04/11/2013 Look East - East

rest of the week. Thank you.

Hello and welcome to Look East. In the programme tonight...

Turned down for IVF because her fiance already has children. This

woman says she will fight to get the NHS to change its policy.

I was devastated. For something I've wanted for such a long time, I felt

like my dreams had been shattered. A week after the storms, the village

where the telephone lines still haven't been reconnected.

The row over NHS bosses who take big redundancy pay offs, only to get

rehired by the health service somewhere else.

And Norwich City fans look away now. All seven goals from Hughton's

horror show. First tonight, who should be

eligible for IVF treatment on the NHS? We have been speaking to one

woman who thinks the authorities have got it wrong.

Her name is Clare Walker, and she knows that IVF is her only hope of

getting pregnant. Which is why she applied for treatment through her

GP. But because her fiance already has two children from a previous

relationship, the NHS said no. Simon Newton has been to meet her.

Clare Walker has always wanted a baby but problems with her fallopian

tubes means she cannot conceive naturally. She cannot get IVF

because her fiance, Matthew, has two children from a previous

relationship. I was just lost for words.

The policy on who qualifies is strict. Women must normally be aged

between 23 and 39, not be a smoker or obese and be childless. It is a

wide definition. The guidelines say there should be known living child

from the cobbled's current or any previous relationships, regardless

of whether they lived with him. This includes any adopted child within

current or previous relationships. People may say that unfortunately

there is not enough money for IDF to go around. Her partner has children,

that is her decision that she has gone with a ready`made family. That

sounds harsh, but some people may hold that view, what would you say

to that gimmick a lot of people have been quite negative with regards to

me having it funded on the NHS. I understand where they are coming

from but I have worked all my life, I paid my taxes and I have

contributed for people having treatment on the NHS.

Since April this year, fertility treatment has been run by Clinical

Commissioning Groups. There are 19 of them in the East of England. In

her case, it is West Norfolk CCG. We asked them for a comment today

but it was not forthcoming. Clare has now appealed against the

decision. If she feels she says she will adopt or foster. She cannot

afford private IVF treatment. For now she has to wait and hope, her

dream of being am closer. `` her dream of being And Simon

Newton is with me now. A mum is no closer. It seems to me

everybody in the Clinical Commissioning Group has been doing

this by the book. Yes, they have. We have bounced

between organisations trying to get an answer to this. The National

Institute of clinical excellence laid stoned the guidelines do this,

but they only refer to a woman's body weight, whether she smokes,

age, they don't cover other aspects. Generally, across the country the

rule seems to be if you have inherited a family, as Clare has

done, you don't get IVF. What are the grounds of her appeal?

Essentially in her eyes it is fairness. It `` she doesn't believe

it is fair she is suffering for the situation she has no control over.

She said you cannot choose who you fall in love with and points out

that quite rightly, perhaps, people move around from relationship to

relationship and don't stay with the same person of their life and these

situations will arise. There is a chink of light perhaps for her,

because the CCG, of which there are 19 in the East, will review this

policy soon. They may perhaps look at this again, but if they let more

women have IVF that involves more money and that the something the NHS

does not have much of. At the moment she looking on the downside, rather

than a positive outlook. And if you have a story to tell

about IDF, we would love to here from you. `` IVF treatment.

A former civil servant who stole more than ?160,000 from colleagues

at a tax office in Southend has been jailed for two and a half years.

Ruth Kevan ran a savings scheme. But Basildon Crown Court heard how she

spent much of the money on holidays and clothes. Gareth George was in

court, and he joins us now. The court heard today how Ruth Kevan

swindled the people she worked alongside out of a lot of money. She

took over the running of the Christmas savings club at HM Revenue

and Customs office in Southend. It became more of a general savings

scheme offering, in hindsight, unrealistically high levels of

interest come up to 14%, but Ruth Kevan was taking much of the money

herself. If a colleague wanted to withdraw some of the money from the

scheme, Ruth Kevan would pay them with money put in by another

colleague. In court today it was described as robbing Peter to pay

Paul. This went on for nearly a decade. Around 40 of Ruth Kevan's

colleagues put in around ?40,000 `` sorry, but in total ?212,000 into

the savings scheme, but when the scheme was stopped there was only

around ?48,000 left. What did the court fear about what

she spent the money on? `` what did the court here?

The court was told she did not have an extravagant lifestyle, she did

not buy your order at flash card, she lived in a rented house in

Southend. `` she did not buy a yacht. The court was told she did go

on holiday and stayed in nice hotels. She bought Mace clothes, the

court was told. The hearing was told that she frittered the money away.

`` she bought nice clothes. One of her colleagues said she felt

betrayed, another said it was a terrible blow at the end of their

working life. She admitted 21 counts of fraud and one count of theft and

was jailed for two and a half years. She is going to try and pay her

colleagues back with her pension, which he is entitled to receive in a

couple of years time. This time last week we were clearing

up after the biggest storm to hit this region for ten years. Thousands

of homes were without power and there was major disruption on road

and rail. A week later the power is back on, but not all the phone

lines. In the village of Elmdon in Essex, 80 people are offline. BT

won't tell us how many other villages are affected.

Around 250 people in Elmdon, which sits in Essex on the border of

temperature and Hertfordshire. In the past week some locals have

felt even more isolated than usual after losing their landlines in a

spot where mobile phone coverage is virtually nonexistent.

Because we do not have a mobile phone signal we would have thought

someone would come from BBC to explain what is `` from BT to

explain what is happening. On a scale of one to ten, how would

you rate the performance? `1. We have a lot of elderly people

here, some not too well, and BT have left them completely lost.

This was the cause ` to trees tumbled in last week's high winds

taking the phone lines down, cutting the connections to around 80 homes.

BT told us in a statement today putting this right will take a

significant amount of work. They have to put in a new poll and 600

yards of cable. They say they do not hit any unforeseen problems

hopefully everyone will be back on my weapons they.

From consternation to pottable const `` compensation. In the immediate

aftermath of the storm, seven `` several hundred thousand homes and

businesses were without power, many back on quickly. Just over 20,000

customers in the East were blacked out for more than two days and will

receive compensation, anything from ?54 up to ?270 for those without

power the longest, that is over 96 hours. The total is more than ?1.1

million. The firm UK power networks is starting to send out letters to

those affected this week. It says it is already committed to reviewing

how the Campbell `` handled the storm and back in the village of

Elmdon... They do not care enough to simply

let people know what is going on, then they will have people ranting

down cameras, as I am doing. And we heard about that story

because Bob Woods sent us an e`mail. If you have a story to

tell, please get in touch. Three armed robberies in Southend

are being linked by the police. They all happened yesterday evening. A

man went into Corals Betting in Sutton Road threatened the staff

with a gun and got away with some cash. A man and a woman had their

mobile phones taken and were also threatened.

A five`year`old boy has been shot and seriously injured in an accident

at his home in Essex. Police were called to the house in Wickford

yesterday. An 18`year`old has been arrested for possession of a firearm

and drug offences and released on bail.

Full time firefighters in this region were on strike again this

morning in their row with the Government over retirement ages and

pensions. The two hour stoppage by members of the Fire Brigades Union

started at 6am. The

still to come tonight, how safe are our level crossings? Within the last

hour, Network Rail has been talking to MPs. We are live at Westminster.

Plus, Norwich's for `` worst defeat since the war. How good as this

season been for canary 's funds? There has been strong criticism

today of a revolving door policy at the NHS, where managers are paid

redundancy and then re`employed a few weeks later. Millions of pounds

have been paid out in compensation as part of a re`organisation of the

health service. The Health Minister and local MP Dan Poulter described

the pay`outs as a waste of taxpayers' money that should have

been spent on patients. More from him in a moment, but first here's

Alex Dunlop. Until April this year, there were 16

Primary Care Trusts in our region. But the government says they were

too bureaucratic and replaced them with the same number of GP`led

Clinical Commissioning Groups. It meant that 29 managers were made

redundant at a cost to the NHS of almost ?3 million. Nine received a

payoff of more than ?100,000. Four were paid more than ?150,000, and

one manager's exit package was worth more than ?200,000. Now some of

those made redundant have gone on to get other management jobs within the

NHS. Those Primary Care Trusts were doing

a good job and didn't need to be disbanded only for those same

managers to then be redeployed elsewhere in the new National knelt

`` National Health Service. That is a scandalous abuse of public money.

Among those who rejoined the NHS is this man, Andrew Morgan. Currently

interim head of the East of England Ambulance Trust, he was the chief

executive of a cluster of local PCTs. NHS Norfolk set aside ?492,000

to compensate him for losing that job. It is not known if he has taken

it. All these payments are perfectly legal, but health unions say the

payoffs are a scandalous waste of money.

Unison members working in health in the East of England recognise the

significance for cuts they are facing, the financial pressures, and

they are outraged that taxpayers' money is going on this rather than

on front line patient services. The Government is now under pressure

to claw back those compensation payments if those who get them

simply walk back into an NHS job a few weeks later.

Earlier today I spoke to the Suffolk MP and Health Minister Dr Dan

Poulter, and started by asking if it would be possible to claw back some

of the money. We are certainly going to do our

best to do so. The problem has arisen because in 2006 the previous

Labour government awarded very senior managers of these sorts of

profligate and unacceptable redundancy terms. We are now coming

to terms with what that means, which is that you have front line staff

feeling pressure on the front line, feeling as if they are being kicked

in the teeth by these arrangements, and also patients that are sought

changed. It is completely unacceptable and we are putting in

measures that will mean in the future these sorts of redundancy

payments to senior managers will not happen again.

`` short changed. When the reorganisation was being discussed,

did anyone say, it will cost us ?500 million in compensation, are we sure

we want to do this two the reorganisation costs 1.5 `` is

saving ?1.5 billion every year by reducing bureaucracy, the number of

blunders and recording costs taking money out of the front line.

`` reducing the number of managers. In the meantime, we inherited this

significant set of redundancy terms that were unacceptable. I don't know

what the previously the government were thinking when they allowed

senior managers to be paid ?400,000 in redundancy. That is unacceptable

and it's short`changing patients. That is why we are looking at how we

can make sure this does not happen again. When we look at this what we

see is that we have a lot of hard`working front line staff in the

NHS. The union is right in condemning this, as well, because

front line staff need more interesting `` more investment. We

need more investment in front line staff, not wasting money on these

profligate payments a consequence of the previous government.

Do we pay people who are accountants and managers more than we pay

doctors, and is that right two you are absolutely right to say that

under the arrangement of the previous government we have a ring

`` we have a situation where senior managers in the NHS are paid...

I am sorry to interrupt you, you keep blaming the previous

government, you have been in power for quite a few years. Shouldn't you

have sorted this out sooner? That is why we put in place reforms

to the NHS, which is saving ?1.5 billion, reducing the number of

managers and administrators, around 20,000 in the NHS, to make sure we

can invest more in front line staff. Part of that is also about reforming

some of the excessive salaries we have inherited from the previous

government. We are putting those measures in place and getting to

grips with those unacceptable redundancy pillage `` payments that

we inherited. We will make sure that we will do better as a government

than Labour did. We will not put money into eye watering redundancy

payments that are eye watering and compromise patient care.

Doctor Dan Poulter, thank you very much.

The head of Network Rail has told MPs this evening that the deaths of

two girls on a level crossing in Essex was a fundamental watershed in

the railway industry. It is almost eight years since Olivia Bazlington

and Charlotte Thompson were hit by a train at Elsenham. Network Rail was

fined ?1 million for breaching health and safety laws, and ever

since the girls' parents have been fighting to make the industry take

the issue of level crossing safety more seriously. Two weeks ago they

gave evidence to MPs at westminster. Tonight it has been the turn of the

industry to respond. Let's join Andrew Sinclair at Westminster.

Network Rail was fined nearly ?1 million for health and safety

breaches after the deaths of Olivia Bazlington and Charlotte Thompson.

At the time the company said they had not been taking this issue very

seriously but that things have changed.

I would say that we are now in a different place. I have to pay

tribute to the actions of the families at the time. Elsenham was a

fundamental watershed for this business. We were in a much worse

place several years ago about managing level crossings and we are

better now, though there are still a way to go.

He went on to save negligent management was responsible for the

deaths at Houghton and he said that Network Rail has risk assessed every

level crossing and you can see that assessment on the company's website.

Apart from being more aware of dangers, what else are they doing to

micro we have also heard from Her Majesty 's Inspectorate of Railways

who said that Network Rail has set aside ?109 million to close 500

level crossings across the country over the next five years.

In the last five years, the company has closed 750 level crossings. Her

Majesty 's Inspectorate of Railways said he would not be unpleasant

about this, but after deaths like the ones we saw at Elsenham, the

industry has woken up. Level crossings in Great Britain are

ranked in terms of the European community as the safest in Europe.

However, the key is all about continuous improvement.

We also learned this evening that Network Rail are looking at the

signage around level crossings, but the company did warn that crossing a

railway will always be a dangerous business, indeed someone died today

in the north`east of England after being hit by a train on a level

crossing. In football, the Norwich City

manager, Chris Hughton, says he is hurting after his team were hammered

at the weekend. But he says he is the right man to turn the season

around. Saturday's defeat at Manchester City

was the worst since the team lost 7`0 at Sheffield Wednesday back in

1938. This result leaves them in the Premier League relegation zone and

without a win in four. Both teams are now just wanting the

whistle to go. Norwich's worst league defeat in 75 years.

Time is ticking, sadly, for Chris Hughton.

He put on a brave face, but this was a miserable day.

At the moment it is hurting, we have let them down today.

Sergio Aguero scores! As manager, I take full responsible

at it. David Silva are arriving!

2`0! We have the choice but to be far better next week.

3`0! When it rains, it pours. And for five days at Bellevue job

goals. Four at United, seven at city, hapless Norwich humour lead

and humbled by successive trips to Manchester. Fans gave the club shop

a wide berth. A lot of fans are very angry. Yes.

No fight, no guts, it was disgusting. I think it is time for

Chris Hughton to go. The danger would be to have a knee

jerk reaction. There are other clubs for Chris Hughton to go to, and if

we're stinted leave the danger is we have nothing to fill the space. ``

and if we asked him to leave, the danger is.

We have to stay positive, but it is not happening.

Norwich are not much worse off than 12 months ago, the same number of

wins, but, crucially, more defeats ` six compared with four after ten

games last season. Fewer points, eight compared with ten, leaving

them 18th in the relegation zone. I have confidence in my own ability

and I have confidence in the changing room. We have been in this

position before, last season, where the start was not as good, but where

we have not been as on the back of a defeat like today.

Not a record Premier League defeats ` that came nearly 20 years ago.

Ipswich thrashed, 9`0 at Man Utd. Both Ipswich and Norwich ended up

going down that year. If Norwich are to avoid a similar fate, results

must improve. Chris Hughton spent millions reinforcing his team.

Performances have not lived up to raised expectations.

A horrible day for Chris Hughton. I think most of us recycle our

household rubbish, but it's not so long ago that things were very

different. Not in your house? We recycle it and

get more back then! He goes to the recycling centre and brings back

loads of stuff that we really do not need!

20 years ago recycling rates were just 4% ` now they are 54% and

rising. 20 years ago we hadn't heard of

recycling centres, either. But, in fact, the first one had just

been opened in Milton Keynes, from where Fae Southwell reports.

It is called a factory for a reason. Recyclable waste is resorted here

with absolute precision. It starts out as a mound of rubbish that is

loaded onto conveyor belts. Paddles shuffle the items forcing

heavy`metal food tins and drinks cans to fall through the gaps.

Cardboard and newspapers are pushed to the front, while jets of air

separate different coloured plastics.

I think there is scepticism that we do not recycle what we take in, but

we truly do. Some people think that by putting a few things in the

recycling it doesn't make a difference but it makes a massive

difference. Recycling was popular in wartime `

the model make do and mend. But it fell out of failure `` favour in the

consumer years of the early 90s. Bill Oddie launched a pilot scheme

covering just 5000 homes. At the time only 4% of all household waste

was recycled. Now in Milton Keynes it is more than 50%.

Extremely forward`thinking, it took a lot of courage for the Council is

to agree to set up a scheme, it was risky and costly but it has paid

dividends. Everyone supports recycling.

At this factory, they sought 16 tonnes of waste per hour, up to

150,000 tonnes per year. Recycling has huge benefits. It protects

finite resources, like oil, used to make plastic. The authorities also

are saving by not paying landfill tax. The council now wants to boost

recycling to 70% of all household waste. It is building a new ?140

million facility to processed rubbish which may have inadvertently

gone into the Blackburn instead. Many people do not realise how

psychical waste management is. In the summer there will be more garden

waste but at Christmas this pile of paper, plastic and bottles will be

up to the ceiling. This month, the factory celebrates

20 years in operation. It is holding an open day for the public on

November the 16th. Looking at that conveyor belt, I am

not sure what he would bring home! Luckily, not that kind of stuff! We

get an off a lot of wood and things brought back.

I am good to be in trouble! `` I am going to be.

Today we had some rain arrived first thing but then it was a nice,

November day. Quite blustery at times but from the satellite picture

you can see this afternoon was largely clear skies and a lot of

sunshine. The clear skies at the moment mean the temperatures are

tumbling. We are already down to around two Celsius. We're looking at

a ground frost in rural areas and perhaps a local air frost for some

of us. Then it will change because this area of cloud and rain pushes

in. By five or six o'clock in the morning it will probably be ringing

across much of the region. Tomorrow, as we head into the early hours,

temperatures rising a little bit. At that point it looks like we will

have light winds, but they are picking up as this system rattles

towards us. This brings cloud and rain but moves east very quickly. We

will sort of cloudy with outbreaks of rain, but as the morning goes on

we will start to see all of that edging into the North Sea with that

weather front and brighter skies following behind with sunshine.

Temperatures tomorrow, similar to today, actually, around 10 Celsius

at best, but it will feel chillier because of the cloud and rain first

thing and also because of the winds, which will be up lustily `` blustery

Westerly. In the east, eventually the rain and cloud should clear,

probably clearing the East Coast by 4pm. Then it is a dry, clear end to

the day. What lies ahead for the rest of the week? Tuesday night, a

dry, clear start, but then the next system arriving during Tuesday

night, bringing more rain. That looks as if it could stay with us

through Wednesday. There is a bit of doubt as to how far north the rain

will spread and how long it will stick around, but as it stands it

looks like the bulk of Wednesday will be cloudy with outbreaks of

rain. Once that has gone, Thursday and Friday are looking better, quite

blustery. Thursday, any showers should be few and far between and

many of us should enjoy decent spells of sunshine. On Friday,

probably a few more showers around and some of them on the heavy side.

Again, not for everybody. That is it from all of us here,

thank you for your company. Good night.

A family memoir that captured the hearts of millions.

A potter telling stories out of porcelain