The planning application for the proposed erection of two storey McDonalds restaurant with drive-thru, car parking, landscaping, play place and associated works on land at Morrisons Car Park Barons Cross Road Leominster in Herefordshire have today been withdrawn.

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THE COUNTY OF HEREFORDSHIRE DISTRICT COUNCIL hereby gives notice that the above application is WITHDRAWN. 

Application P181448/F

Statement from Herefordshire Council strongly rejects the Prime Minister’s comments that ‘too many care homes didn't really follow the procedures in the way that they could have’. Read the full statement from Herefordshire Council in response to the Prime Minister’s recent comments regarding care homes.

Herefordshire Council strongly rejects the Prime Minister’s comments that ‘too many care homes didn't really follow the procedures in the way that they could have’. Cabinet Member for Adults & Wellbeing, Councillor Pauline Crockett, said:

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“Herefordshire has so far experienced the sad loss of 60 people in care homes across the county. Our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones, and we continue to do all we can to prevent more people and families from suffering. Care homes and care providers in Herefordshire have responded with the highest level of bravery and professionalism throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and continue to provide the highest quality of care under difficult circumstances. By no means are deaths in care homes a reflection of the quality of care provided by a hard working care sector.

“Herefordshire Council continues to work closely with care homes and providers to provide high volumes of PPE to help keep residents safe and to protect staff. Support for the care sector from government was slow and the guidance offered was confusing and changing almost daily. Shifting the blame this way towards local care providers shows poor judgement. In my view, the response from all of our care providers, including care homes has been nothing short of amazing.”

The club confirmed the news in a statement explaining that both are asymptomatic but, as part of the procedures introduced by Premiership Rugby as part of Stage Two of the Return to Training Protocols, they will be re-tested. 

Both are currently self-isolating at home.

Stage Two of the Return to Training Protocols require clubs to provide a written declaration to Premiership Rugby that they have met a number of key criteria alongside a full risk assessment informing the operational policy for their training facility. These include:

• All players and support staff must undertake an Education Module and sign a formal “opt in” process for moving to Stage 2.
• All players and designated support staff undergoing weekly COVID-19 testing, and maintaining the high standards of hygiene introduced at training facilities.
• All clubs in conjunction with Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Football Union undertaking a rugby risk assessment to support the mitigation of risk in training.
• The continuation of a daily medical screening for players and support staff, which involves the completion of a symptom checklist and temperature check before entering the training facility.
• A contact tracing protocol which will be supported by GPS data and the videoing of training sessions.
• The provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) appropriate for the setting.

Hereford's New Foodie

🇵🇱 Uwaga! Ogłaszamy konkurs! Do wygrania przepyszne specjały kuchni Polska Street Food o wartości £25 !🇵🇱

We have teamed up with our Polish friends at Hereford's latest restaurant and takeaway Polska Street Food

(we've had many dishes already and can assure you the food is lush)🥙🌮🍕🍟🌭🌯🥖🍔

To be in with a chance of winning a superb selection of food from their fantastic menu all you have to do is follow these 3 simple steps...

👉 LIKE & SHARE Polska Street Food & Hereford Voice 
👉 Comment, telling us which dishes you would like to try
👉 Tag a friend who would enjoy some new style food 😜

A lucky winner will be selected at random on Tues 14 July 
(Entrants MUST at least 16 years of age)

☎️ 01432381200 - 'Just Eat' or visit their website HERE

Good Luck 👍
Competition / Giveaway T&C's

#HerefordVoice #hvcomps #Hereford #hfdcomps

Thousands of homeowners across the UK are set to receive vouchers of up to £5,000 for energy-saving home improvements as part of Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s proposed £2bn grant scheme in England.

The Green Homes Grant, announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer today, will give hundreds of thousands of homeowners vouchers of up to £5,000 for energy-saving home improvements, a move which the Treasury hopes will help to support more than 100,000 jobs in the industry.

The Chancellor also revealed that the poorest homeowners could receive up to £10,000 as part of the plans.

Rishi Sunak set out a £2bn grant scheme in England for projects such as insulation as part of a wider £3bn plan to cut carbon emissions.

Under the Green Homes Grant, the government will pay at least two-thirds of the cost of home improvements that save energy, the Treasury said.

For example, a homeowner of a semi-detached or end-of-terrace house could install cavity wall and floor insulation for about £4,000 – the homeowner would pay £1,320 while the government would contribute £2,680.

The scheme will launch in September, with online applications for recommended energy efficiency measures, along with details of accredited local suppliers. Once one of these suppliers has provided a quote and the work is approved, the voucher is issued.

WIN a Sunday Roast for 2 People at The Den Hereford.

"It's what Sundays are all about" 

We have teamed up with our lovely friends at The Den to celebrate their reopening this coming weekend. 

To be in with a chance of winning a mouthwatering Sunday roast for two people on Sunday 12th July between 12-4pm (table has already been reserved) pop over to our Facebook page..

👉 LIKE & SHARE The Den & Hereford Voice FB Pages
👉 Leave a comment telling us your favourite veg or meat
👉 Tag a friend who would love a roast 😜

A lucky winner will be selected at random on Wed 8th July 
(Entrants MUST at least 16 years of age and available Sunday 12th July 2020)

Good Luck 👍
Competition / Giveaway T&C's 

#HerefordVoice #hvcomps #Hereford #hfdcomps

At approximately 11.30pm on Sunday night, Ledbury Fire Station attended a tree fire in #Eastnor near Eastnor Castle.

The tree was well alight when the crews arrived and unfortunately it was not possible to extinguish quickly. 

Great efforts were made by the crew from Ledbury and also by a crew from Upton Upon Severn Fire Station. The crews ran out hose approximately 120metres and used an appliance to shuttle water to and from the incident all through the night. Foam was also used to blanket the tree in great efforts to save it.

This once magnificent tree in question is a very well known and admired tree called #TheWhiteLeavedOak. We understand that this tree is visited by people from all over the world and plays a large part in the rituals of Druids. 

The White Leaved Oak is thought to be around 500 years old and is featured on many websites and books.

The cause of the fire is unknown, However please be careful when visiting the countryside, especially when visiting somewhere that is as sacred or precious to many people.

Tesco will be relaxing some of their social distancing measures from tomorrow.

The store will be removing the one way system in the aisles and all arrow floor stickers will be removed with some being replaced with occasional 'Keep Your Distance' stickers.

Tesco feel now is the time to improve the ease of shop across their stores and also remove the need for staff to what are sometimes, difficult conversations with customers. 

We understand that other measures will also be relaxed similar to that now in place at the Ledbury store, where door staff will no longer be restricting customer numbers entering the store, customers will also need to clean their own shopping trolleys.

B&Q have also removed the need to have a trolley when entering their store in Hereford and customers are also required to clean their own trolley, if one is required. Sanitisers and cloths will still be provided.

Herefordshire Council have made a u-turn from last week when they reintroduced parking charges only offering a free 30 minute window as we reported in this article however, today there is some better news for local businesses as the council have now completely lifted the charges altogether for the best part of a month to help businesses recover from the Covid-19 lockdown.

Parking charges lifted temporarily in town and city car parks to support business

To support local business during this particularly difficult time and encourage people to visit their high street rather than shop on-line, Herefordshire Council is offering free parking on street and in council car parks* from Saturday 27 June until Friday 24 July 2020.

Cllr John Harrington, Cabinet member for infrastructure and transport explains:

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“After listening to the concerns expressed by parish and town councils, by ward members and particularly those from businesses and Hereford BID, I’ve taken the decision to reintroduce free parking for four weeks, to help give retailers and the hospitality trade a much needed boost at this critical time.

“We hope to be able to follow this with a scheme later in the year with incentives to encourage people to stay for longer for less money, encouraging them to spend more time supporting our retail and hospitality outlets, particularly our independent businesses.

“Like every other council across the country we have parking charges for several good reasons. Charges help us to encourage people to travel in a different way, by walking or cycling for example. For those that want to or must drive, varying those charges allows us to encourage shoppers and other visitors to park outside the urban centres by charging them less for staying longer, whilst those that want to park right in the centres are expected to pay more. Charges keep spaces turning over especially in the City and town centres.

“Ideally we would love people to really think about travelling a different way in town, especially when you consider for example that over 50% of the residents of Hereford travel less than two miles to shop or commute to work. We have all been encouraged by the boost in walking and cycling lockdown brought and we intend to support those ambitions in any way we can whilst recognising some folks must travel in by car.      

“Herefordshire Council has made a commitment to support local business, encourage people to visit our historic city and market towns, and buy locally. After years of austerity and with challenging financial times ahead we cannot afford to provide free parking forever as we use this income to subsidise public transport and school buses. So, in the longer term we will be looking at other ways to encourage people to safely visit our wonderful city and historic market towns. There is an opportunity to look to do things in a different way while supporting local business.”

Resident parking and other restrictions will be enforced.

*Excludes Friar St Military Club car park, at their request

Hereford FC is delighted to announce that popular local restaurant The Beefy Boys, will be the home short sponsor for the upcoming 2020/21 season.

Lee Symonds of The Beefy Boys said, 

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“We were delighted with how our first season’s sponsorship with Hereford FC went so we are delighted to be the home short sponsors for the upcoming season.”

Hereford FC General Manager, James Watts said: “

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It is fantastic news that we have secured The Beefy Boys for the upcoming season with Hereford FC. We will continue to look at ways to progress the partnership this season as we know a lot of our supporters are regular visitors to the restaurant”.

Local people from Herefordshire and the rest of the UK can now travel freely to and from Wales as the lockdown measures that were introduced in March are lifted from today 6th July 2020.

The Welsh government had imposed a "stay local" requirement which advised people to remain within five miles of their home.

Visitor attractions can open and it will pave the way for the tourism sector to begin re-opening from July 11, providing conditions allow.

Families will be reunited as people from two households are now able to form one extended household.

Herefordshire Council have fast-tracked a 7 day order to close the Old Bridge to northbound traffic by converting the road to a pedestrian and cyclist only route. Buses will still be able to use the route. 

These decisions have been made behind closed doors as it's a seven day order there is no public consultation required, is this transparent enough❓

There are many concerns by local businesses about a huge potential loss of trade. We understand that traders were notified on June 20 with the consultation ending on June 23

People living south of Hereford will be most inconvenienced by these changes, If you needed to drive into the city centre your main route would be to drive to the Steels roundabout northbound to then come back southbound to gain access into Broad St and King St. Motorists could attempt to turn right into St. Nicholas St but that junction at best only allows one or two vehicles to cross before the lights change.

Additional cycles routes and reduced speed limits are welcome but are these changes going to cause more traffic mayhem particularly if the Greyfriars bridge becomes blocked?

The measures in Hereford are shown on the attached map and comprise:
- 20mph zones
- On street cycle lanes
- Footway widening
- Extension to the city centre timed closure
- Closure of the old Wye Bridge to all but buses and cycles

The measures are temporary and although they have a maximum period of 18 months, they will be monitored and retained only for as long as necessary. If a measure is felt to be suitable for retention in the long term, a fully TRO process with consultation will be required.

I have not fished the lake for probably nearly 30 years. I have started fishing again. Are there any fish left in them?

Harveys and Benson for Beds enter into Administration.

Harveys goes into administration with 240 jobs lost and branches under threat. 

Bensons for Beds, which is owned by Harveys' owners Blue Group, will see around 50 of its outlets close, leaving between 150 and 175 open.

Blue Group formally appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrator on Tuesday.

The move leaves the future of Harveys hanging in the balance, with PwC looking for buyers for the business and its three manufacturing plants. Harveys is not currently taking any new orders but will honour existing ones, according to its website

Harvey’s have had financial trouble for the past 12 months and have been seeking a new buyer. Most stores were due to re-open today, with staff spending the past two days cleaning showrooms.

The two furniture retailers operate from 269 stores across the UK and employs 2700 in total, 700 of which are directly employed at Harvey’s.

Both Bensons for Beds and Harvey’s also had a change of hands last November, when former parent company Blue Group was sold off by Steinhoff to Alteri Investors for an undisclosed sum.

Alteri Investors, which owns Blue Group, has decided to restructure the business so that Bensons will become a standalone business. Bensons is the second largest bed retailer in the UK behind Dreams in terms of market share.

Military charity support move to new distribution hub 

An essential role for Herefordshire Council during the Covid-19 response has been to provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to staff carrying out critical business.

Since the start of the pandemic, the council has been sourcing, buying, distributing and storing PPE stock for non-NHS settings across the county. Many care providers have had difficulty accessing PPE due to high national demand, so the council has also provided free PPE to these sites. Since early April the Council has provided care providers with over 6 million pieces of PPE including over 1.2 million surgical face masks.

As we prepare to live with the long-term impact of Covid-19, the council has created a new Herefordshire PPE hub with support from Operation RE:ACT, Team Rubicon UK’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Nigel Jones, the team leader for RE-ACT and his amazing team of volunteers gave up their own time to help the council pack, load and relocate around 25 pallets of vital PPE to a new, secure location.

Alistair Neill, Herefordshire Council’s Chief Executive, said:

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“Sourcing and distributing PPE remains of the highest priority to ensure the safety of council and care provider as they carry out their essential duties. We set up a temporary distribution hub for PPE in the first week of lockdown, and our new PPE hub will enable us to continue our supply in the longer term. I would like to thank the Operation RE:ACT team who gave up their time to assist with moving PPE stock to our new, secure centre.”

Herefordshire Council and Operation RE:ACT were also assisted by:

• Eagle Plant Hire Hereford, who provided the Council free use of a self-drive Manitou fork lift; this was expertly driven by Cllr Jim Kenyon.
• DLT Training Ltd Bridgend in South Wales, who provided the Council with a large van and volunteer driver;
• Total Produce Foodservice Hereford who provided the Council with a large van and another volunteer driver;
• Herefordshire Council’s library service who filled up with PPE and drove the library van between the old and new PPE sites.

We do not publish national news articles very often and would prefer to keep our network for Herefordshire however, because of all the hard work already done in trying to contain the virus and the dedication from the NHS and other key workers, we felt compelled to post this article because if people continue to ignore the guidelines we may end up with a second wave.

We have all seen the pictures of thousands of people flocking to the beaches this week across the UK during this period of hot weather. Bournemouth beach was a classic example and a major incident was declared yesterday after thousands ignored health advice, with widespread anti-social behaviour, gridlocked roads and huge crowds on the hottest day of the year.

Bournemouth East MP Tobias Elwood said 500,000 visitors were in Dorset yesterday – almost as many people as living in the county.

Maybe Bournemouth council should take some responsibility here for not putting social distancing measures in place...But people should equally be responsible for their own actions.

This was Bournemouth Beach yesterday

Photo courtesy of The Telegraph - Bournemouth Beach

We should look at other countries to see how they are creating safer beach environments for the public. 

This is a brilliant example of how they should apply social distancing at Jesolo Beach in Italy

Photo courtesy os Skyline Webcams - Jesolo Beach Italy

View the LIVE Jesolo Beach webcam here

It can't be that difficult surely.. your thoughts?

In the governments final daily briefing broadcast yesterday chief Medical Office Chris Whitty reminds us..

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"The advice to stay at 2m if you can do, still remains. It is a 1m plus rule and it is with mitigating conditions which people must take seriously"

Boris Johnson announced social distancing rules will be eased, allowing pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers to open from 4 July in England.

The prime minister said people should remain two metres apart where possible, but that a "one metre plus" rule would follow.

A very small fraction of our population are temperamentally drawn to what seems like a noble cause and are dangerously susceptible and vulnerable to ideological possession. For these people, mostly with Far Left leanings, they’ve convinced themselves that any oppression, real or imagined, is the direct result of an oppressive patriarchy which they’re intent upon destroying.

And so, once these slavish ideologues settle upon their latest noble cause their hierarchy create an ideology, they hoover up their temperamentally drawn followers to the chosen noble cause and they take control of all media language that demands that any objection to the cause is heresy, racist and are the thoughts of bigoted cruel and insensitives who have an inability to display empathy and are in some way are cruel or even evil.

Rather like the era of Joseph Goebells where you identify a threat, terrify the people and convince the masses that they’re being threatened, they begin to purge the noise of opposition and the relevance of any dissenters, thus creating two groups. One which is good and one which is bad. Because of noble causes that the Far Left are drawn toward, ideologies are formed and as is always the case with the Far Left, they become tyrannical.

And noble causes are good. There’s nothing wrong with a noble cause. The problem with them is the ideology that accompanies them. Whether it’s Women Equal Pay, Brexit, Transgender issues, Climate Change and Black Lives Matter, every single one of them evolves into tyranny to exclude any voices that disagree with the narrative that everything is the fault of an oppressive patriarchy.

When do we know when an ideology has become tyrannical and its slavish followers have become irrationally possessed by their ideas? When we are all expected to do and say things that publicly demonstrate just how ashamed we all are of ourselves, our gender, our ethnicity,sexuality and what we all really think but dare not say because we don’t want to be labelled in some negative way.