First hour News Review: Mayor steals public dockside land to sell it off to his speculator chums â The Great Bordeaux Quay Robbery: with former Bristol mayor George Ferguson â Lockdown eases further on Saturday â will it work?
Known Crooked Outsourcing firms Serco and Deloitte get private Covid contracts â Serco boss defends its work on setting up NHS test-and-trace system â Rupert Soames says criticism largely motivated by ideology amid calls for £45.8m contract to be cancelled â The boss of the outsourcing firm Serco has defended its âextraordinaryâ work in setting up the NHS coronavirus test-and-trace system, amid calls for the £45.8m contract to be cancelled. Critics of Sercoâs involvement have pointed to its mixed record on public works, the use of subcontractors and a blunder last month in which it inadvertently revealed the email addresses of contract tracers recruited to assist in the UK governmentâs âtest, track and traceâ strategy. Rupert Soames, the companyâs chief executive, acknowledged the scheme was not perfect but said criticism was largely motivated by ideological opposition to private companies running state services⦠Labour slams ministers over Deloitte virus testing deal â Pressure increases on government over amount of data given to health and local authorities â The opposition Labour party has attacked ministers for awarding one of the key coronavirus testing contracts without obliging the private provider to share the results of tests with public health bodies in England. The revelation about the deal with consultancy Deloitte, which set up the system that conducts the vast majority of tests in England, has added to the criticism of the governmentâs approach after it ordered the city of Leicester into lockdown. Leicesterâs mayor said he only knew a few days before the lockdown was ordered on Monday how bad the situation was in his city as the government had only just begun sharing national data from dozens of drive-through testing sites and home kits provided by the Deloitte system⦠âWe are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds if not millions to a private company to help with testing for coronavirus, and it appears no one commissioning that service thought to make sure they share the results with health authorities and councils when they find a positive case so they could do something with that data,â Ms Creasy told the FTâ¦
Bristol City Council faces âcatastrophicâ £82million blackhole due to coronavirus â âIt is urgent for government to engage in conversations with local authoritiesâ Coronavirus could leave Bristol City Council with a âcatastrophicâ £82million blackhole that would threaten frontline services, civic chiefs have warned. Head of paid service Mike Jackson said the authorityâs vital income, such as from parking charges, council tax and business rates, will be severely damaged by the pandemic and that â without a bailout from Whitehall â the council would be forced to tear up its budget and plunder its reserves to stay afloat. He told the councilâs overview and scrutiny management board: âWe really need to make sure the Government understands the impact on our income streams. âThe Government does understand the additional costs associated with responding to the crisis but I really donât think they have grasped that for some authorities the loss of income streams is significantly greater than the direct cost associated with responding to the crisisâ¦
EXCLUSIVE: Selling Our City Off To Speculators In Secret â Mayorâs secret planning deal with private speculator for public land â Interview with former Bristol Mayor, George Ferguson: place making and a good balance of mixed uses; Bristol Arena project; Mayor Marvinâs cult-like regime and secrecy over proposed development on Bordeaux Quay in Bristol Harbour; Western Harbour development group, âpliable friends of former Merchant Venturers master John Savage and mayor Marvin Reesâ appointed to oversee development; Mayoral system problems; more secrecy over Temple Island development. PMQs local government and procurement fraud. Intu shopping centres gone bust.
Hotel with more than 150 rooms planned for Bristolâs Bordeaux Quay and Millennium Square â The land is owned by Bristol City Council, with London-based property company Bell Hammer set to be the developer of the proposed scheme. AHMM says the Waterfront Place site is the only one in the area which remains empty since the site regeneration, listing Watershed, Bordeaux Quay, WeTheCurious, Bristol Lab and Arnolfini as the buildings retained from the industrial era that have been reinvented. It adds the development, planned where there is a âvoid in the townscape,â would âunify and bind together the collection of substantial buildings around the Meeting of the Waters: Bordeaux Quay, Narrow Quay+ Arnolfini, M-Shed, Wapping Wharf and LLoydsâ. For these reasons, it says, the scheme can ârightfully provide a central building of Bristol, not just as part of the dockside at a location to where ships from around the world have travelled, but to express the contemporary strength of the place, combining work and leisure, in this location at the heart of the modern cityâ. A development agreement has been signed and the applicant is currently in pre-application discussions with the council.
December 2011 â former Merchant Venturer master John Savageâs 2011 vision book for the West of England âCity Regionâ. 2050: High in Hope â Since its conception, The West of England Initiative has recognised the need for a long term plan for the Bristol City region. In 2011, The Initiative published 2050: High in Hope â A Business Vision for the West of England City-Region. â Inspired by the influential 1909 Plan of Chicago, which provided the city with a direction of development, 2050: High in Hope is a visual and written interpretation of a business vision for the West of England city-region. It is a strategic master plan.
September 2019 â Mr Rees said the councilâs plans to build houses in a redesigned Cumberland Basin was driven by the cityâs housing crisis and climate emergency. âWe do have to take advantage of city centre locations because that reduces car dependency,â he said. â Council chiefs also want to take the opportunity to free up land in the area, which they have rechristened Western Harbour, for up to 2,500 new homes for Bristol, as the city faces a huge housing and homelessness crisis. The initial feasibility studies came up with 10 possible options, but they were shortlisted down to three by the Mayorâs Office, and then shared with the public in an early engagement exercise. This is not the same as a consultation process, which is a formalised procedure seeking the publicâs views on a specific proposal in advance of a formal decision by the mayor or cabinet.
Boris Johnsonâs âBuild Build Buildâ speech â how is this different from FDRâs New Deal? â Boris Johnsonâs £5BILLION promise: PM puts forward radical ânew dealâ for COVID recovery â BORIS JOHNSON has promised a £5billion ânew dealâ to kick start economic recovery and get Britain back to work after the coronavirus crisis. In a major speech, the Prime Minister has set out plans for an âinfrastructure revolutionâ to modernise hospitals, schools, roads, prisons, the courts, high streets and town centres. And he urged the country to pull together to âbuild, build, buildâ its way out of the economic downturn caused by weeks of lockdown. âIf we deliver this plan together, then we will together build our way back to health. We will not just bounce back, we will bounce forward â stronger and better and more united than ever before,â the Prime Minister said. Mr Johnson travelled to Dudley, in the West Midlands, to make his keynote speech on the UKâs future, deep in the so-called âBlue Wallâ territory captured from Labour at last yearâs general electionâ¦
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