Category: News Story

STORY

Lincolnshire County Council and North Kesteven District Council have formally issued judicial review proceedings over ministerial approval for what would become the UK’s largest solar farm.

The Springwell Solar Farm, approved by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in April, would cover around 1,280 hectares of land near Scopwick. The councils argue that the application did not properly assess effects on rural villages and landscapes, or adequately consider the cumulative impact of developments in Lincolnshire.

A judge will now decide whether there are arguable grounds for the case to proceed beyond the permission stage. North Kesteven’s leader said the councils were acting on nine points and that, although the action would have a cost, failing to challenge the decision was not considered to be in residents’ interests.

STORY

Rugby Borough Council has been found to have serious failings by the Regulator of Social Housing after around 4,000 tenancies were potentially overcharged rent.

The regulator said the council had applied a general rent-setting approach which failed to use the correct property valuations as the basis for formula rent. When the correct valuations were applied, the overcharges were estimated at about £415,000.

The council said it had identified the historic issue through its own investigation and reported it to the regulator. It apologised to tenants, said further verification work was continuing and promised that where tenants had been overcharged it would put matters right.

STORY

The UK has accused Russia of resorting to escalation and intimidation because its war in Ukraine is failing, following another major wave of aerial attacks against Kyiv and other civilian areas.

James Kariuki, the UK Chargé d’Affaires to the UN, told the Security Council that Russia had launched one of its largest attacks on Kyiv since the start of the full-scale invasion, damaging residential buildings, schools, emergency service facilities, Government buildings and cultural institutions. He said Russian attacks had killed nearly 200 civilians and injured more than 1,500 others during May, making it likely to become the deadliest month for civilians in Ukraine since the early phase of the invasion.

Kariuki said Russia had deployed an Oreshnik nuclear-capable missile for the third time and for the first time in Kyiv Oblast, calling its use in an urban environment “brazen and reckless”. The UK also raised concern about reports that diplomatic sites in Kyiv had been hit, including UN premises and a residential complex housing the Albanian Ambassador, and criticised Moscow for warning diplomats to leave the city before threatening further strikes.

He told the Council that Russia was trying to project strength through mass attacks while presenting itself as the victim at the UN. Kariuki said new intelligence showed almost half a million Russian soldiers had been killed since the conflict began, while Ukraine continued to resist. He said an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire was essential, but warned that peace could not be achieved while Russia continued attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population.

STORY

Reform UK’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election is under renewed pressure after polling suggested Andy Burnham has moved into a narrow lead in a contest that had been expected to offer Nigel Farage’s party one of its strongest chances of taking a Labour seat.

A Survation poll for Election Data Ltd put Burnham on 43% and Reform candidate Robert Kenyon on 40%, with Restore Britain on 7%, the Liberal Democrats on 4%, the Greens on 3% and the Conservatives on 2%. Survation said the figures showed Burnham’s personal vote pulling Labour ahead in a constituency where Reform led Labour by 11 points on a generic Westminster voting intention question.

Kenyon’s campaign has been hit by a series of disclosures about previous online comments. The Guardian reported that he had criticised Brexit in 2016 as economically damaging and accused campaigners of having “peddled the nationalistic pish”, comments which sit awkwardly with Reform’s central political identity. The same report said previous posts had also raised questions about his views on Covid vaccines, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and interactions with far-right figures.

Carol Vorderman has also demanded an apology from Kenyon after reports linked him to a crude social media exchange about her. She described the comments as “disgusting” and said public online abuse should not be excused simply because it was posted before someone became a parliamentary candidate. Reform UK MP Danny Kruger acknowledged that the language was inappropriate, but argued that it should be seen in the context of comments made before Kenyon entered frontline politics.

Reform has continued to defend Kenyon, saying it fully backs him and has no plans to investigate the allegations. The party has argued that the posts were made before he entered politics and that he should not be judged as though he had spent years as a professional politician.

STORY

Stephen Lillie has been appointed as His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, succeeding Matthew Lodge. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said Lodge will move on secondment to another Whitehall department.

Lillie will take up the appointment in September 2026. He previously served as Director for Defence and International Security at the FCDO between 2022 and 2025, and was British High Commissioner in Nicosia from 2018 to 2022.

His earlier diplomatic career included postings as ambassador in Manila, consul-general in Guangzhou and commercial and economic counsellor in New Delhi. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1988 and has also worked on Asia-Pacific, Far Eastern, China-Hong Kong, European Union and Middle East policy.

STORY

Andy Burnham has stepped back from earlier calls to abolish the no recourse to public funds rule as scrutiny grows over his policy positions during the Makerfield by-election campaign. The rule prevents many people who move to the UK from accessing benefits or public housing before they are granted settled status.

Burnham had previously called for the policy to be abolished and had supported changes to give non-UK nationals facing homelessness at least a minimum safety net. His allies now say he supports an immigration system based on both control and compassion and broadly backs the direction of the Home Secretary’s proposed reforms, while wanting consultation on complex areas such as settled status rules.

The shift matters because the Makerfield contest is widely seen as a test of Labour’s future direction as well as a by-election. Burnham has presented his candidacy as a chance to change Labour if he returns to Westminster, while immigration remains a central political issue in Labour’s contest with Reform UK.

STORY

The Environment Agency has opened a consultation on its draft decision to grant a permit variation to Drax Power Limited in Yorkshire. The company has applied to change its environmental permit to incorporate carbon capture at its bioenergy plant near Selby.

The agency said it was currently minded to issue the variation after considering comments and evidence from two earlier public consultations. It said it could not find a reason to refuse the application at this stage, but had not made a final decision and would consider further responses before doing so.

The consultation will remain open until 24 June 2026. Drax wants to capture carbon dioxide produced during electricity generation and transport it by pipeline for permanent storage under the North Sea, making the permit decision an important part of the wider debate about bioenergy, carbon capture and the Government’s clean power strategy.

STORY

The UK Health Security Agency has warned that Salmonella cases in England have reached their highest level in a decade. New data showed cases rose slightly from 10,389 in 2024 to 10,406 in 2025, while Campylobacter cases remained high, falling only slightly from 70,392 to 69,394 over the same period.

UKHSA said both infections are usually caught through contaminated food, including poultry, meat, eggs, raw fruit or vegetables and unpasteurised milk products. The agency is urging the public to practise good food hygiene, particularly when preparing raw and cooked foods, and said young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems were at higher risk of serious illness.

The figures also showed listeriosis remained broadly stable, with 181 cases reported in England and Wales in 2025, compared with 179 in 2024. UKHSA said listeriosis could cause serious illness in older people, immunocompromised people and pregnant women, with pregnancy-associated cases continuing to pose a risk of stillbirth or miscarriage.

STORY

The Intellectual Property Office has issued new guidance designed to help consumers avoid counterfeit goods when buying second-hand fashion online. The Government said figures released today showed one in four buyers of second-hand clothing had unknowingly purchased a counterfeit item online in the past year.

The guidance, developed with support from Vinted, forms part of wider work between Government, online marketplaces and enforcement bodies to tackle counterfeit sellers. Officials said one in three second-hand clothing buyers admitted they did not check authenticity before making a purchase, while nearly 60% of those who bought fakes had experienced negative consequences such as poor quality, refund disputes or rapid deterioration.

The Government said younger shoppers were particularly exposed, with almost half of 18 to 24-year-olds having encountered counterfeit designer goods on resale platforms. The announcement follows police and Trading Standards raids in which more than £4 million worth of luxury designer goods were seized.

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British food and farming businesses are being told to prepare for changes under the planned UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, with ministers expecting the new arrangements to take effect from mid-2027. The agreement is intended to reduce routine paperwork and checks on agrifood products moving between Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the European Union.

The Government has updated guidance for businesses on how to prepare for the SPS agreement, which covers areas including animal and plant products, food and feed safety, organics, pesticides, marketing standards and food labelling. The deal is expected to ease the movement of meat, dairy, fish, eggs and other regulated products, though not all technical details have yet been finalised.

The issue is politically significant because it forms part of Keir Starmer’s wider attempt to reset relations with the EU while staying outside the single market and customs union. Supporters of closer alignment argue that reducing border friction will help exporters and food producers, while critics are likely to scrutinise the extent of any continuing regulatory alignment with Brussels.