Laura Whitmore, the TV presenter, has alleged she was subjected to “inappropriate behaviour” during her stint on Strictly Come Dancing.

The former Love Island host, 39, was partnered with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice in 2016, and was the seventh celebrity eliminated.

Whitmore, who battled through an ankle injury during the early weeks of the BBC One show, claims she “raised concerns” at the time.

Pernice, 33, has previously rejected “threatening or abusive behaviour” allegations made by Amanda Abbington, the Sherlock actress who was partnered with him in 2023 before he exited the show.

Whitmore wrote in an Instagram story on Saturday: “I was trying not to comment on recent press speculation until the BBC review is complete but feel there is a lot of misinformation in the press and I want to help and show support by setting the record straight.

“I was asked to speak to the BBC along with six people that I know of (who deserve anonymity as they don’t want to be dragged through the press), about inappropriate behaviour they experienced similar to mine with the same individual.

“I initially raised concerns back in 2016. I thought my experience was specific to me but I’ve since learned I was wrong.

“The aim of this is to show a pattern of behaviour that I believe needs to stop. My evidence is to support other people’s experience.

“It’s a shame it takes this for someone to be heard. I am not looking for anything just an acceptance that what happened to me in the rehearsal rooms during my time on BBC Strictly was wrong and that it won’t happen to anyone else again.

“Because I have not made an official complaint, and am providing evidence of my experience to support the investigation, not all the communication will be passed on to all parties involved.”

She added that she was trying to “set the record straight” by speaking out.

‘Victim-blaming’

“Victim-blaming must stop or we will never get better,” Whitmore said. “I’ve tried to speak up in the correct way. I know the BBC and all outlets continue to do their best to be better, but for that to happen we must speak up.”

Spokespeople for Pernice have repeatedly insisted that the star is confident his name will be cleared.

A source has now told The Sun that the probe could conclude within the next week.

Speaking to the newspaper, the anonymous source said: “Day by day the ­situation is changing, and right now the future of Strictly is hanging by a thread.

“Internal meetings are happening on an almost daily basis, and BBC execs are living in fear of a ­‘smoking gun’ moment – something that irreversibly undermines and damages the entire brand, and brings Strictly crashing down.

“They are doing all they can to detoxify the show – new measures and protocol are in place to safeguard – and they hope to formally conclude the on­going probe within the next week.”

It is not known whether the findings of the investigation will be made public.

On Saturday, it was also reported that production staff who formerly worked on Strictly Come Dancing had complained of a toxic work culture and accused the BBC of failing to take their complaints seriously.

According to The Observer, one former staff member alleged they had been subjected to sexist comments – which included questions about their sex life.

A spokesman for BBC Studios told the newspaper: “The welfare of our crews working on each series of Strictly is always of paramount importance to us. We act speedily when any concerns are raised, and we have thorough, effective and longstanding processes to manage them.” They added: “We do not recognise the claims relating to a negative workplace culture.”

Meanwhile, Abbington’s parents told the Mail that their daughter was “no snowflake”.

Speaking to the newspaper, her father John, 77, said: “As soon as I wake up in the mornings and when I go to bed at night I am worrying about it.

“It’s the after effects I worry about too. Will she be able to carry on with her career?’’

A spokesman for Pernice previously said: “We are co-operating fully with the BBC’s review process.

“All parties have been asked to respect this process and to not speak to the media before it concludes.

“We will continue to respect the integrity of the investigation and believe it is the right forum for all the evidence to be reviewed.

“As part of the evidence-led review, the BBC has shared the allegations they have been able to substantiate with us.

“They do not resemble Amanda’s latest allegations, given to Channel 4, in any shape or form.

“Giovanni refutes any claim of threatening or abusive behaviour, and, having provided the BBC with his evidence, is confident that the review will prove this.

“We would urge people to wait for the review’s conclusion and not to pay heed to these very serious and defamatory allegations that have no evidence in support of them.”

A BBC spokesman said: “Anyone involved in a complaint has a right to confidentiality and fair process and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further on individuals. However, when issues are raised with us we always take them extremely seriously and have appropriate processes in place to manage this. As we have said before, we would urge people not to indulge in speculation.

“More generally, the BBC and BBC Studios takes duty of care extremely seriously. Our processes on Strictly Come Dancing are updated every year, they are kept under constant review and last week we announced additional steps to further strengthen welfare and support on the show.”

A representative for Amanda Abbington was approached for comment.

Nottinghamshire police have launched an investigation after a horse was found “dead and mutilated” in a field.

The force has warned owners to be “extra vigilant” after the discovery of the 16-year-old horse, known as Alfie, a tri-coloured cob.

It suggested that the attack was likely deliberate, adding that the animal was discovered at a property off Owday Lane, Carlton-in-Lindrick, on Thursday morning after being left fit and well by its owner on Wednesday night.

Chief Inspector Clive Collings said: “All of the evidence shows that this was a sickening, heartless assault on a defenceless animal and I would urge anyone with information about what happened to get in contact with us as soon as possible.

‘Violent attack’ 

“This is the epitome of a senseless and violent attack.

“Alfie’s owner had been left distraught by his cruel death and wants justice for him.”

Locals on social media speculated that the apparent attack may not have been an isolated incident.

One woman, whose profile says she lives in Nottingham, said there was “something very wrong” and posted links to news stories about other horse mutilations that have occurred across the country over the previous decade.

She added that she keeps her own horses close to where Alfie was found.

‘Severely mutilated’ 

A Grantham business owner suggested the attack was connected to a horse that was killed and “severely mutilated” in a field in neighbouring Lincolnshire in December.

Another social media user said they had experienced similar incidents and referenced the spate of horse killings in France in 2020 that French police suspected may have been the result of satanic rituals.

Nottinghamshire Police said it was continuing to investigate the incident, which includes checking CCTV footage, exploring forensic opportunities and carrying out house-to-house inquiries.

The force asked people in the area to recall if they saw suspicious activity on Wednesday night and Thursday morning and check if they had recorded doorbell cameras or CCTV footage that could be of use.

It urged anyone with information to call the force on 101 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously.

A police officer watched bodycam footage believed to show the head teacher of Epsom College and her family after they were shot dead. 

The bodies of head teacher Emma Pattison, 45, and her daughter Lettie, 7, were found in the grounds of the prestigious school on Feb 5 2023.

Mrs Pattison’s husband, George Pattison, 39, is believed to have shot them both before killing himself.

Officer Baseer Ahmed viewed at least part of footage linked to a case that “generated a significant amount of local and national interest”, a misconduct panel ruled.

Surrey Police has not confirmed which specific footage was viewed but the date matches when officers were called to Epsom College. 

A hearing on July 1 this year found that Mr Ahmed accessed the footage of the “serious incident in East Surrey” on Feb 7 2023 while his boss, Ch Supt Budd, was on annual leave. Mr Ahmed insisted he did not watch it in its entirety. He is now banned from policing. 

He told the panel that he had accessed the footage for “a legitimate policing purpose and in carrying out his role as a staff officer” but it was found there was no reason for him to have watched the footage.

The misconduct panel judged that Mr Ahmed breached the standards of policing by accessing the footage, and concluded that he would have been dismissed for his gross misconduct had he not already left the force in Dec 2023.

Clare Harrington, head of the panel, said: “Mr Ahmed accessed the body-worn footage without a policing purpose, contrary to the relevant policies and without specific instructions to do so.

“It is important to remember the high standards that members of the public rightly expect police officers to adhere to, the extremely difficult circumstances being faced by family members in this particular case and the likely effect that unnecessary viewing of the footage would have on them.

”[Mr Ahmed] made the decision to access the footage, thereby failing to maintain the highest standards of behaviour expected of him.

“The context of the misconduct was a very distressing and high-profile case which was known to Mr Ahmed to be the focus of much public attention and scrutiny.

“Following careful consideration, the panel is satisfied on balance that if Mr Ahmed had remained a serving officer, he would have been dismissed for the misconduct as we have found it.”

‘Unacceptable breach of trust’

Following the panel’s decision, Supt Andy Rundle, Surrey Police’s head of professional standards, said Mr Ahmed’s behaviour was “not acceptable”.

“The public rightly expects that police officers behave at all times with integrity and respect,” he said.

“Ex-officer Ahmed breached this trust when he looked at body-worn footage of a crime scene, despite having no policing purpose. This behaviour is not acceptable, and a thorough professional standards investigation was launched.

“At his misconduct hearing the chair conducting the proceedings found that the allegation did breach the standards of professional behaviour at a level of gross misconduct and had he still been a serving officer, he would have been dismissed.

“He will also be placed on the College of Policing barred list. We are supportive of the hearing’s decision and hope that it demonstrates how seriously we take misconduct issues as a force.

“Thankfully, the majority of our officers and staff come to work each day to protect the public and abide by the standards of professional behaviour.”

An inquest into the Epsom College deaths is due to take place on Tuesday.

It is not the first time police have come under fire for the misuse of bodycam footage at crime scenes.

A Nottinghamshire Police Special Constable was dismissed after he viewed body-worn video footage of Nottingham attack victims Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber. Paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane killed the pair in the early hours of June 13 2023.

The force launched multiple misconduct cases against officers related to the case.

An investigation found that 11 members of staff had viewed material relating to the case who did not have a legitimate reason to do so.

Officers also shared WhatsApp messages describing how the two university students, who were stabbed to death after a night out, were “proper butchered”.

Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace’s grieving father, told The Telegraph at the time that the messages “were as barbaric as the crime itself”.

Earlier this year, Cameron Hanson, a 33-year-old officer with Lancashire Police, and Kirstie Hanson, his police colleague wife who was also 33, were jailed after they shared video footage taken at a murder scene.

Hanson attended an address in Oct 2021 and found the body of 45-year-old James O’Hara. He recorded the discovery on his body-worn video, but later sent his wife audio messages about the incident and used his personal phone to take videos of Mr O’Hara.

Hanson and Kirstie Hanson were jailed for 32 and 18 months respectively.

Earlier this month the mother of two murdered sisters revealed that she attempted suicide after two Metropolitan Police officers who photographed their bodies and shared them via WhatsApp were released from prison.

Mina Smallman’s daughters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were killed by Danyal Hussein while they were having a picnic in a park in Wembley in June 2020.

Deniz Jaffer, 49, and Jamie Lewis, 34, were both jailed after pleading guilty to misconduct in public office, but later appealed and were released early.

Ms Smallman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that their early release led her to attempt suicide, saying: “I knew they were coming out [of prison] but the whole trauma of their journey and the effect of when they appealed and applied to go to an open prison … The journey kept going back, forward, back, forward.”

“I thought: ‘You know what I don’t want to be here. Actually I have had enough, I have had enough of everything.’ And yeah, I attempted suicide.”

The green belt should not be considered sacrosanct when it comes to housebuilding, the chair of Natural England has said.

Writing for the Telegraph, Tony Juniper said housing and green space did not need to be competing interests.

Endorsing the Government’s plans to build on “grey belt” areas, he suggested it was acceptable to construct homes on areas of the green belt that are “bereft of wildlife”.

As head of the Government’s environment watchdog, Mr Juniper is responsible for ensuring the protection of the natural world, including enforcing regulations around development that housebuilders say have blocked new homes.

The Labour Government has said it will need to build on “poor quality and ugly” green belt sites to meet its target of 1.5 million new homes this Parliament.

The green belt, which spans around an eighth of England, protects land around urban areas from development and is intended to stop towns and cities from spreading unchecked.

On Tuesday, Angela Rayner is expected to unveil a National Planning Policy Framework under which more affordable homes will be built from the autumn.

Writing in The Observer, she blamed the former government’s “haphazard approach to building on the green belt” for “the wrong homes” being “built in the wrong places”.

She insisted that while the Government was “committed to preserving the green belt”, they will make “a green belt established in the middle of the 20th century” work “properly for the 21st”.

‘Bereft of wildlife’

But Mr Juniper, the former head of Friends of the Earth, said the green belt was wrongly perceived as a haven for wildlife, and had “taken on totemic status and become sacrosanct”.

But “parts of the green belt around England are pretty bereft of wildlife, have little value in terms of food production, and are closed off to the public,” he writes. “Development could unlock the vital funding needed to turbo-charge recovery in these areas.”

He added: “It is right that the Government should be focused on the so-called ‘grey belt’ – the lower quality land which has limited value for nature and wildlife.

“For example, a disused car park or petrol station that happens to be in the green belt.”

Mr Juniper has faced criticism for backing the Government’s move to tweak rules that forced developers to offset any impact from their development on river pollution before getting the go-ahead to build.

He had previously defended the nutrient neutrality scheme after the Conservative government attempted to rip up the rules to free housebuilding, in a vote that was blocked in the Lords by Labour. The construction industry had said the rules were blocking tens of thousands of homes.

Under the new rules being pushed by the Labour Government, developers will be able to start building on their site before securing any mitigation to reduce water pollution, such as funding local nature recovery.

‘A joined-up approach’

Although Mr Juniper welcomed Government plans to free green belt land for building, he said it must be accompanied by “a joined-up approach that avoids environmentally harmful development while harnessing the contribution housing can make to restoring our natural world.”

He said: “New developments that are designed with good quality green infrastructure from the outset – for example with extensive mosaics of new wetlands, grasslands, native shrublands and woods, connected to new housing with footpaths and cycleways – would create good places to live, from land that is at present not providing huge value to society.”

Steve Turner from the Home Builders Federation said they welcomed the new approach to the grey belt, but added that the Government would need to make it clear to local authorities how they could approve such sites.

“As the new government has quite rightly identified, we cannot build the homes we need without releasing some land currently classed as green belt,” he said. “There is a process for releasing land that does not play a significant role in green belt terms through local plans, but local plans take, on average, seven years to be put in place.

“Introducing support in planning policy for these ‘low performing’ sites to come forward in the short term would provide a much needed boost to the amount of land available to the homebuilding industry.”

‘Ring of green steel’ isn’t working for people, nature, or the environment

By Tony Juniper

England doesn’t have enough houses, and also doesn’t have enough nature. If we are to succeed in meeting our national needs, we require more of both. For too long we’ve been told that the only way to build more homes is to lose space for nature while the only way to protect it is through a “ring of green steel” around our towns and cities, known as the green belt.

But this isn’t working for people, nature, or the environment.

We need to look at the planning system differently. Currently planning applications are dealt with in a reactive site-by-site way, which is inefficient, resource intensive for all parties, and can cause delays to the development of housing and infrastructure. Building millions of homes while accelerating nature recovery requires a joined-up approach that avoids environmentally harmful development while harnessing the contribution housing can make to restoring our natural world.

‘Beautiful and healthy places’

Stepping away from the current piecemeal approach and adopting a broader landscape view would enable the state of nature, health of river catchments, water resources, climate change adaptation, levels of pollution and spaces for public enjoyment to be considered and planned in an integrated way, alongside the design of new residential areas. This would not only enable new homes to be built, but also create beautiful and healthy places.

Such an approach could be used across the country, including in what is presently green belt. For many the green belt has taken on totemic status and become sacrosanct, but parts of the green belt around England are pretty bereft of wildlife, have little value in terms of food production, and are closed off to the public. It seems to me though in many areas it could be made better than it is now –  a greener and wilder belt.

‘Turbo-charge recovery’

Development could unlock the vital funding needed to turbo-charge recovery in these areas. New developments that are designed with good quality green infrastructure from the outset – for example with extensive mosaics of new wetlands, grasslands, native shrublands and woods, connected to new housing with footpaths and cycleways – would create good places to live, from land that is at present not providing huge value to society. This, in turn, attracts skills and investments and improves the lives and wellbeing of the local community. This is supported by a growing wealth of evidence.

To do this, we need to go further with an ambitious and robust green infrastructure framework in local policy plans and design codes. This will ensure that development contributes positively toward nature recovery, benefiting people, and contributing to the legal Environment Act targets. Ecologists, planners and developers working together can pull this off, so long as the direction of travel is clear and we move beyond the mindset of “the environment or houses” and into one of “environment and houses”.

‘Preventing urban sprawl’

This has to be done correctly. It needs to involve everyone that has a stake and should not undermine areas where green belt is preventing urban sprawl.  It is right that the government should be focused on the so-called “grey belt” – the lower quality land which has limited value for nature and wildlife. For example, a disused car park or petrol station that happens to be in the green belt. This should not be about reducing the protection of nature, rather it is about maintaining and going beyond those protections in ways that are quicker, more strategic, and more efficient.

It is time for the start of a national conversation about how to turbo-charge nature recovery while building the homes the country needs. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and have a steep hill to climb to halt nature decline by 2030 as the government has committed to doing.

A new approach toward how we plan new housing landscapes could be one powerful way for making progress.

Tony Juniper is chairman of Natural England

Three members of family gospel group the Nelons were among seven people killed in a plane crash in Wyoming.

The Nelons co-founder, Kelly Nelon Clark, her husband, Jason Clark, and their daughter, Amber Nelon Kistler, died in the crash on Friday, according to a statement from another daughter, Autumn Nelon Streetman.

She is the fourth member of the Georgia-based quartet.

The Nelons were inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 2016 and were winners of 10 GMA Dove Awards, including multiple song of the year and album of the year awards.

“Thank you for the prayers that have been extended already to me, my husband, Jamie, and our soon-to-be-born baby boy, as well as Jason’s parents, Dan and Linda Clark,” Ms Nelon Streetman said. “We appreciate your continued prayers, love and support as we navigate the coming days.”

The aircraft was identified as a single engine turboprop Pilatus PC-12/47E.

The crash occurred at about 1pm in Campbell County, Wyoming, north of Gillette and about 250 miles north of Cheyenne, according to a statement from Campbell County spokesperson Leslie Perkins.

Campbell County Fire Department Chief Jeff Bender said in a statement on Saturday that a fire caused by the crash has been contained to less than one square mile and that firefighters would remain on the scene throughout the day.

‘Autopilot issue’

National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Keith Holloway said on Saturday that preliminary information indicated the plane crashed following an “autopilot issue during flight” and a team of investigators was heading to the site.

“The aircraft is in a remote location and once they gain access, they will begin documenting the scene, examining the aircraft,” Mr Holloway said. “The aircraft will then be recovered and taken to a secure facility for further evaluation.”

Also killed in the crash were Nelon Kistler’s husband, Nathan Kistler, family friend Melodi Hodges, and Larry and Melissa Haynie, according to Ms Nelon Streetman.

There were no survivors.

Larry Haynie was chairman of the Georgia Board of Corrections and was remembered for “a career of valued public service,” according to a statement from Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

“Our entire family is asking everyone to join us in praying for those who have been lost, for their loved ones and communities, and for those throughout the gospel music community who have lost dear friends in this heartbreaking accident,” Kemp said.

The group was travelling to join the Gaither Homecoming Cruise to Alaska, according to a statement from Gaither Music Group, the sponsor of the cruise, which features numerous gospel singers and groups.

Gaither Music said Hodges was an assistant for the band and that Larry Haynie was pilot of the aircraft and Melissa Haynie was his wife. A preliminary report on the crash is expected in about 30 days, while a final report with the probable cause could take up to two years to complete, Holloway said.