Top story: Town halls to charge more ‘wherever we can’

Hello, I’m Warren Murray with your first sample of the news on a Thursday morning.



Councils in England are being slammed by costs, with 95% planning to increase council tax this year and impose charges “wherever we can” – parking, waste disposal, burial, home care, meals on wheels – as well as cutting services such as libraries and parks.

Northamptonshire council has effectively declared bankruptcy and that could be the “tip of the iceberg”, warns the Local Government Information Unit thinktank, which says four-fifths of councils are uncertain about their finances. Many local authorities plan to increase council tax by 6%, the maximum allowed. “Councils are on the edge,” said Jonathan Carr-West, the unit’s CEO, adding that they can only hold services together by “raising council tax, increasing charging and draining their reserves”. The survey found adult social care is the greatest long-term pressure on council budgets, while children’s social services are suffering from rising numbers having to be taken into care.

Separately, the government’s secret Brexit analysis suggests a no-deal scenario would blow an £80bn hole in the public finances. MPs who have seen the documents say they show every region of the UK will be affected negatively whatever the deal.

Stonehenge tunnel unveiled – Plans for the £1.6bn Stonehenge tunnel go on public display today, with the underground bypass slightly lengthened to just under two miles. That will preserve burial mounds and avoid disturbing a winter solstice view of the setting sun. Highways England says taking the A303 underground will reconnect the two halves of Stonehenge, and construction would start in 2021, with completion in 2025.

English Heritage, the National Trust and Historic England support the concept but have expressed concern that will also relink several ancient byways, which might encourage 4x4 traffic and even camping near the site. The Stonehenge Alliance of archaeologists and environmental campaigners has called the plan an “international scandal” while the archaeological charity Rescue said: “Our government proposes to spend £1.6bn trashing a world heritage site.”

‘Girls in fetish gear’ at conference – Gambling companies have failed very badly to read the room, going ahead with a major exhibition in London that featured promotional women parading in lingerie and performing pole-dancing shows. The ICE Totally Gaming event at London’s Excel centre comes after the President’s Club scandal that led to the winding-up of the charity behind it. Labour’s Tom Watson said: “You’d expect even the most unreconstructed businesses to realise they should stop treating women as objects – but it seems this industry is ignorant enough not to clean up its act.”

Meanwhile a leaked survey has revealed that one in five workers at Westminster claims to have witnessed or been affected by sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. A full report is due to be published today.

Gay marriage overturned – There has been a big backward step for equality in the British territory of Bermuda, where the Queen’s viceroy has signed the repeal of same-sex marriage legislation. “Governor [John] Rankin and the Bermuda parliament have shamefully made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to repeal marriage equality,” said Ty Cobb, director of Human Rights Campaign Global. Marriage for same-sex couples has now been replaced by registered domestic partnerships after an outcry from the island’s social conservatives. “I feel enormously disappointed,” said 64-year-old married gay Bermudian Joe Gibbons. “This is not equality, and the British government has obviously just said, ‘This is not our fight.’”

Slow start to 2018 home sales – New buyer inquiries fell for a 10th successive month in January in the UK while the number of houses newly listed by estate agents slipped back to the record lows of mid-2017. In its survey of estate agents, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) says house prices are expected to stay roughly flat in the coming three months. Prices have been edging upwards at a national level according to the survey, but have fallen in London, the south-east, East Anglia and the north-east. Prices have gone up most strongly in the north-west of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. More than half of homes valued over £500,000 are being sold below asking price, according to the Rics survey.

Health news in brief – We’ve done housing so let’s cover that other staple news round this morning:

> Anti-obesity programmes in schools may not be the answer to the problem. About 1,400 children in West Midlands schools were put through a year of extra physical activity sessions and healthy cooking classes but there was no improvement. University of Birmingham researcher Miranda Pallan says it shows “schools can’t do it alone” and government measures are needed.



> Livestock raised for food in the US are dosed with five times as much antibiotic medicine as farm animals in the UK, new data has shown. There are fears a post-Brexit Britain will come under severe pressure to allow such imports (remember chlorinated chicken?).



> Premature babies do better if they are partly cared for by their parents in the maternity ward. A international study they put on more weight, their parents were less stressed, and once home the mothers were more likely to breastfeed.



> A substance called asparagine – found in asparagus and many other foods – has been found to accelerate the spread of breast cancer within the body. Scientists are researching ways to suppress its action because it would be impractical to eliminate from our diet and is produced naturally by the body anyway.



Lunchtime read: The road to inbox zero

Unanswered emails were the bane of Moya Sarner’s life. “Since I started working, I’ve never felt in control of my emails, and that is how I ended up with 16,516 unread ones.”

But how to get on top of that pile? Delete without prejudice? Reply immediately? Archive? Follow Moya through a month-long quest to clear her inbox.

Sport

Mauricio Pochettino is sick and tired of being told he needs to win a trophy with Tottenham but the route to glory in the FA Cup appears to have opened up after a routine dismissal of Newport County. Maro Itoje has put his friendship with Alun Wyn Jones on ice with the England youngster’s duel with his Lions second-row partner potentially holding the key to victory in the Six Nations match against Wales at Twickenham.

The Tote, a name familiar to generations of racegoers over the past 90 years, will be replaced by Britbet from mid-July on the vast majority of British tracks. And the case for NBA rookie Ben Simmons to be picked for the All-Star team has gone all the way to the Australian federal parliament with an MP making an impassioned plea for his compatriot’s inclusion.

Business

Asian stock markets were mixed as this week’s financial turmoil continued to reverberate and Wall Street recorded losses. The Nikkei 225 rose 0.3%, South Korea’s Kospi jumped 0.7%, the Hang Seng rose 0.6% and the Shanghai Composite went down 0.6% while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was flat.

The pound has been trading at $1.387 and €1.132 overnight.

The papers

The Daily Mail leads this morning with that “Thumping rise in council tax” and says average bills will to go up £100. The Express is on that story too – “Council tax bills to soar” – as is the Times, which focuses on the £100m budget black hole in Surrey, “Britain’s richest county”.

The Mirror has a plea from James Bulger’s father: “Name him before he claims another victim” – referring to Jon Venables, one of the boy’s killers, who now lives under a secret identity and has been given 40 months’ jail for child abuse pictures. The Sun talks to James’s mother and says of Venables: “He’s got away with it”.

The Guardian leads with the £80bn cost of a hard Brexit that is revealed in secret government papers. The Telegraph has a picture of George Soros and tells how the “man who broke the Bank of England” is backing a secret plot to thwart Brexit – here’s our version of that one. The i takes up the “plight of children who dream of Britain” – the young migrants stranded on the French side of the Channel. The FT explains why the UK stock market is trailing global rivals.

For more news: www.theguardian.com

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