Local News Wednesday 8th March

Wednesday, 8 March 2023 at 06:00

A new hostel for homeless people is set to open in Yeovil. Homeowners in Chard are to be provided with water butts to help reduce the risk of the town flooding. Seven Avon and Somerset Police officers have been dismissed for inappropriate sexual contact since 2018. A Yeovil man, whose father died of prostate cancer, is planning to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise awareness of getting an early diagnosis for prostate cancer.....and more.

A new hostel for homeless people is set to open in Yeovil but South Somerset District Council, who are funding the project, won’t say where in the town the hostel is located. The new hostel will accommodate ten homeless and rough sleepers and replace the Pathways homeless lodge on Newton Road when it closes at the end of the month. South Somerset District Council is providing two-hundred-and-twenty thousand pounds towards the first year’s costs of nearly three-hundred-and-eighty thousand pounds of running the hostel.

Homeowners in Chard are to be provided with water butts to help reduce the risk of the town flooding. Around one thousand properties on Furnham Road and on the Glynswood estate when damaged when Chard flooded in 2021. Somerset Rivers Authority has allocated funds to buy water butts for homes across the town in the hope that it will reduce surface water.

Seven Avon and Somerset Police officers have been dismissed for inappropriate sexual contact since 2018. Data gathered by the Observer newspaper shows the force had the most incidents of this kind out of the twenty-two police forces in England and Wales who responded to their survey.

Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh has welcomed the government’s decision to provide more support to children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Investment in the SEND programme will rise to more ten billion pounds starting from April. Mr Fysh, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Education, says the extra funds will be used to build new special schools and improve services to children with special needs and disabilities and their families.

A Yeovil man, whose father died of prostate cancer, is planning to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats this summer in his memory. David Parish’s father Henry died following a late diagnosis. David believes if he’d gone to see his GP sooner, he might still be alive today. David will be joined by two friends, Sheldon Fling and Jonney Reay, raising awareness of prostate cancer and importance of an early diagnosis, along the 900-mile route.

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