in the US, amid its rapid spread through cows this year. Tests show the case involved a mutated version of H5N1 that helps it bind to human upper respiratory cells. This could make it easier to spread between people through coughing or sneezing, raising concerns the virus is adapting to infect humans more effectively. Bird flu viruses do not typically bind to a cell receptor in human upper airways, which helps explain why H5N1 rarely infects people or spreads between them. Bird flu is spread by close contact with an affected bird. This includes touching or petting an infected bird, touching droppings or bedding, or killing or preparing infected poultry for cooking. Read more on the Irish Sun However, bird flu cannot be caught through eating fully cooked poultry or eggs, even in areas with an outbreak of bird flu. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the human risk remains low, but urges countries to share information quickly for monitoring and preparedness as the virus spreads. 3 So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 can spread between humans Credit: Getty
