Stoke-on-Trent councillors back calls for larger homes
The plans for 117 council flats, houses and bungalows on the former Brookhouse Green Primary School site in Bentilee were approved in April, but 10 houses and four bungalows will be below the space standard.During the April meeting, Jellyman, who chaired the planning committee at the time, described the scheme as "incredibly poor" and an "embarrassment" to the council.In proposing his motion to full council, he said he thought it was time to consider adopting the NDSS.Jellyman said: "We had this flagship social housing scheme that isn't actually flagship at all – it's too small. "We thought this was wrong, particularly from an administration that said they were going to invest well into social housing."The NDSS, established in 2015, sets different minimum internal floor areas for different properties depending on the number of bedrooms and floors.Jellyman acknowledged there could be issues with applying the NDSS to heritage building conversions but he said these could be taken into account by the cabinet.Councillor Andy Platt, the current chair of the planning committee, agreed that the Bentilee scheme failed to meet space standards, although he noted that the plans had started under the previous administration.He said: "I do think national space standards are important. The national standards have got smaller and smaller over the years, but a lot of the council properties in the city meet the original ones from the 1940s, which were huge."Platt pointed out that some of the Bentilee properties had missed the standard by just one square metre. But Conservative councillor Dave Evans said that even one square metre could make a difference to young parents with a pram.This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.
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Glasgow Times
29 minutes ago
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Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Crazy golf trips, circus tickets and countless Amazon parcels: How cash-strapped councils are handing out gift cards and fun days to asylum seekers using taxpayer money
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The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
We should consider introducing same prison sentence as France on hiring illegal workers here… and bring back Rwanda
ILLEGAL immigrants across Europe now see the UK as a soft touch. They are willing to risk their lives to cross the Channel from safe countries like France, thanks to Keir Starmer's weak approach to fighting illegal migration. 3 3 3 I saw this with my own eyes a couple of weeks ago. I went to an asylum hotel in central London, populated by illegal immigrants who had mainly come here on small boats. In a small compound next to the hotel I found dozens of bikes, many of which had Deliveroo, Just Eat or Uber Eats containers. A shopkeeper over the road confirmed that the residents of the hotel routinely worked on these bikes — despite having no right to work here. The Sun has done great work to expose this illegal working as well. People-smugglers now openly advertise the fact it's easy to work illegally in the UK. This illegal working is also putting women and girls at risk if a late-night delivery is made by an undocumented and unknown illegal immigrant. Afghan males, for example, are 22 times more likely to be sex offenders than average. This is exactly what happened to a 32-year-old pregnant woman in Glasgow. Her attacker, Muhammad Faizan Khan, brutally sexually assaulted her in her own home, causing her pregnancy to be lost. Khan was using someone else's Deliveroo account that he had paid to use. By allowing accounts to be rented without proper checks, companies such as Deliveroo are making the UK a magnet for illegal immigrants and putting women and girls at risk. This madness has to stop. First, the Home Office must urgently end illegal working based at the hotels they run which taxpayers are funding. Action by Immigration Enforcement and the police against illegal working must also be ramped up. The likes of Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just East must face massive fines for what they are enabling. Allowing illegal immigrants to work on their platforms has become part of the business model. They are complicit. Log-ins to work on the platforms are openly bought and sold — a practice called 'substitution', where one person can work in place of another. Deliveroo and others claim driver substitution is fine but it is allowing illegal immigrants and unverified people to make deliveries without proper checks. Those running companies which enable illegal immigrants to work on their platforms, or do not have systems to identify substitutes and verify they are in the UK legally, would be deterred by facing prison. In France, employers can get up to five years in jail for hiring an illegal worker. We should now consider introducing that same prison sentence here. The Government must also stop illegal arrivals in the first place. Keir Starmer claimed last year that he would 'smash the gangs'. This has laughably failed. Illegal channel crossings have surged by over 40 per cent since Starmer was elected, and this year so far has been the worst for it in history. Sir Keir's recent deal with France — if it ever starts — will only see six per cent of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel removed. What we need is a removals deterrent where every illegal arrival is removed without interference by judges. An approach like this worked in Australia about 12 years ago. And this is exactly what the last Government's Rwanda plan would have done. It was ready to go last July and was handed to Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on a plate. And what did they do? They cancelled it days before it was due to start. We need to end illegal working and we need to bring back Rwanda. Then illegal immigrants will know there is no point in trying to come here in the first place.
