05/04/2017 East Midlands Today

And now the news for the East Midlands.

First tonight, the long stand-off between Derby City Council

The industrial dispute over pay had become one of the longest

It began after the authority imposed new contracts which meant some staff

After ten months of strikes, they've accepted the council's

latest offer but not all parents are impressed.

Strikes, protests, and demonstrations.

This long, bitter dispute has been conducted with the volume raised.

Even the council leader hasn't held back.

But today both sides were singing from the same hymn sheet.

I'm delighted as an individual and on behalf of the council

and the city that we have managed to resolve this dispute.

How do you go about rebuilding a relationship with the council

after everything all that's been said and done over

I look forward to working with Councillor Baggy Shanker

who has taken a personal interest in this dispute and been key

The offer accepted by school support staff today includes a ?2 million

It will include one-off payments to the worst affected staff

and the reinstatement of 52-week contracts.

Parents we spoke to outside this school had mixed

In my opinion, why putus through 60 days of strikes

if they are just going to give them what they wanted anyway.

We are happy and hopefully it is never going to happen again.

Does the council owe parents and children an apology for how

things have been handled and the disruption to their lives?

I, on behalf of the ocuncil, apologise to anybody who has

That is not an issue that any of us take lightly.

Certain details are still to be agreed but we are unlikely

I'm joined now by Jemma Walker, a mother in Derby whose son George

is a special needs pupil and lost school time during those strikes.

I think this was handled really badly. Our children have had over 70

days of school, we are still waiting to hear from Derby City Council

about letters of complaint that have gone in and we have had nothing, no

acknowledgement of the letters or anything. And as we heard there, 60

days of strike action. What has the effect been on your son? It has been

awful. His behaviour has deteriorated, he doesn't know if

he's coming or going, he is very agitated at the moment. We have had

tears again tonight because he doesn't particularly want to go to

school again now because he has had such a long time off. A lot of the

children that are in the school have the same behavioural issues. We have

behaviour. It has affected the behaviour. It has affected the

children quite badly and it has affected the family. There are two

sides to any dispute but do you want an apology from the council? An

apology would be nice. Just reassurance that it's anything like

this happened again, we wouldn't just be left to try and get on with

our lives. Parents have lost their jobs because they had to take time

off work. It is not fair. Our lives are hard enough as it is without

losing school as well. Thank you. Nottinghamshire Police say they've

received a lot of information after yesterday's appeal

to the missing mother Samantha from Newark went

missing last Monday. It's believed she's with her two

boys, six-year-old Louis Her disappearance comes

after a family court removed the children from Samantha's care

and made them wards of court. A senior officer in the case

says they're pursuing A retired teacher's been cleared

today of three historic sex attacks Three women had accused

Christopher Metcalfe, including an allegation he raped one

of them when she was in his care at the former Skegby Hall care home

near Sutton in Ashfield. A jury at Derby Crown Court

cleared him of that and two counts of indecent assault

on other children. The jury failed to reach verdicts

on two other counts. The prosecution's now got three

weeks to decide how to proceed. The Queen has today paid tribute

to an historic cavalry regiment which recruits here in the East

Midlands. In a ceremony at Windsor Castle,

Her Majesty handed over an heraldic banner, or guidon as it's properly

called, to the Royal Lancers. She described them as a force

without match and said their loyalty and devotion had never been found

wanting in more than 300 years. One in five people in

the East Midlands are risking potentially fatal health problems

because they prefer ordering A partnership of charities working

to tackle conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease has

carried out research It's now urging people

to swap the takeaway It seems our obsession with fast

food could risk that happening. The fear being that the high salt,

high fat content in many meals In a world of choice, this

is the firm favourite, with more than a quarter of us

preferring a Chinese takeaway. An average portion of

spring rolls and a sweet and sour chicken and rice

is an astonishing 2200 calories. That, according to health

campaigners, is the problem. Alongside traditional fish

and chips, this shop offers fish in light flour,

salad and chips cooked Part of a county council scheme

for lower fat fast food. We felt we had a moral obligation

to customers to not necessarily make them think they are coming

in for healthier fish and chips but just giving them

healthier fish in chips. We are slowly educating them

that there is a healthier option But what about our high

calorie favourite? How many people would

choose the takeaway over Who knows how to cook Chinese?

Not me. Take it away because it

saves messing about. Do you realise it's got

almost 2200 calories? So more work to do,

according to campaigners, before more of us bring back home

for dinner a healthier outlook. With us tonight is Nottinghamshire

County Council's Dan Flecknoe, evaluation to be done on this but so

far the healthier options takeaway scheme has had very good buy in from

local businesses and we have had minimal dropouts which suggests

people are not losing money. I suppose it is good for the image.

Absolutely. It enables local businesses to showcase their

responsible attitudes towards helping the community to be healthy.

Is education still the key? The message needs to get through before

people stepped foot in a takeaway? Absolutely, but there are so many

barriers to people eating healthily. The philosophy this scheme is based

on is that many people want to eat healthily and definitely want their

children to eat healthily but there are lots of barriers to them doing

that and the accessibility and ubiquity of takeaway food, which is

often very high calorie, is one of them. By making more choices

available, we hope to impact their health in a positive way. Councils

They licensed takeaway is. Is there They licensed takeaway is. Is there

something that can be done there? It is an option. There are many options

in tackling the food environment. At the moment we prefer a more softly,

softly approach. Not pushing things on people and not banning things.

Thank you. So, it's goodbye from me, but

with your weather now, here's Mel. It has been a fine end to the day

with some evening sunshine on offer The cloud is a feature

but it is a fine day and we should see some break from the cloud

allowing spring sunshine Today we saw the cloud spill

out from the north-west It was quite fragmented

so most of us got to see Overnight it looks as though that

cloud will once again Where we get to see some

lengthy clear spells, temperatures in sheltered rural

spots could dip as low as freezing. But on the whole a minimum

temperature of around A bit fresh in places

but on the whole another fine day. Where we do find breaks in the

cloud, temperatures will respond. And it is a repeat performance

as we head into Friday. The cloud will lift and break

a little more readily on Friday to give us a bit more in the way

of sunshine but it is Towards the weekend,

the area of high pressure starts to move towards the near continent,

opening the gate for this warm air After a fresh start on Saturday,

temperatures will start to respond and by Sunday we could see those

temperatures in the high teens. I will leave you with

the outlook now. or 15. It is sunny towards the

weekend and we could see the low 20s by Sunday. Here is Darren with the

national weather. Hello. The weather has been a big

news in North America across the Masters in Augusta, for the first

time the par-3 competition was abandoned, the storms moving away

and sunshine windy for a while. Temperatures about 17, which is on a

par with what we had today in the south-east of Wales, blue skies

around here. That's from one of our weather watchers. More sunshine over

the next few days. Little or no rain once again, it's looking dry and as

we get more sunshine, especially in England and Wales this weekend, it

will be