27/03/2017 East Midlands Today

And now the news for the East Midlands.

First tonight, the head teacher of Derbyshire's biggest primary

school is blaming a funding shortage for his latest decision

to shed a third of his teaching assistant posts.

Staff at Hilton Primary describe it as a disaster but claim there's

Have a look on the board, it will help you.

Jill Radcliffe is one of 40 teaching assistants working

A budget shortfall of ?120,000 means that she and her colleagues have

been issued with redundancy notices to cut their number by 13.

Everyone is in the same boat and we just know that some of us

It's very upsetting, very, very upsetting.

For the past two years the county council has helped with contingency

funds and this year it is providing an extra ?100,000, but it is not

At the end of the day, our children deserve the same

opportunities as every other child in Derbyshire, yet receive ?800

less per pupil than your typical Derbyshire child.

In a statement, Derbyshire County Council said...

The elastic now is stretched as far as it's going to stretch and losing

these TAs is a disaster, it really is a disaster and it seems

utterly unfair that children will walk through our gate

in the morning and get less spent on them than any other

Staff who are losing their jobs will be notified in May

and compulsively redundancies cannot be ruled out.

Quentin Rayner, BBC East Midlands Today, Hilton.

School leaders have lobbied their local MP, Heather Wheeler,

in the hope she'll back their fight for extra funding.

So, earlier, I asked her what should be done

There are ongoing conversations with Derbyshire County Council.

This is all to do with why Hilton Primary, a primary pupil

there is worth ?3090 a head, whereas a primary pupil

somewhere else in Derbyshire is worth ?3900 a head,

and this is what Derbyshire County Council need to actually

And, of course, there is the proposed funding formula...

This school would benefit by about ?200,000 a year.

Now, Tory backbenchers are essentially threatening

putting this on hold, what do you make of this?

Certainly backbenchers who have small rural schools have found that

at certain times the funding formula will not help them.

In South Derbyshire, out of my 40 schools,

30 would improve or stay the same and ten would lose, so no

doubt I am going to be getting letters from those.

So it is quite right that the consultation period is only

just finished and Justine Greening needs to look at the whole formula.

The whole point of this was to make sure that schools like Hilton

actually increased in their funding and we had fair funding

OK, Heather Wheeler, thank you very much.

Leicestershire Police say they're reviewing one of their "risk

assessment" forms after it sparked a racism row.

The claim has come from music promoters who say other forces

are using the system to unfairly ban rappers and grime

It's fast tempo, it's high energy, it's the attitude,

it is the whole culture, it is fashion, it is

People in the industry have said that this genre of music

is being unfairly targeted by the police, who ask

for a specific risk assessment form to be filled in.

In my experience, when it's normally a night where it's

predominantly black people, without fail, the 696 form comes out

This is the form used by Leicestershire Police

which specifically asks questions about ethnicity of the audience.

Event organisers claim that is racist.

Well, Sarah is here, what have our police forces had

Well, we saw in my report Leicestershire Police

is using these forms and, here, it is clearly asking

Derbyshire Police don't use the forms and Nottinghamshire Police

told us they don't profile the ethnicity of attendees

when assessing the potential risk of an event.

But they look at rival factions such as local

The issue with this form really is that lots of these artists

are much more mainstream now and many of those artists have

played here in the East Midlands without any trouble at all.

So a form that links safety to ethnicity

Leicestershire Police have told us today this form

From today, Grantham's A department will open

The unit's been shut overnight from 6:30pm until 9am since last

August due to a lack of medical staff.

It'll now open from eight o'clock each morning

And its hours will be looked at again in May.

Meanwhile, campaigners say they want it fully reopened.

The police have named a man who died after he was stabbed

22-year-old Pedro Godinho was found seriously injured

on Canonsleigh Road yesterday morning but later died in hospital.

A 19-year-old man was arrested this morning on suspicion of murder.

A 21-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion

Plain-clothed police officers on bikes are to be used by one

East Midlands force to catch drivers who pass perilously close

This latest crackdown by Leicestershire Police

is in response to local cycling groups who claim too many motorists

are failing to follow the rules of the road,

Too often you will have a car fly right past you without giving any

It is not anger, it is adrenaline that hits you.

You have just been skinned by a hard motor vehicle.

Jules Richards cycles 80 miles a day from Syston to Braunston and back.

He records his journey on his helmet cam.

The person on a bike is in a vulnerable situation

and we need motorists to recognise that.

So now Leicestershire Police plans to educate drivers who overtake

cyclists too closely by using plain-clothes police

They will have cameras on the front and rear of their bikes.

If whilst they are on their patrols they are passed dangerously

by a motorist, then they will pass that on to the rest of the team

who will endeavour to stop that vehicle and then speak

It is a scheme that has been trialled with success

It has been welcomed by cycling groups here.

Survey after survey has shown that the reason that people

do not cycle is primarily because of the fear of traffic

and it only takes one near miss or close pass to put them

The Highway Code says you should give at least as much

space as you would a car, or run the risk of being prosecuted

for driving without due care and attention.

Kevin Clinton, who is from the Royal Society

for the Prevention of Accidents, told this programme why

he welcomes Leicestershire Police's latest measures.

Well, we know that around 100 cyclists are killed every year. Over

3000 or seriously injured. 20,000 cyclists are injured in total and

those are just the incidents that are reported to the police and

probably there are three times more than that that go unreported. It is

a serious problem and one of the most common complaints at cyclists

make is that drivers pass them far too close and squeeze them into the

gutter. Changing the road itself through cycle lanes and facilities

is one of the ways that is getting looked at, also managing traffic

speed which gives drivers more time to see what is happening in front of

them and avoid the risk of collisions. The scheme by

Leicestershire Police is one of the Leicestershire Police is one of the

ways that will help to make cycling safer.

Now, it's been a sunny day across the region,

so before we find out what tomorrow's weather

let's soak up this splendid springtime spectacle -

a host of golden daffodils from Ulverscroft in

So, it's goodbye from me - with your weather now,

spells of sunshine but as they go spells of sunshine but as they go

through the deep things Aughton a little bit more unsettled. There

bits of rain and it will be turning bits of rain and it will be turning

quite breezy. But there will still be someone sunshine to be had as

well. Through this evening and overnight it is quite a cloudy night

to come, there will be patches of mist and fog developing, the

overnight temperatures dropping to five Celsius. For Tuesday morning,

it is going to be quite a grey start to the day, a bit misty and murky

during the morning, gradually, the sunshine will break through for the

afternoon, but there will still be a few showers around. Some of the

showers could be fairly heavy, temperatures tomorrow at around 14,

15 degrees. As we head through Tuesday and Wednesday, the isobars

weather front brings further weather front brings further

outbreaks of rain. We lose the showers, Tuesday night in the

Wednesday, a few clear spells for a time but gradually the cloud will

increase as we head towards Wednesday morning, and the

temperatures overnight will adopt down to around 10 Celsius. So

clearly mad night to take that into Wednesday morning. Another severely

grey start on Wednesday, we will see some outbreaks of rain pushing in

from the West as we had through the day but gradually, the cloud will

start with them, so we will see one or two much brighter spells and

temperatures still doing well, 14 Celsius, a stronger breeze blowing

from the South West on Wednesday. On the Thursday, again, quite a lot of

blood, if you showers here and there, some could be fairly heavy,

but the temperatures doing well, 16 or 17 degrees, that looks likely to

be the mildest day of the spell. The authority and onto the weekend, it

stays fairly unsettled, another weather front moves through taking

us into Friday, which means it will be cooler and more chalets. They

should be some spells of sunshine by the afternoon

brighter on Sunday and if we go back to the temperatures in the next

couple days, you see those highs on Thursday. He is John Hammond with

the national this cyclone Debbie crashes onto the

Queensland coast with