The £25 million figure would cover the construction of the bridge, while the remaining £55 million is needed to cover complex associated works, including critical utility provisions, diversions, and rail-replacement co-ordination over the Central Line. Source link
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, Outrage is boiling in North Texas after the McKinney City Council voted 7-0 to greenlight a major new Islamic center complex, brushing aside hours of public testimony that included a direct warning from an Iranian Christian who fled Sharia law. Citizens packed City Hall for a marathon session that stretched past midnight. More than 150 people signed up to speak. The approved site plan covers roughly 5.5 acres at Virginia Parkway and Crutcher Crossing. It includes a 15,000-square-foot sanctuary, a 10,000-square-foot classroom building, and a 7,000-square-foot gym for the McKinney Islamic Association, which says its existing facility has been outgrown. City staff insisted the revised plan met every zoning requirement with no variances, leaving the council little legal room to deny it. Council members framed the vote as purely procedural. Residents who showed up in force saw something far larger at stake. ? NOW: Outrage is ERUPTING after McKinney, Texas council votes to APPROVE a large Islamic Center Countless citizens stormed the meeting to oppose it, including an …
On a Wednesday morning in Newham, east London, the Carpenters Estate is not a prepossessing sight. Once a bustling community hub, this collection of tower blocks has been reduced to a ghost town, subject to endless plans for redevelopment going back 25 years. Many of its flats have been rendered uninhabitable by flooding, structural issues and damp. All the same, provided they do not spend the night there, residents are free to return to the flats they still think of as home, however run down they have become. “We cook dinner in our flats, then we have to spend the night in a Travelodge,” says Warren Lubin, who has lived on the estate since the 1990s. “The council moved us out in November 2025 because of structural issues making the building unsafe, but we still can’t see or hear any work being done. Sometimes if it rains hard enough, you’ll have water running down the main stairs.” Residents like Warren Lubin just want a home to live in – Jeff Gilbert It is a similar …
Wandsworth Labour accused the local Conservative Party of breaching pre-election period (PEP) rules Source link
The National Secular Society has urged a Welsh council to scrap its plan to build a new Catholic ‘super-school’ that would cost taxpayers almost £86 million. Flintshire County Council is proposing to build a new 3-18 through school on the site of an existing voluntary aided (VA) Catholic school, and to close a number of local Catholic schools. The costs of the new buildings would be provided entirely by public funding, with the Welsh Government covering 85% of the total project costs and the remaining 15% funded by council capital borrowing. Although the council estimates the costs of the project at £55 million, this rises to just under £86 million once its borrowing costs are factored in. Despite being 100% funded by the public, due to conventions of ownership regarding VA schools, the newly developed facilities would be handed over in their entirety to the Catholic Church, one of the wealthiest religious institutions in the world. The NSS described the proposals as “astonishingly poor value for money”, and a “misallocation of significant public funding for …
While the council inspected the property in June and October, and arranged some work, Miss X told the ombudsman the leak still had not been fully resolved. She said the council’s delays in fixing the issue had severely impacted her physical and mental health. Source link
Andy Burnham is not actively considering replacing council tax and stamp duty, according to Downing Street. The i paper reported on Sunday that Treasury officials have been examining options for reforming council tax, replacing it with a 0.48% annual property tax. The prime minister also told the BBC that his government will face “big decisions” about the levy. But a spokesperson rejected the idea on Monday, telling reporters: “Suggestions that scrapping council tax or stamp duty are under ‘active consideration’ by the prime minister are not true. “As has always been the case, decisions on tax are a matter for the chancellor to set out at fiscal events.” Asked if Treasury officials are also looking at the policy plans, the spokesperson said all “decisions on tax are matters for the chancellor to set out at the budget”. “It wouldn’t be right to comment outside of those circumstances,” he added. When asked about the prime minister’s suggestion that council tax needs reform, the spokesperson said: “What has been clear is we need to honour the manifesto …
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government. There’s no exact way to measure the effectiveness of Los Angeles City Council members. But we analyzed three basic elements — meeting attendance, committee assignments and amount of legislation drafted — to give readers a sense of what their local electeds are up to. Meeting attendance As part of charter reform efforts, the City Council sent a measure to the November ballot asking voters to allow it to reduce the number of council meetings from three per week to just one. The proposal received stiff pushback from at least one council member, Monica Rodriguez. For the record: 9:05 a.m. July 25, 2026An earlier version of this newsletter said a proposal to reduce the number of City Council meetings from three a week to one failed to make the November ballot. The measure did make the ballot. “Meeting less for a city of 4 million people I think sends the …
A mock-up of President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, pictured during the state fair on D.C.’s National Mall in June. The real thing needs to undergo a historic preservation review before it can be approved. Jen Golbeck/AP hide caption toggle caption Jen Golbeck/AP The Trump administration is eyeing a workaround for one of the procedural hurdles facing its proposed 250-foot arch: weakening federal oversight of all construction projects affecting historic sites. Critics say that the move would not only clear a path for President Trump’s controversial projects in D.C., but also endanger the preservation of historic and cultural places across the United States. “Every American who has any place in their heart that is historic or culturally significant to them should be concerned about this attempt to gut historic preservation protections,” said Greg Werkheiser, founding partner at the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners. The National Register of Historic Places contains over 100,000 properties, encompassing more than 1.8 million buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts. They take many forms, from a house to a burial ground, a …
The National Secular Society has backed a Welsh council’s plan to redesignate a faith primary school as a nonreligious community school. In May, Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC) voted to remove the Voluntary Controlled (VC) status from Cilgerran Church in Wales VC School and convert it to a school without a religious designation, following a consultation. Welcoming the decision, the NSS praised the council’s “secular approach to education” as the “best means of ensuring publicly funded schools are equally welcoming to all children, regardless of their backgrounds”. The NSS added: “Inclusive schools which educate pupils together are one of our best means of promoting community cohesion, whilst faith schools which divide children on the basis of religion and are entirely out of step with the irreligious and religiously diverse Wales of today. “Schools we all pay for should be managed in the best interests of everyone, not used as a vehicle for the agenda of religious institutions”. As revealed in the 2021 census, the nonreligious are the largest religion or belief group in Wales at 47% …
