Can Fire and Rescue Services and the National Health Service work together to improve the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable older people? Design of a proof of concept study

Older adults are at increased risk both of falling and of experiencing accidental domestic fire. In addition to advanced age, these adverse events share the risk factors of balance or mobility problems, cognitive impairment and socioeconomic deprivation. For both events, the consequences include significant injury and death, and considerable socioeconomic costs for the individual and informal carers, as well as for emergency services, health and social care agencies.Secondary prevention services for older people who have fallen or who are identifiable as being at high risk of falling include NHS Falls clinics, where a multidisciplinary team offers an individualised multifactorial targeted intervention including strength and balance exercise programmes, medication changes and home hazard modification. A similar preventative approach is employed by most Fire and Rescue Services who conduct Home Fire Safety Visits to assess and, if necessary, remedy domestic fire risk, fit free smoke alarms with instruction for use and maintenance, and plan an escape route. We propose that the similarity of population at risk, location, specific risk factors and the commonality of preventative approaches employed could offer net gains in terms of feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability if activities within these two preventative approaches were to be combined

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games

Making cities more child- and nature-friendly: a child-focused study of nature connectedness in New Zealand cities

While it is clear that contact with nature is vital to the health, happiness and well-being of urban residents, itis less clear how urban children connect with nature in their immediate environments. In this paper we ask: Do city children feel that they can connect with nature and what forms does this connection take? We present the perspectives of 187 children living in three New Zealand cities. We argue that for most children, cities can offer a variety of positive natural opportunities but that low-income children tend to access less biodiverse spaces. We explore how planners and other urban professionals can better understand and support children's connectivity with locally available biodiverse environments

Captured streams and springs in combined sewers: A review of the evidence, consequences and opportunities

Captured streams and springs may be flowing in combined sewers, increasing clean baseflow in pipes and wastewater treatment works (WwTWs), reducing pipe capacity and increasing treatment costs. The UK water industry is aware of this in principle, but there has been no explicit discussion of this in the published literature, nor have there been any known attempts to manage it. Instead, the current focus is on the similar intrusion of groundwater infiltration through pipe cracks and joints. We have conducted a thorough review of literature and international case studies to investigate stream and spring capture, finding several examples with convincing evidence that this occurs. We identify three modes of entry: capture by conversion, capture by interception, and direct spring capture. Methods to identify and quantify capture are limited, but the experience in Zurich suggests that it contributed 7–16% of the baseflow reaching WwTWs. There are negative impacts for the water industry in capital and operational expenditure, as well as environmental and social impacts of loss of urban streams. For a typical WwTW (Esholt, Bradford) with 16% of baseflow from captured streams and springs, we conservatively estimate annual costs of £2 million to £7 million. A detailed case study from Zurich is considered that has successfully separated captured baseflow into daylighted streams through the urban area, with multiple economic, environmental and social benefits. We conclude that there is a strong case for the UK water industry to consider captured streams and springs, quantify them, and assess the merits of managing them

Planning, urban design and the night-time city: still at the margins?

The planning system was constrained by a neo-liberalist insistence on land-use planning in the 1980s and early 1990s, thereby providing the institutional framework for deregulation of the numbers, capacities and types of licensed premises in town and city centres. This had a direct impact on levels of crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. Criminologists have criticized planners for their complicity in this process. The article argues that entertainment uses have been marginal to the social and ecological preoccupations of the planning profession. It suggests that the reintroduction of spatial planning by the New Labour government has allowed planners to reassert social and environmental objectives into their development plans and potentially to introduce a greater degree of regulatory control. The article examines the changes to the planning system and its complex relation to licensing. Finally, it questions whether this new opportunity for planners to intervene will be realized in the current economic downturn