11/04/2017 South Today

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Hello and welcome to South Today, I'm Edward Sault.

The south's care homes deemed just not good enough.

Gary Stacey died after being punched just once.

Now a jury will decide if a young student is guilty of manslaughter.

And the ?500 million plan for shops, offices and flats, labelled as one

of the most important in the south, is in doubt tonight.

Simply not good enough - that's the finding of a report out

today, which shows that a worrying number of care homes in the south

Figures on care home performance, gathered by the charity

"Independent Age", show that, in the South West region,

more than one in five homes was rated as "requires improvement"

In the South East region, that figure goes up to more

In Portsmouth, more than 40% of care homes fell

And other parts of the south weren't far behind.

Tom Hepworth reports from one care home in Weymouth

Care homes are taking a financial hit.

with moderate needs here is around ?850, but social services pay ?590.

If it didn't have private or self funding residents,

and recruitment and retention is a big issue particularly

It is almost exclusively now staffed by people from overseas. And so I

don't know what the plans are for that. But that is putting doubt into

the minds. If this is the attitude towards us in this country, then we

will go back home. That would be the worst thing that could happen to us

and it is already happening at the moment. Every day, we wrestle with

finding trained nurses. care homes are facing more exacting

standards, but there are questions about whether the Care

Quality Commission's They are not supporting managers who

are struggling to comply and want to comply and they are not actually

supporting them and saying, if you do it this way, you won't get this

result next time. Though care was rated good

at all four council run homes in Portsmouth the CQC found

they required improvement, We did ask the city council

for an interview but were told In a statement, it said robust

action plans have been put in place, staff will be better supervised

and they'll improve the joined up management of care

across the system. to here said it was better run

than many of the private homes she'd worked in,

and said caring should be more There are 18,000 vacancies in

Hampshire. That means if every single child leaving school with

GCSEs this summer went to work in health and social, there still would

not fail all the vacancies. People are not paid good wages. I am not

sure that in society we really value them.

This is by no means a problem specific to Portsmouth.

The number of people over 85 has increased by nearly a third

in little more than a decade and although the government's

increased funding for adult social care by ?2 billion, budgets

have been cut by more than double that since 2010.

Care is costing more, we're all going to have to foot

the bill, the detail will be in the government's green paper due

It was a violent encounter which lasted seconds.

And now a jury will decide whether a young student is guilty

of manslaughter after killing a man with just one punch.

Ryan Cooper hit fellow Isle of Wight resident Gary Stacey after a night

But he claims it was in self defence after he was

The prosecution say it was an unprovoked attack.

Ben Moore reports form Winchester Crown Court.

Mr Justice Welby listed the events that led to tragedy in the early

A tragedy that centres around two people from the Isle of Wight,

20-year-old Ryan Cooper and 49-year-old Gary Stacey.

Ryan Cooper was a law student at Southampton University out

with friends after returning to Newport at the weekend.

He was rejected from the pub at around 2:30am.

But it was on the street just before 4am when the two met.

The court was reminded how Ryan Cooper and other witnesses

maintained Gary Stacey had threatened to knock him

out after confusing him with a different group of people.

What is captured on CCTV and not in dispute is that

The defence say Ryan Cooper was acting in self defence,

The prosecution says this is a cover-up and lies,

after Gary Stacey died after falling to the pavement and receiving

a blow to the head and a bleed to the brain.

Friends and parents described him as distraught as he dialled 999

But after three weeks of evidence, it is up to the jury

Police investigating a fire at a tower block in Southampton have

Officers say the 28-year-old is still under investigation.

Sunday's fire at Redbridge Towers completely destroyed a flat

No one was seriously injured and firefighters managed

to prevent the blaze spreading to neighbouring flats.

The cause of the fire is not yet known.

It's been described as one of the most important

developments in the South, but now the future of

The ?500 million plan for flats, shops and offices

near to Reading Station has been on the table since 2005.

But now the BBC understands that the owners of the site have put

it on the market as our Business correspondent Alastair Fee reports.

It's been talked about for years, a public space with retail,

homes and offices, but the town is still waiting.

Now the owners, Stanhope, having secured planning permission,

are believed to have put the site back on the market.

We had hoped that Station Hill would have been completed to now.

Certainly it has been going on for over ten years

with different ownership in that period and we the council

are very concerned that this might mean further delay

Progress has been made levelling the area -

Excietment began 12 years ago when it was bought

by Sir John Madjeski, he later sold it.

The plan went through council in 2015, but since then several

new offices have sprung up around the town.

Property agents suspect that is putting off more

The offices are probably the part of the site that was slowing down

and reduced the likely demand for it because there is a million square

Building out another million square feet today is clearly

So the office element will be delayed and that is a pretty big

Crossrail and the promise of more firms relocating to the town

But first a new buyer needs to be found.

The current owner Stanhope has refused to comment.

Reading's flagship development is still a long way off.

So what now for the Station Hill development?

Earlier Matthew Treacy sent this report from the site and he outlined

how the town could address the issue of empty office space.

It's still an attractive option to have offices here in Reading.

There is an ever growing list of companies from the surrounding area.

Including Pharmaceutical giant Bayer, energy company SSE

and electronics firm Thales, who have moved here

But there is still a lot of empty offices in this town.

The real prize is pulling big international companies out

of London and making there home here.

There's a ?15 billion reason why that's a realistic possibility,

and it's called Crossrail, a new fast direct service

But the first trains aren't due until the end of the decade.

In the mean time, there is big demand for housing.

This plan was always aiming to be a mix of shops, offices and homes,

but the council is now saying it will look at any future

planning applications, which may open the door to this

being a lot more about building houses.

That could restart this project, but possibly at the longer term cost

of having a prime site for big businesses to move into.

That's all from the South Today news team this evening.

We're back tomorrow with bulletins in BBC Breakfast and there's more

Here with our regional weather forecast is Alexis.

Thank you. We have had such a lovely day. Top temperature 16 Celsius in

Southampton. 15 Celsius elsewhere. They will be slightly more cloudy

tomorrow. Clear skies tonight but the cloud will increase from the

West through the course of the night. Temperatures could fall as

far as five Celsius. And there will be a breeze coming in from the West

during the course of the night. It is a breezy day tomorrow with a lot

more cloud than today. A few brighter spells here and there but

also the chance that one or two showers could develop. Cloud will be

thicker with a weather front moving southwards across the South and that

is taking its time to move southwards during the afternoon. Top

temperature 14 Celsius. Thursday will be a similar day. Mainly dry

with a bright start. A cool starting places. A touch of frost first

thing. Cloud increasing during the afternoon and we may see the odd

shower. But a lot of dry weather as well. Easter weekend, Good Friday

starts on a cloudy note. Also the chance of rain at times. Saturday,

the odd shower is a possibility and Easter Sunday and Easter Monday

should be mainly dry. On Sunday, on the cool side for East

itself. Good evening. Grace of all it -- it

is greatest of all in Scotland. A weather front is on the move. The

rain edging down into south-western parts of Scotland and northern

Ireland. Much of England and Wales will have a dry note but not quite

as Chile to start tomorrow. Let's deal with the wet weather first

thing tomorrow. It will be a damp start for Scotland and Northern

Ireland. Heaviest rain on the hills towards the coast and east of the

Pennines, not too much rain at all. Southern parts of England and Wales,

some more cloud with sunny spells. Most places dry with an isolated

shower or