And there you go: Lab capacity. In August. Yes, more people are now going for tests. But the lab issues were already there. theguardian.com/world/2020/sep…
Baffling why the two lab programmes are not run as one. But also: pillar one labs - which were asked to pick up pillar two slack - don’t just process Covid tests. They do the other NHS stuff too. And they don’t have enough reagent; my understanding is due to NHS supply chain.
Asked a contact earlier what would solve that. They said the DHSC could change NHS procurement rules at any point. Upshot, according to them, is pillar two - private sector - can get its hands on reagent but pillar one really constrained by not being able to.
Two lab systems:
Why?
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The Teesside taxpayer is now on the hook for £4m+ after the mayor/Teesworks tried to ransom the area’s biggest private sector employer - and then conclusively lost at the high court
This is far too long a saga to relay in a thread but, in brief:
PD Ports runs the port next to Teesworks and is the statutory harbour authority for the Tees. In March 2021, the development corporation overseen by Ben Houchen launched legal action against it over access
It sought a declaration that PD had *no* rights at all - and that bit is important - over its land, the former steelworks at Redcar, which is now part of the Teesside freeport
A brief thread on what it’s like to read a South Tees Development Corporation board paper. Approx one third of next week’s agenda is devoted to the declarations of interest procedure, which as we know is rigorously adhered to 1/
There then follows a report about landfill tax exemptions, much of which is about “onerous” environment agency rule changes now making it harder to dump toxic waste /2
There then follows an update from the chief exec, which I have to confess baffled me. Lots of things that looked like they’d been copy and pasted from a previous update 3/
Will do that mega thread soon, not forgotten my somewhat hasty promise
…but thought it was worth, in the first instance, laying out some of the key findings, particularly given some people commenting on it don’t appear to have actually read it.
On great rail cancellations, a reminder that the expansion of Piccadilly, intended to alleviate the chronic northern rail bottleneck in the centre of Manc, was promised a decade ago, then put on ice, messed about with and actually only officially cancelled a few months ago.
The version of Northern Powerhouse Rail eventually signed off by govt two years ago, meanwhile, was a wildly scaled back version of what northern leaders had spent years drawing up (with the backing of George Osborne), because govt didn’t want to spend the £
PD Ports, which owns the port next door to Teesworks - and is also in the Teesside freeport - accused Houchen of ‘inaccurate’ public statements re a case that has been rumbling on for two years on.ft.com/3N0VGOK
The development corporation sued PD over access in 2021. In court papers at the time, PD said it had been directly told by a corporation board member (an allegation that is denied) that the goal was to force a distressed sale: drive down the port’s value, buy it cheap and flip it
The development corporation did then try to buy the port - to incorporate it into Teesworks - when it was put on the market later that year, but owners Brookfield pulled the sale
Ok so, here goes. My (long-researched) attempt to explain why so many allegations are flying about in relation to Ben Houchen, the former steelworks in Redcar and, by extension, the Teesside freeport
(It is not completist, because as anyone who has followed this knows, that would be impossible to attempt in six articles let alone one.)
This has taken many many months and I want to be the first to recognise the huge and forensic body of work Private Eye have done on it. Private Eye is not a comic - it’s actually the reason I first wanted to be a journalist.