Annual Reports
MoJ: The Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI) has published its annual report for 2008-09, which sets out the advice that the Panel gave to Michael Wills, Minister of State for Justice, in 2008; and its recommendations to official consultations that are central to the re-use of public sector information (PSI) agenda.
Press release ~
HO: The increasing availability and potential harm of legal highs are one of the key priorities of the ACMD as set out in their recently published annual report. The ACMD undertook numerous reviews and gave advice on classification of; cannabis, MDMA (ecstasy), GBL, BZP and 24 various steroids.
Professor David Nutt, Chair of the ACMD, said: “One of our key priorities for the coming year will be investigating the increasing threat of legal highs. We have already started this work and recently gave the government advice on the synthetic cannabinoids known as SPICE”.
LBRO: LBRO has published its 2008/09 annual report, ‘demonstrating how local regulatory services delivered by councils across the UK are playing an increasingly vital role in supporting economic prosperity and protecting the public’.
Newswire - CMEC: Almost 794,000 children are benefiting as the Child Support Agency collected or arranged £1,136m in child maintenance across Great Britain over the past twelve months. Recent National Statistics show between July 2008 and June 2009, the CSA also continued to recover unpaid maintenance for children, with £157m in arrears collected in Great Britain in the last year.
Clients are seeing a more efficient service, with 84% of new applications being cleared within 12 weeks and the CSA answering 99% of telephone calls available to answer, with an average waiting time of 8 seconds. The CSA is now the responsibility of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which is developing an entirely new maintenance scheme to replace the two CSA schemes from 2011.
ScotGov: Scotland's Chief Statistician has published statistics from the Annual Population Survey (APS). The APS is a boosted annual version of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and is the official source of many labour market & lifelong learning indicators for Scotland and local authority areas in Scotland.
The publication provides an annual summary of the data covering key indicators such as employment rates, unemployment rates, rates of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and qualification breakdowns.
It is important to note that the APS data for 2008 covers the calendar year, January to December, so does not necessarily take into account the full extent of the economic downturn as Scotland officially entered recession in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Press release ~ Local Area Labour Markets in Scotland: Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2008 ~ Labour Market statistics within Scotland ~ About Official Statistics in Scotland
OS: Ordnance Survey has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2008-09.
DCSF: The DCSF has released the latest national & local authority level data on permanent and fixed period exclusions.
Press release ~ Figures ~ Podcast on figures ~ Podcast - Improving behaviour ~ Podcast -Parents supporting schools ~ Podcast - Young people roaming the streets ~ DCSF National Strategy: Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) ~ Teachernet - Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) ~ Teachernet - Exclision
EA: The Environment Agency has announced that successful prosecutions for waste crimes resulted in fines totalling £3m last year (The amount has doubled in the last 5 years). Its crackdown on waste crime – from flytipping to the illegal export of waste – has led to an increase in the severity of penalties handed down by the courts. This week the Agency secured its largest ever waste fine – £261,268 – after the soft drinks company Red Bull failed to meet its requirements to recover & recycle packaging waste.
In the last 12 months the Environment Agency has created a new National Environmental Crime Team made up of around 20 former-detectives, intelligence officers and forensics experts. The team was set up to target organised waste crime, and they are specialists in recovering the proceeds of crime.
In May a serial fly tipper was jailed for 2.5 years for repeatedly collecting household & business waste for a fee, and then dumping it around Bristol and the surrounding countryside. After the man was arrested, reports of fly tipping in & around Bristol decreased by over 30%.
Press release ~ EA – Fly-tipping ~ The Swat Fly-tipping Project ~ Defra - Local environmental quality: fly-tipping ~ Fly-tipping and the law - A guide for the public ~ National Fly-tipping Prevention Group (NFTPG)
STFC: The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has published its Annual Report and Accounts 2008-2009, which outlines a ‘year of significant scientific and technological achievement and selected highlights of the many economic and societal benefits resulting from STFC’s wide array of research disciplines’.
