27/03/2017 BBC Wales Today

Welcome to Wales Today.

Our headlines tonight:

Four health boards ?146 million in the red.

Welsh Government says no more bailouts.

The mother of Khalid Masood -

who lives in Carmarthenshire says - she is numbed by his actions.

And flames burning at the back door -

more than 100 grassfires across the country since the weekend.

Good evening.

Health boards in Wales have been told there will be no blank

cheque to bail them out.

Four health boards here seeing their overspend

treble in the past year has prompted the health secretary

to tell them to do more to live within their means.

Health accounts for almost half of the Welsh government's ?15 billion

annual budget.

Here's our political editor Nick Servini.

We knew the NHS in Wales was under intense pressure.

We now know what the impact has been on the budget of some

of our largest health boards.

The deficit forecast for Hywel Dda University Health Board,

which covers West Wales, is ?50 million.

In ABMU which covers a Bridgend and Swansea, it is 35 million.

Cardiff and Vale, 31 million.

And Betsi Cadwaladr, which covers North Wales,

?30 million, for the financial year just coming to an end.

Overall that is around three times higher than the previous year.

Smiles all round as the Health Secretary meets staff

at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff - one of the health

boards that has failed to balance the books.

As a result, the message was a serious one -

there will be no bailout.

Every health board itself, the independant members should be

challenging and looking at the financial plans that

are coming forward because we cannot have a position that the health

service gets an additional sum of money at great expense

to the rest of public funding in the rest of Wales and we do not

deliver a properly acceptable performance and also financial

performance as well.

The director of nursing at ABMU catches up after the weekend

at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.

This is part of ABMU, where the deterioration has

been particularly stark, going from a break even position

to a ?35 million overspend.

A figure that is enough to run the entire health board

for nearly a fortnight.

It has responded to the problems by focusing on recruitment to cut

down on the cost of taking on agency staff.

If you are using premium rate agency, undoubtedly that

will have a drain on the financial resource, however it is really

important that we utilise and keep the staff we have got

and keep our ongoing recruitment programmes and actually get more

staff to work for us in the health board, and we have seen that

over the last few years.

Up until this point, the Welsh Government has had

a we are all in this together partnership approach,

however the hard-hitting response from ministers,

calling the finances and acceptable, is a reflection of frustration felt

at very senior levels of the Welsh Government in the way

some of the hospitals are being run.

From the health board's perspective they have the big job now in trying

to introduce savings in the next year without effecting services.

The think tank The Health Foundation analysed a potential black

hole in the Welsh NHS in a report last year.

We have been going since around 2010 with this need to make

continual savings every year, so the low hanging fruit,

as it were, would have been taken and we need a real system look

at how we can work together as an NHS and as a combined

health service to really release these savings.

At a time of rising demand these figures reflect the ever-growing

problem for health bosses and Government ministers

of coping with the spiralling costs in the NHS.

The mother of the Westminster attacker Khaled Masood,

who lives in Carmarthenshire, says she's shocked, saddened

and numbed by his actions.

Janet Ajao released a statement earlier.

It's five days since her son killed four people

before being shot dead.

Sachin Krishnan reports.

SIRENS

Within 24 hours of the attack in Westminster,

officers were at Janet Ajao's home in the small Carmarthenshire

village of Trelech.

Hers was a number of properties searched across the UK as part

of the extensive investigation.

Tonight Janet Ajao, who it is believed had not been

in contact with her son for some time, released a statement.

In it she said she was deeply shocked, saddened and numbed

by the actions of Khalid Masood and she had shed many tears

for the people caught up in this horrendous incident.

She added she wanted to make clear she does not condone his actions,

nor support the believes he held that led him to committing

this atrocity.

Janet Ajao thank her friends, family and the wider

community for their support.

The Metropolitan Police, who are leading the investigation,

have stressed there is no threat to the area.

The remains of Sandie Bowen,

who was murdered by her husband 20 years ago,

were found tied to a porcelain sink at the bottom of Wentwood

reservoir last month, the inquest has heard.

The reservoir near Newport hadn't been drained for 100 years.

Michael Bowen was jailed for her murder in 1998, but never

revealed where he hid her body.

The clean-up of the Wylfa and Trawsfynydd nuclear sites

in North Wales has been halted because of the rising

cost of the project.

The ?6 billion contract to decommission 12 redundant nuclear

power sites in the UK was awarded to the Cavendish Fluor

Partnership in 2014.

But the UK government's scrapped the deal and will investigate

its "flawed" tendering process.

Grassfires are still burning in every corner

of the country tonight.

After a weekend where firefighters were called to more than 100 grass

fires across Wales - most of them deliberate -

the emergency services are warning that

lives are being put in danger.

Caroline Evans reports.

Flames creeping ever closer to houses in the

area of Swansea.

The latest in a series of grass fires across the country

since the beginning of the weekend.

This was Penrhys Mountain in the Rhondda at the height

of the blaze on Saturday night.

Dramatic and dangerous.

The flames leaping, powered by the strong east wind.

As you can see from the scorch marks, a relatively small fire,

but with the windy conditions, spread quite quickly

across the mountainside.

As you can see behind us there.

Up to the roadway, a lot of spectators there,

so we had to go back with the roadway but more

worryingly, burned down towards the side of the mountain

towards the houses and going right close to the backs

of some of the houses.

Eileen is part of a team who rescues animals,

but there aren't any to rescue from scene like this.

The animals don't survive.

Now is the start breeding season, so we have got baby animals,

maybe undercover, which aren't going to survive those kinds

of fires, the adults may be run away from the scene,

but if they are injured, they are not found,

they just crawl off and die and that is heartbreaking.

We can use the Polaris on a lot of this.

The fire services adopting new approaches and as Craig

explained to me, this vehicle is not only helping them get water

to the scene, it also means they can fight fire with fire.

So we have drip torches.

This contains a mixture of petrol and diesel and we actually put it

together and we have along with coming out with a burning torch

on the and that we can walk along and actually light fires.

We have a tool box of tools, we have water, a leaf blower,

with no flames with a leaf blower.

And exacerbating the problem is the sheer amount of dry bracken

now covering the hillside.

Harris is involved in a project looking at what can be done

from an environmental perspective.

By reintroducing traditional management like this,

in the long term, you will get more varied habitat, the seed

bank will build back up again on the hills,

because at the moment, it is getting devastated by these fires.

And the problem isn't going away.

Near Llangollen, a blaze which has been extinguished reignited.

And in Swansea, it could be hours before these claims

are brought under control.

Delays along North Wales' main road, the A55,

are being kept to a minimum, the Welsh government

has insisted tonight.

Yesterday there were reports of drivers queueing for hours

to travel just a few miles.

Some businesses say they've lost thousands of pounds.

Here's Roger Pinney.

Well, at least today, the traffic was moving, most of the time.

There were hold-ups at the rush hours

and mid-afternoon.

This is BBC Radio Wales.

The A55 continues to crawl eastbound from Dwygyfylchi at 16A

all the way through towards Old Colywn.

It's a bit slow heading west toward Old Colwyn on the 55 as well.

That's what listeners to BBC Wales heard yesterday.

If anything, the situation on the ground was worse.

There were reports some drivers were stuck in the queue several hours.

It was Mothering Sunday

and at the Mulberry Pub and restaurant on Conwy Marina,

they were booked out.

Debbie Taylor, the manager there, says the traffic

disrupted staff, customers and cost the business thousands.

A lot of our tables didn't turn up

or were ringing to say they were going to be

at least an hour, an hour and a half late, which set us back.

We had a lot of empty tables for a time because most

of our tables were booked between one and half two.

Staff, same with staff, coming in to do service,

they were late, stuck in the traffic,

so it kind of effected trade.

Traffic Wales, the roads arm of Welsh Government,

says work is going on around the clock to clear

the delays by Easter.

At Conwy tunnels, its planned improvements, but further east

of Colwyn Bay, there's what's described a semi-emergency

work on a bridge.

Delays are unavoidable, it seems.

The A55 was just like a parking lot.

It was just solid, it didn't move.

We do understand that these important maintenance

works have to take place.

It is better that they are done in the winter rather

than the summer months.

I think we've probably just got to put up with it and hope that

it finishes as possible.

No one would disagree with that.

For now, though, it's a case of just grin and bear it.

It's been confirmed a 12 millimetre long millipede,

described as the Mardy Monster, is a new species.

Experts say the brown bug - which was found crawling under

stones at the old colliery site in the Rhondda - is completely

new to science and is distinct from other millipedes.

But it's not known how it came to be in South Wales.

Let's get the weather - Sue Charles has tonight's forecast.

After a warm weekend and a dry start to the week

it is turning more unsettled.

Dry at times, still some brightness but becoming blustery.

Overnight, it remains dry with clear spells and light winds.

Turning chilly in rural areas with cloud thickening in the early

hours and fog forming, so not quite as cold

as recent nights.

Tomorrow we see some changes with low cloud and fog

in mid and North Wales, that will slowly clear to leave

a mix of sunny spells and showers.

And across the UK, still dry and bright for much of eastern

England and Scotland but a weak front edging in from the south

and west bringing blustery showers across Northern Ireland,

Wales and south-west England, with top temperatures tomorrow nine

Celsius in north-east Scotland and 17 in the milder air

in south-east England.

Tomorrow afternoon for Wales, showers, heavy in places,

still some sunny spells and more so later on with the winds

turning south-westerly, quite gusty along the coast

with highs of 12 Celsius.

Tomorrow night, thicker cloud, rain pushing in from the west

and a noticeably milder night with mist and fog forming overnight.

This big area of low pressure in the Atlantic

will influence our weather from the mid-week onwards.

More rain pushing inward with stronger winds as well.

Wednesday, some dry spells, often cloudy, with showers

and longer spells or rain pushing in from the west.

Heaviest on western-facing hills.

Gusty winds bringing in mild air from the south.

Temperatures still above average on Wednesday.

It will turn more unsettled from midweek onwards.

Thursday is a mix of sunshine and showers, often quite windy

and still relatively mild but it will be frost-free by night.

That's Wales Today.

Thank you for watching - from all of us on the

programme goodnight