Nottingham attack families fear further disasters as NHS trust deemed ‘not safe’

Families of three people murdered by a schizophrenic man in Nottingham have branded the NHS trust that treated him “not safe,” demanding special measures following a critical report into its mental health services.

Following Wednesday’s publication of an inspection into Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, relatives of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates expressed a “real fear” that “further disasters are inevitable.”

Valdo Calocane, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, killed Mr Webber and Ms O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and caretaker Mr Coates, 65, in Nottingham last June, also attempting to kill three others.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) report criticised the trust’s mental health services, which treated Calocane from May 2020 to September 2022, for not always providing “humane, dignified or high quality care” to patients.

Between May 2024 and August 2025, the CQC carried out 39 inspections at the trust, before a trust-wide review of its leadership was carried out last September.

The report said the trust was found to have breached regulations about how it was managed and asked it to provide an action plan.

The CQC said: “Due to the level and nature of risks identified, we have taken enforcement action and asked the trust to make significant improvements and to work collaboratively with key stakeholders in the wider healthcare system to support significant improvement.”

Seven of its 18 services were rated as requires improvement, including five mental health services.

In a statement from the families of Mr Webber, Ms O’Malley-Kumar and Mr Coates, they said: “This report confirms what families have feared for far too long: this trust is not safe and should be placed into special measures immediately.

“Families have lost all confidence that this trust will learn on its own. If it is allowed to continue unchanged, there is a real fear that further harm and further disasters are inevitable.

“This is no longer about improvement plans or assurances. It is about urgent intervention, accountability at the highest level, and protecting lives.”

Greg Almond, partner at Rothera Bray Solicitors, who represents attack survivors Wayne Birkett and Sharon Miller, said there are “significant and glaring problems” in Nottinghamshire’s mental health care.

He said in a statement: “The report acknowledges the significant amount of scrutiny the trust was under following the attack. Despite this, the CQC conclude that there remain significant and glaring problems in the mental health provision in Nottinghamshire.

“For the survivors, who deserve to have faith in the mental health provisions in Nottinghamshire, this is a deeply worrying assessment and they can’t help but be left with the feeling that nothing has been done to prevent a reoccurrence.”

Ifti Majid, chief executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare, said: “We accept the CQC’s findings and recognise where improvement is needed.

“We have already made significant improvements since the CQC’s last inspection but fully appreciate there is still more to do. We will be addressing all areas identified in the report.”

The events leading up to the killing of Mr Webber, Ms O’Malley-Kumar and Mr Coates will be looked at in a public inquiry starting in February.

‘Complete shambles’: Exasperated Labour MPs lash out at Starmer over digital ID U-turn

Labour MPs are questioning whether Sir Keir Starmer can hold on to power after he performed his 11th U-turn as prime minister by ditching plans for mandatory digital ID.

The government has reversed course on policy issues at least 11 times so far, including by raising the inheritance tax relief threshold for farmers after months of protest and scrapping a raft of benefits cuts under the threat of a backbench revolt.

The latest decision comes amid growing concern over the direction of Sir Keir’s beleaguered Labour government in the face of disastrous approval ratings, with the prime minister facing mounting questions about his position.

Sir Keir last year said Labour would introduce a digital ID system that would be voluntary in most cases but mandatory for right-to-work checks. However, these plans were thrown into confusion on Tuesday night after it emerged that ministers were looking at rowing back on the compulsory element, allowing other digital documents to be used for right-to-work checks.

The U-turn, which has sparked a fresh wave of criticism from Labour backbenchers who believe the prime minister’s position is at risk, came just hours after health secretary Wes Streeting told a conference in London that the government should aim to “get it right first time”.

One despairing minister told The Independent: “Nobody knows what is going to happen next or what we are even doing.”

A senior Labour backbencher added: “It just feels like the government is in freefall at the moment. It is a complete shambles. It feels like this government is just holding on until May, and hoping that they can get through the moment of danger and things somehow turn around.”

Another MP said: “I keep being told to wait until the local elections in May, but increasingly I wonder what the point of that is.”

“It’s quite obvious No 10 have totally lost touch with reality,” another MP said of the U-turn. “One might have thought they were learning on the job. But their decision-making and policy development strategy is going from really bad to alarmingly inadequate.”

The MP expressed their belief that the prime minister will “fall on his sword” after what is expected to be a disastrous result for Labour at the local elections.

“A leadership contest has been on the cards for some time now. It’s widely accepted within the [parliamentary Labour Party] now. However, it’s a political game of chess – who makes the next move.”

Meanwhile, there has been vocal criticism of the attempt to revive Sir Tony Blair’s failed mandatory ID policy.

Norwich South MP Clive Lewis said: “This is the sort of thing a government tries to do at the height of its powers, not when it is struggling in the polls. If people trusted it on foreign policy and the economy, then it might have been able to say, ‘We are doing this in your best interests.’

“But these were badly designed plans in the first place. An unnecessary fight. And of course, it was always going to trigger the libertarian right.”

It came after former Labour home secretary David Blunkett fiercely criticised the U-turn, arguing that the government had been forced to abandon the scheme because it had failed to convince people of why it was a good idea after announcing it last year.

In a damning indictment of the prime minister, Lord Blunkett told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Very sadly it is an indication of the failure to be able to annunciate why this policy mattered, to follow through with the detail of how it would work, and reinforce that by a plan of action. When you fail to do all those things, it’s not surprising in the end that the thing runs into the sand.”

Lord Blunkett, who first proposed ID cards in 2002 as a cabinet minister in Sir Tony’s administration, said he was “disappointed but not surprised”.

He said the original announcement was “not followed by a narrative, or supportive statements, or any kind of strategic plan which involves other ministers, and those who are committed to this, actually making the case”.

But Sir Tony’s think tank, which championed the introduction of digital ID, said the U-turn is “a change in approach, not a change in direction”.

Sir Tony himself tried to introduce mandatory ID cards during his time in Downing Street, but was forced to water down the policy to a voluntary scheme that was then scrapped by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition.

Ryan Wain, executive director of policy and politics at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said: “Removing mandatory digital ID from right-to-work checks is a change in approach, not a change in direction.

“Digital identity remains essential if we want public services that work in the way people now expect, with less friction, fewer forms, and services that actually join up. The real test isn’t whether people are forced to use it, but whether it’s good enough that they choose to.”

He added: “If digital ID makes everyday interactions with the state easier, faster and more personalised, people will choose it. Getting the design and rollout right is how you build public trust, and it’s the foundation for genuinely modernising public services.”

The mandatory ID card scheme was announced by the prime minister last September in a blaze of publicity, and was presented as a major weapon in the campaign to curb immigration. Sir Keir said at the time: “Let me spell that out: you will not be able to work in the UK if you do not have digital ID. It is as simple as that.”

But support for the policy collapsed in the wake of Sir Keir’s announcement, falling from 53 per cent in June to just 31 per cent in October.

Government sources say the scheme will now be optional when it is introduced in 2029, with workers given the option of using other means to verify their identity.

Defending the decision to water down plans for mandatory digital ID as he faced fire in the Commons over the U-turn, Sir Keir insisted there “will be checks” on the right to work in the UK, arguing: “They will be digital, and they will be mandatory.”

Ukraine says 2 million potential troops evading call-up with 200,000 awol

Around two million Ukrainians are wanted for evading mobilisation while 200,000 soldiers are AWOL (absent without official leave), Ukraine’s new defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov revealed on Wednesday.

Fedorov has promised to revolutionise the country’s armed forces as it faces a critical manpower shortage. According to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, evading mobilisation is punishable by imprisonment of three to five years in wartime.

The 34-year-old made clear his plans to revolutionise the country’s armed forces, saying: “Our goal is to change the system: to reform the army, improve infrastructure on the front lines, eradicate lies and corruption, and make leadership and trust a new culture.

It follows news that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow for another round of peace talks with Vladimir Putin, according to a report.

Sources told Bloomberg that the two envoys could meet with the Russian President this month amid faltering efforts by the US to negotiate an end to the conflict. A date for the meeting has not been agreed.

A flurry of diplomatic activity driven by Trump has failed to yield a peace agreement, with Moscow refusing to budge on its maximalist demands and Kyiv continuing to seek security guarantees from Washington.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s viral ‘personality reveal’ wasn’t the mask-slip everybody thinks

They say no man is an island – even if, like Leonardo DiCaprio, they own their own private one. But is that really true? There has always been something remote about the 51-year-old star of Titanic and One Battle After Another. It’s a mystique that Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser touched on at last weekend’s awards ceremony, after cracking wise about DiCaprio’s age-gap dating history. “I’m sorry I made that joke,” she said. “It’s cheap. I tried not to, but like… we don’t know anything else about you, man. There’s nothing else. Like open up. I’m serious. I looked. I searched. The most in-depth interview you’ve ever given was in Teen Beat magazine in 1991. Is your favourite food still pasta, pasta, and more pasta?”

She’s not wrong: even by movie-star standards, DiCaprio remains more or less a complete cipher off-screen. We know he supports the LA Lakers. We know he likes the environment. (His private Caribbean island, Blackadore Caye, is said to house something called a luxury “eco-resort”.) But what else? Does he have a sense of humour? Does he have a Netflix account? Does he doomscroll into the wee hours? Beyond his aforementioned dating history (about which only the vaguest details ever really surface), the only solid narratives around DiCaprio are professional ones. For years, he was defined by his fruitless – even, as popular logic had it, desperate – pursuit of an Academy Award: the decades-long snubbing became a meme in and of itself. After missing out on the prize for films such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), The Aviator (2004) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), DiCaprio finally exorcised that demon with 2015’s The Revenant, now best remembered as the film in which an incessantly gurning Leo gets mauled by a bear and eats raw bison liver.

The bizarre intensity of DiCaprio’s process there – the madness to his Method, as it were – seemed to play into all the actorly preconceptions about him, the idea of him as an obliviously self-serious thesp. It is this reputation that might explain the virality of the Golden Globes’ big social media moment: a candid clip in which Leo, seated, can be seen flamboyantly gesticulating to another award-goer (speculated, by online sleuths, to be One Battle co-star Teyana Taylor), while mouthing about K-pop. Fans revelled in DiCaprio’s almost unprecedented display of offscreen exuberance, with some suggesting that his usual buttoned-down professionalism was “a performance”. This, they claimed, was a rare glimpse at his “real personality”.

In truth, though, the question ought not to be “is this the real DiCaprio?” but, instead, “Why do we care so much?” The hankering for insight into celebrities’ personal lives is nothing new, naturally – as long as there has been a film industry, there have been tabloid journalists and biographers growing fat from veil-lifting reportage and gossip trafficking – but in the age of social media, it has metastasised into a rather more particular fascination with micro-behaviours. People don’t want dirt so much as they want access, often to the most banal crevices of celebrity life. And the more that access is withheld, the more tantalising it becomes.

Increasingly, as happened with DiCaprio’s viral moment, fans are also turning to lip-reading to analyse even the subtlest private aside – and awards shows are a particular nexus for TikTok’s Lip-reading Industrial Complex. In recent years, figures such as Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez have gone viral thanks to inaudible interactions at the Globes, with fans scrutinising every (entirely hypothetical) phoneme on social media to unearth supposed slights. There’s not really much that celebs can do about it either, short of covering their mouths with their hands like all those ridiculous-looking Premier League footballers. As long as they attend these events, there will be cameras. And as long as there are cameras, people will be watching – all too closely.

When it comes to the attentions of social media, there is something particularly alluring about DiCaprio, a man who has juggled an intense personal privacy with outsized screen personas that are quintessential meme material. (The shot of him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, seated in an armchair and pointing ecstatically at a TV screen, has to rank among the most enduring internet memes in history.) But let’s be clear, there’s a big difference between a flash of awards-do ostentation, and actual transparency. That is to say, I wouldn’t bank on DiCaprio launching a personable curtain-lifting podcast any time soon. (“Leo Season”, anyone? “Chatter Island?”)

No, all that Golden Globes clip really revealed is that DiCaprio knows how to turn on the charm when required. An actor with charisma – who knew?! As for the “real Leonardo DiCaprio”, that’s anyone’s guess. But boy, are we going to keep guessing.

London’s Burning actor John Alford jailed for sexually assaulting teenage girls

Former London’s Burning and Grange Hill actor John Alford has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two teenage girls.

The 54-year-old was found guilty of four counts of sexual activity with the younger girl, aged 14, and charges of sexual assault and assault by penetration relating to the second teenager, aged 15, at a property in Hertfordshire in 2022.

Jurors heard during the trial that the defendant, charged under his real name, John Shannon, sexually assaulted the girls while they were drunk following a night out at the pub.

All of the offences took place at the home of a third girl.

The former actor, who appeared in the BBC drama Grange Hill, bought some £250 worth of food, alcohol and cigarettes from a nearby petrol station in the early hours of the morning, including a bottle of vodka which the victims subsequently drank, the court heard previously.

Alford then had sexual intercourse with the 14-year-old girl in the garden of the home and later in a downstairs toilet, and inappropriately touched the 15-year-old girl as she lay half asleep on the living room sofa, jurors heard.

Police received a third-party report from the 15-year-old girl’s mother outlining the allegations two days later, before the defendant was arrested.

The 15-year-old girl said in her evidence that she had felt “absolutely sick” following the assault and had planned to keep the incident secret before having a “mental breakdown” to her friend’s mother.

Alford told jurors during the trial that all the allegations were “scandalous” and a “set-up”, and that there was no DNA evidence to support the assaults.

He said he had told police that the girls were “going to extort money” from him, and that he suffered from mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and paranoia.

The younger girl said in a statement read to St Albans Crown Court during sentencing on Wednesday that being sexually assaulted has “affected me and my family in every way”.

The older girl said in her impact statement: “This man destroyed my mental wellbeing.”

Mohammed Bashir, defending, said the defendant “is a man with no similar type of offences in his conviction history”.

He added: “The impact upon the girls has been great but it’s important to note that in that time Mr Shannon has not committed any further offences.”

Recorder Caroline Overton said the victim impact statements told of the “significant and ongoing impact of your offending on their lives”.

Alford shook his head from the dock as Ms Overton outlined the offences before sentencing.

She told the defendant his focus “has remained throughout on the impact to you and to your family”.

Ms Overton sentenced Alford to eight and-a-half years in custody, and told him he will serve up to two-thirds in custody and serve the remainder on licence.

She also told the defendant he would be subject to a restraining order and she made a sexual harm prevention order.

Alford was previously convicted of supplying illicit drugs to former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood, who was known as the “fake sheikh”, following a trial in 1999, and was jailed for nine months.

Jurors heard he also received a payment of £500,000 from the news organisation in relation to allegations that his phone had been hacked.

Alford was convinced by Mahmood to meet a fake Arabian prince at London’s Savoy hotel in 1997 on the promise of receiving new acting roles and lucrative public appearances, before later being asked to source cocaine for the individual.

He later filed lawsuits against the News of the World and its editors with claims that he was subjected to landline wire-taps, voicemail hacking and the wide-ranging theft of his personal data for use in their headline stories.

Mahmood was jailed in 2016 for tampering with evidence in the collapsed drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos, which led to Alford’s conviction being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Lawyer Chris White, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “John Shannon was fully aware of the girl’s ages, yet he chose to exploit them – giving them alcohol and then committing sexual offences against them.

“We commend the victims for reporting what happened. They were supported to give evidence against Shannon: their statements were recorded and played to the jury during the trial, and we arranged for screens to be provided so they did not have to face the defendant during cross-examination.

“Shannon’s sentence today sends a clear message – we will pursue those who target young people for their own gratification.”

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MPs call for removal of water boss amid continuing ‘totally shambolic’ outages

MPs are calling for the “inadequate” boss of South East Water to resign as 17,000 properties in Kent and Sussex remain without water for the fifth day.

Pressure is mounting on the chief executive David Hinton to step down as politicians describe the embattled company’s response to the ongoing outages as “totally shambolic”.

South East Water blamed the latest in a string of supply failures on burst pipes and power cuts caused by Storm Goretti, and said it is “working around the clock” to fix the leaks and bursts across the counties.

However, the company has faced fury from both politicians and residents, who have been left without water supplies for days.

Conservative MP for Maidstone and Malling, Helen Grant, said her constituents had been repeatedly left without water due to failures at South East Water.

The MP was one of six MPs who wrote a letter calling for Mr Hinton’s removal and said she has “no confidence” in him.

“It’s been terrible and we’ve had this before,” she told The Independent. “We feel the lessons are not being learnt by South East Water. Their communication has been dreadful. It’s really appalling, too little too late and often very confusing.”

“I have no confidence in the company and I don’t think they’re fit for purpose. The leadership team is inadequate and I think serious changes need to be made in the not-too-distant future,” she said.

“I haven’t come across an MP in Kent or Sussex who is not calling for Mr Hinton’s resignation. It’s been chaos and our position is clear – it is his time.”

The latest shortage also followed disruption before Christmas, when more than 20,000 properties were left without water.

Katie Lam, Conservative MP for Weald of Kent, described the water company’s response as “totally shambolic”.

“No information or the wrong information, no real interest in livestock, vulnerable customers left without deliveries, and no reliable number to call, even for members of parliament desperately trying to help our constituents,” she told The Independent.

She said thousands in her own constituency have only been able to get even bottled water because a group of volunteers – the Staplehurst Emergency Help Team – have provided it.

She said: “This is an extraordinary failure, and the chief executive of South East Water cannot keep his job.”

Sir Keir Starmer said ministers are holding emergency meetings every day as thousands of people are now enduring a fifth day without water.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has called for SEW to be stripped of its licence for failing “over and over again”, during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.

Sir Keir replied that the situation is “totally unacceptable”.

He said: “He will want to know that ministers have chaired daily emergency meetings to hold the company to account to deliver on the change that’s urgently needed at the moment in all the areas that he mentioned.

Mike Martin MP, Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, told The Independent that the outages are “having an unimaginable impact on the daily lives of residents”.

“I was at a primary school yesterday evening where the after-school club was filled with children of parents that have to work late,” he said.

“When the water is going in and out without any communication, parents are forced to fork out huge sums on last-minute childcare.”

“I don’t believe the leadership are fully empathetic to all these knock-on impacts, otherwise they’d have better comms. The CEO must go.”

Labour MP for Ashford Sojan Joseph said the company “need to step up and fix this quickly”.

“Their standards have not been good enough and residents have a right to be angry. These issues are a total result of heavy deregulation and neglecting water infrastructure,” he told The Independent, adding he hoped the government’s new Water (Special Measures) Act would hold CEOs to account.

The prime minister has also criticised the embattled water company, saying during PMQs that the outages are “clearly unacceptable”.

He said ministers had chaired daily emergency meetings to “hold the company to account” and warned they must “urgently invest in infrastructure”.

Ofwat, the water services regulation authority, has voiced “concern” about the latest outages, and says it will “review all the evidence” before deciding whether SEW has met its legal obligations to customer care.

The regulator can impose fines on water companies, ban unfair executive bonuses, force money clawbacks, and investigate failures – but cannot directly fire a water company’s CEO.

South East Water has said supplies will continue to be returned to people in Kent and Sussex throughout the day.

The majority of those still affected are in East Grinstead, East Sussex, where approximately 11,500 properties remain without water.

Bottled water stations remain in place in Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead and Maidstone, and location details can be found on SEW’s website.

South East Water bosses have been recalled to appear before MPs over a water outage before Christmas, as thousands of its customers suffer following the latest supply failures.

South East Water bosses, including Mr Hinton, have been recalled to appear before MPs on the parliamentary environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee, over a water outage before Christmas.

Alistair Carmichael, chair of the Efra committee, said he and his colleagues remained “deeply sceptical” about the water company’s version of events surrounding an outage affecting 24,000 properties in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, last month.

South East Water has repeatedly apologised for the water shortages. In a statement on its website on Wednesday, it said: “We’re extremely sorry to all customers who currently have no water or low pressure.

“We know how tough it is to be without water and this is not the level of service we want to provide. We are using every available resource to water supplies, from fixing leaks to rerouting water around our network.”

A South East Water spokesperson said: “David Hinton remains committed to resolving the immediate issues facing customers in both Kent and Sussex, whilst continuing to seek to obtain the investment to deliver the much-needed improvements in resilience to the South East Water network, detailed in the company’s business plan.”

Nearly 1.5 million households to receive cold weather payment this year

Nearly 1.5 million households will soon get a one-off payment from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) following the freezing cold temperatures experienced across the UK experienced in the first weeks of 2026.

Areas across the nation reached were recently battered by Storm Goretti, which brought winds, snow and temperatures as low as -12C at points.

To help support people during the cold snap, the DWP continues to run its cold weather payment scheme for qualifying households. This is a one-off payment of £25 that is triggered for every seven-day period where the temperature of an area is at or below zero degrees.

Here are the affected postcode areas for the period of 30 December 2025 to 9 January 2026:

In Northern Ireland, postcodes where payment has been triggered are: BT24, BT25, BT26, BT30, BT31, BT32, BT33, and BT34.

People should then receive the payment within 14 days.

Over one million households across 802 postcode areas are now estimated to receive a payment, with these areas split across the UK, covering areas of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Since 1 November, there have been eight days of triggers due to the sub-zero temperatures experienced across the country.

Pensions minister Torsten Bell said: “As temperatures plunge, cold weather payments will automatically get support directly to vulnerable households.

“Combined with the biggest ever pension credit take-up campaign and our triple lock commitment – set to increase the state pension by up to £2,100 over this parliament – we’re ensuring pensioners get the support they need this winter.”

The scheme runs from 1 November to 31 March every year. The payment is paid for every period during which a postcode area experiences seven or more days of freezing temperatures, meaning households can receive more than one payment. Several living in the Lake District received three last year, which was £75 in total.

Those eligible for the cold weather payment must receive at least one of the following:

Those who are not receiving pension credit will also typically need to have a health condition, caring responsibilities, or young or disabled children.

They must also live in an area that has experienced seven days of zero or sub-zero temperatures.

The DWP relies on Met Office equipment to measure temperatures across all eligible UK postcodes. Those who disagree with the judgement are able to appeal directly to the department.

Although the affected areas cover parts of Scotland, those living in the country will not receive a cold weather payment. The Scottish government has replaced the scheme with its annual winter heating payments.

Those eligible will get the payment automatically. They should arrive in the same bank account they receive benefit payments, within 14 working days of the cold period, with the payment reference “DWP CWP”.

Those who believe they are eligible but have not received the payment should contact the DWP.

A total of 17 out of the Met Office’s 71 weather stations triggered the payment during the week ending 9 January, 14 of them for the first time this winter.

The highest number of payments (241,000) was triggered by the station at Rostherne in Cheshire, covering people living in much of east Cheshire and southern Greater Manchester.

Some 136,000 payments were triggered by the weather station at Morpeth in Northumberland, covering many people across the county as well as much of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland.

Below is the full list of over 700 postcodes eligible for the cold weather payment: