Latest news with #SomersetCouncil
BBC News
2 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Community hub to open in former council office in Williton
Three publicly owned buildings will be sold off following the completed refurbishment of a former council Somerset House, on Killick Way in Williton, was the joint headquarters of Somerset West and Taunton Council until the council's abolition in April taking over the building, Somerset Council had been carrying out refurbishment work to allow the village library and other services to operate out of the site, the Local Democracy Reporting Service the building due to reopen on 25 June, the council said it would sell off the former library, children's centre and Beckett House, with the proceeds being used to fund front-line services. Since Somerset Council officially took over, no in-person meetings had been held at West Somerset House – with all meetings of its planning committee west taking place in Taunton and being decision to remodel the building was taken by the council in March Federica Smith-Roberts, the lead member for communities, housing and culture said: "By bringing the library, customer access point and other services together under one roof, we're creating a hub where people can access vital services and get support."The ground floor of the revamped West Somerset House will comprise the library, registration service and children's addition to selling off the former library building and children's centre, the council also intended to dispose of Beckett House on Bridge head of property Simon Lewis said the council's ongoing financial emergency meant it was not in the public interest for these surplus assets to be council has declined to state how much it expects to raise from the sale of these three buildings, citing commercial sensitivity.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
B3191 Cleeve Hill closure U-turn demanded by residents
More than 1,000 people have signed a letter demanding a council reverses its decision to permanently close a coastal B3191 in Watchet, Somerset, was hit with a permanent traffic regulation order in May, after it was found to be too unstable to allow vehicles through due to coastal James Wright said the closure was "hurting people" and coastal communities needed to be listened cliff-side road, known locally as Cleeve Hill, remains accessible to pedestrians and cyclists and Somerset Council said it was committed to finding new ways of funding a solution. The road had been temporarily closed to traffic since January Wright said 1,152 residents had signed his letter opposing the road being shut permanently. He added: "Blue Anchor and Watchet are both difficult to reach places... and local connectivity is so important."The permanent closure meant the council lost the responsibility to keep that road open. They wouldn't have had to find an alternative. "We're hoping the council keep the temporary closure... so they have a duty to review it. We hope they listen to the people and keep the road as it is."The council said the permanent order could be reversed if needed, adding it was "committed to exploring all potential sources of funding and is continuing to lobby for transport investment in the area". A spokesperson said: "Detailed inspections following January 2023 revealed further movement was inevitable and it will be impossible to safely reopen the road to vehicles without major intervention such as creation of an alternative alignment for the road and cliff protection and stabilisation measures at Cleeve Hill. "The council has completed cliff protection works at nearby Blue Anchor in order to ensure that an alternative route remains available for traffic to access businesses and destinations along the B3191."
BBC News
5 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Top tips on how stay safe at festivals this summer
People heading to Glastonbury and other festivals are being reminded to remain aware of health risks so they can enjoy events kicks off the festival season in two weeks - but ongoing risks around measles, sexually transmitted diseases and illegal drugs remain."Most risks can be avoided by taking simple steps to help protect yourself, remembering to keep yourself cool and avoid excess alcohol can help keep you safe during periods of hot weather," said Alison Bell, acting director of public health for Somerset authority have worked with the UK Health Security Agency to put together five tips on staying safe at festivals this year: Get your MMR Measles is currently circulating across the country and has high numbers in the South West and include a high fever, sore red watery eyes and a blotchy red-brown rash. It is particularly easy to catch when in close contact with others, such as in with symptoms is advised to stay at home and contact their GP or NHS remains the best way to protect yourself and others around you. Prepare for the weather While the weather cannot be predicted - everyone is hoping for sun when they head to a the UKHSA say it is important to pack for all to take wellies, waterproofs and warm layers in case the weather takes a turn or gets cold at - remember to pack a refillable water bottle, sun hat and sun cream and avoid excessive alcohol consumption in hot a look-out for signs of heat-related harm in yourself, your friends, and other people around the festival and seek help if you are struggling. Practice safe sex Certain sexually transmitted diseases are currently on the rise and the UKHSA is reminding everyone to practice safe sex and get regularly is free and confidential, and you should get tested even if you are not showing any symptoms."Condoms are the best defence, but if you didn't use one the last time you had sex with a new or casual partner, get tested to detect any potential infections early and prevent passing them on to others," said Dr Alasdair Wood, consultant in health protection at UKHSA South West. Be aware of ticks Regularly check clothing and skin for ticks and brush them off outdoors if they have not a tick has burrowed into your skin - it must be removed as soon as possible using a tick tool or remove a tick, grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull upwards slowly and use of insect repellents such as DEET can repel ticks and prevent them from climbing onto clothing or attaching to can cause illnesses such as Lyme disease if not removed properly. Avoid illegal substances The message from most festivals is not to bring or use illegal substances to the enforcement laws are as applicable on the festival site as anywhere else in the country and you risk being arrested and evicted from the site if found with are reminded if they do ignore that advice and become ill or experience unusual effects from any substances taken, to seek immediate help from the medical or welfare services on site who can provide help and use – using more than one drug at a time – intensifies the effects of the drugs and makes them more dangerous. Mixing alcohol alongside other drugs is one of the most common forms of polydrug use and can seriously increase the strength and impact of those substances, increasing the chances of a potentially fatal chemical reaction.
New Statesman
7 days ago
- Business
- New Statesman
Local government is adopting AI, but careful thoughtis needed
Photo byArtificial intelligence is already being widely used across local government to deliver services. These involve everything from customer service chatbots to writing paperwork to preventing damp. Central government is currently piloting a set of AI tools for local government. Other councils are working with commercial AI providers. Somerset Council was one of the first local governments in the UK to join Microsoft's Early Access Program for AI. Somerset started with Copilot, a generative AI chatbot, and has now moved on to Magic Notes, which turns meeting recordings into a first draft of paperwork and forms and is now used by around half of social care teams in the UK as a way to improve the quality of paperwork while reducing the time spent on it by 50 per cent. Somerset Council says this has allowed frontline staff to free up time to be spent on 'person-centred work' and improved their work-life balance. AI has great potential to improve democratic processes and decision-making and from there flows improved services for citizens, according to Alexander Iosad, director, government innovation policy at the Tony Blair Institute. AI can be used to engage with citizens and get data from them to accelerate the back-office process and to improve decision making, he explains. One problem of the traditional process for policymaking is having 'more data than you can turn into actionable insights', Iosad says. AI is not just able to process all of that information, and to do it faster so the information is still current or in real time, but is able to cross-reference it across services. However, there are still significant hurdles to integrating AI tools into council services and realising its potential. A survey of county councils and unitary councils by the County Councils Network (CCN) found that while 85 per cent were using AI (and the remaining 15 per cent were considering using it), local governments felt that a lack of staff capacity, funding and training were holding them back. The Tony Blair Institute report says councils 'lack the confidence, capabilities and infrastructure required to unleash this innovation'. The Tony Blair Institute worked with a local council in the UK and estimated that AI could be applied to 26 per cent of tasks, resulting in a saving of one million work hours, or £30m in financial costs, each year. Scaled up nationally, this would mean around £8bn in cost savings. Organisations of all types, but particularly government and public services, are looking to AI to save them money, but less than half of those surveyed by the CCN said AI had resulted in savings so far. This compared to over 90 per cent reporting improved staff productivity and three quarters that said it improved services. Transformation of services usually requires significant investment in order to realise improvements to the quality of services and their savings. Big digital projects have historically been difficult to deliver and to realise their benefits, particularly in the public sector. In 2021, Birmingham City Council invested £19m in a new IT system with the aim of reducing costs, but spending on getting the system up and running has since spiralled to £90m. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe There are also questions over some of the ways AI has already been deployed. Several councils have bought and use AI systems to identify families in need of support and young people who may be at risk of becoming involved in gangs, while others use them to highlight potential council tax fraud. These have been mired in allegations of bias, consent and lack of transparency. In Rotterdam, an algorithm was used to assign a fraud risk score to residents based on data from 12,707 previous investigations. But in practice, women, young people, parents and migrants got higher scores and were more often flagged for investigation. Subjective assessments by caseworkers, such as whether a person was 'flexible' enough to deal with the challenges they were facing, were incorporated into the data, giving it the sheen of neutrality. The city suspended its use in 2021 following an external ethics review. In 2015, Hackney Council paid for an Early Help Profiling System provided by the company Xantura that used data collected by the council to identify families that were 'at risk' – the families were never informed their data would be used in this way. These challenges mean the governance, transparency and privacy policies around AI in local government need to be robust. The Local Government Association says 'councils must also be mindful of the risks and challenges associated with safe and responsible AI adoption', listing strong data foundations, data protection, bias and privacy as key issues to address. The Tony Blair Institute advises councillors to champion AI innovation, but to de-risk it by looking to tools that are already in use, collaborating, using existing standards and training the workforce to improve AI literacy. 'The biggest challenge is data,' says Iosad. 'It's getting the right data and then setting up the systems allowing you to work with data effectively.' Where the UK is arguably weakest, he says, is having data sets collected by government that can be linked and used together in order to really personalise services and to make effective decisions at local, regional and national levels. 'The blueprint for modern digital government has a very encouraging line on this, not just recognising that there is a challenge, but mostly setting out the ambition that every data set that is used in the public sector has an API,' Iosad says. He adds this will also put in place the safeguards required for data. What is clear is that AI tools and technologies will be taken and used by local government in the way that new technologies have been in the past. Some of the risks and challenges around technical literacy, training, choosing good suppliers and managing those contracts are familiar. However, the challenges of transparency, scrutiny and identifying bias in complex systems are more novel and require local government not just to look for an easy answer but the best solution to create a better place and life for residents. Related
BBC News
12-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
‘My family's facing homelessness as Hinkley Point C workers snap up houses'
A mother of three says she has no option but to sit and wait for the bailiffs to come after being served with a no-fault eviction months ago, the Somerset family of five was informed that their landlord intended to sell the home they had lived in for the past six nowhere else to go, they are left waiting to see what happens next, which could be bailiffs at the three miles from the family's home in Stogursey is Hinkley Point C. Mum Megan says "all" her neighbours are construction workers at the new nuclear power station. Some local residents feel the 15,000 workers are snapping up properties and pushing up prices."I'm just sitting and waiting and panicking," said Megan. "I keep calling the council and requesting call backs - nobody contacts me."Hinkley Point C said it was working on plans to expand the amount of local accommodation it has to "limit the impact on the local accommodation market".Andrew Cockcroft, head of social impact at Hinkley Point C, said: "We are very, very conscious of some of the impacts of such a large project on the community."We are working on plans with Somerset Council to expand the amount of local accommodation we have, which will limit the impact on the local accommodation market." But this is of little help to Megan, who said despite being assigned a council housing officer who acknowledged her family was homeless, no further action has been taken since."They said not to leave the property, wait until court action is taken when a bailiff will come and they will temporarily house us which would be a hostel or B&B," she said."I've been back and forth to the GP because I just run on antidepressants because I'm scared. What's going to happen to my children? How we're going to cope in a hostel? "What we're supposed to do when the bailiffs arrive? Where am I supposed to put the contents of a three-bedroom house?" she added. Megan's eldest child, six-year-old Tilly, has been diagnosed with learning difficulties. Megan works full-time and her husband, Kieran, gave up his job to become Tilly's registered and her husband have applied for four private rented houses in the last two said: "They tend to see 'carer' and think: why would we choose a family who needs government help, when you've got a three-bedroom house and that's three HPC [Hinkley Point C] workers they could house who are on £120k a year? We don't get a look in."Megan is worried any temporary accommodation the council offers them could be up to a 25-minute drive away from her older children's school and that sharing a bedroom would be "impossible". After researching the issue on social media, Megan said she heard from dozens of other mums in a similar position."It's absolutely terrifying, it made everything very real, to know there are already families like us in hostels in Bridgwater," she said."You don't ever think it's actually going to get to that point." Bridgwater is the nearest town to Hinkley Point, where lots of the construction workers are living. Some are in purpose-built campus accommodation, others are in shared private letting agent Andrew Lee said it was very "busy" with lots of people said: "You could just come in the morning and you've got 25 enquiries per property - this has been for the last few years. "But as we have known throughout the country, the housing stock and the letting stock is low."He also said Hinkley Point C had increased demand for private rentals."All these extra people, extra workforce, they create demand. Prices go up. So, unfortunately, you are going to have all these people and local people chasing the properties, and it's trying to get a balance," Mr Lee said. Megan and her family are among a growing number at risk of homelessness needing help from the local Wakefield is a Lib Dem councillor and lead member for housing and homelessness at Somerset Council. "We will advise them to stay in their home for as long as possible because if we have to move them out, and if they do go into accommodation provided by the council, it may not be where they want to be."It may not be close to their work or schools or other support that they need and that makes it very difficult," she said."We have had the the hike in interest rates and we've had all those problems."The living wage in Somerset is lower than the national average and it means they can't afford some of the mortgages that other people might be able to afford. "There is pressure and we are doing our best to address it, but it does need government action."Somerset Council said Hinkley Point C was required to fund mitigation measures to "support the creation of bed spaces in Somerset". It said so far that had created 3,800 additional bed spaces for Somerset residents in addition to the accommodation built for Hinkley workers. Leigh Redman, the Labour councillor on Somerset Council for Bridgwater Central and North, has previously described the private rental housing market as "broken".He said that "EDF has brought some fantastic things to the area" which has been paid for by mitigation money from the firm, but that it had come with downsides."Bridgwater and surrounding towns and villages are suffering with the private rented sector being under capacity," he added.
