Soldiers and firefighters will test their speed and efficiency by setting up temporary flood barriers during Exercise Touchpaper.

The Environment Agency and emergency services are teaming up to test ways to protect Salisbury from flooding.

Exercise Touchpaper will last 3 days and is led by the Environment Agency, who will supply flood barriers, about 50 staff and all the necessary equipment for a pump.

The army’s ability to set up barriers will be tested at Ashley Road on Tuesday 1 October 2019. It should take soldiers about 3 hours to set up 350m of defences, before they are taken down again. Access to properties won’t be affected.

Guy Parker of the Environment Agency said:

This is an opportunity to test the speed and efficiency of the army in setting up temporary flood barriers at Ashley Road and Fisherton Recreation Ground to reduce flood risk to properties in Salisbury in times of need.

Practicing with the barriers now to get the alignment right and give valuable experience to the military is obviously preferable than during a flood.

The exercise will also trial:

• new equipment to allow firefighters’ pumps and hoses to be connected to Environment Agency equipment
• a new way to capture water from hoses during firefighting to stop it from entering watercourses and be reused
• Community information officers – a new role for the Environment Agency to give face-to-face information and updates during an incident

Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service will be supporting the exercise by helping to set up the temporary flood barriers, and a high volume pump will be brought up from Christchurch on the third day (operational commitments allowing).

The Environment Agency has a world class flood forecasting service which provides people, businesses and the emergency services vital time to prepare in a flood. 1.4 million properties are signed up to our free flood warnings – an increase of 129,000 since last winter.

For more information on flood risk and to sign up to receive free flood warnings go to www.gov.uk/check-flood-risk or call Floodline on 0345 988 1188.

• Minister for Investment delivers a keynote speech at UK Space Conference in Newport
• DIT announces support for £100m investment in Leicester Space Park that will create more than 2,500 jobs by 2020
• Australian-UK Space Bridge to unlock growth and increase innovation in both countries

On Tuesday, 24 September, the Department for International Trade’s (DIT) Minister for Investment, Graham Stuart, delivered a keynote speech at the UK Space Conference 2019 in Newport, Wales to reinforce the government’s commitment to boosting investment and exports in the UK space sector.

UK space exports are set to grow to £25bn in the next decade, meeting the industry and government target for space exports to make up 60% of the sector’s revenue by 2030.

In his speech, the Minister expressed his support for the £100m+ Space Park Leicester, an industry-academic cluster, announced last year. DIT has recognised this as a High Potential Opportunity to increase market penetration and exports by reducing the cost of satellite build and enabling better data-driven products, services and solutions in the rapidly growing space sector. The development will be delivered by the University of Leicester, working closely with a range of local, national and international partners.

The Space Park, opening in late 2020, will create more than 2,500 jobs and will include research and development across the entire space value chain, with plans now being finalised for a new open-access satellite manufacturing facility aimed at rapid, low cost access to space.

Space Park Leicester will be a hub for businesses in the sector to set up and grow and work with the largest space-related academic talent pool in the UK. In fact, Airbus announced its plans to re-locate their Leicestershire based Earth Observation expert team to the space park.

The Minister also reaffirmed the government’s commitment to helping British companies in the space sector compete overseas by strengthening ties with our partners from around the world. This came as the UK Space Agency announced a new collaboration between the UK and Australian Space Agencies to unlock investment and share best practice across a common framework in both countries.

DIT is now also leading a mission focused on securing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by bringing 24 companies from seven different countries to the trade show and other parts of the UK.

Minister for Investment Graham Stuart at the Department for International Trade said:

Space is going mainstream. For communications, data, earth observation, climate change management, smart cities and transport, space technology is fundamental and growing in importance. With Europe’s leading science base and continuing membership of the European Space Agency, the UK’s commercial space industry is determined, with government support, to double its share of the growing global market.

That’s why I was delighted to announce the Australian-UK Space Bridge yesterday at the UK Space Conference in Newport. International collaboration is key to our success and DIT has a dedicated space team and trade advisors around the world ready to support businesses looking to trade in space expertise and technologies. This pioneering tie-up with Australia and the fantastic showcase event at the new International Conference Centre in Newport are just the start. With delegations attending from all over the world supported by DIT we are determined to do our part to make UK space a continuing success.

Grant Bourhill, CEO of Leicester Science Park said:

Space Park Leicester will be transformational for the UK. It will see the industry collaborating with the largest pool of space-related academic talent in the country and position us at the centre of the global shift to ‘New Space’.

We will work with DIT to attract international partners to access the space park and expand their businesses. The DIT partnership and promotion has already strengthened the Space Park’s position as a key piece of national strategic infrastructure in the UK’s growing space ecosystem and the department is critical in our engagement with international companies.

At the conference, the Minister showed his support for the sector by visiting UK pioneers in space, including Airbus, Thales Alenia Space UK, Deimos Space UK, Space Park Leicester, Spaceport Cornwall and SatixFy.

Last year, Israeli high-tech company SatiXFY announced it will be carrying out the R&D development for chips resilient to harsh radiation in space within their Cheadle operation with support from DIT and the UK Space Agency.

Capital expenditure will equal £30m with 30 new jobs created. SatixFy (UK) estimate this investment will generate upwards of £50m in sales by 2021.

In a further boost for the sector, the Prime Minister has announced a £20m investment from government into research that can improve systems at the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre to help predict severe space weather events.

The Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) has produced a series of examples to support the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) in its response to a legal judgment. The case centres around pension entitlements for specific fee-paid members of the judiciary who were not previously eligible for the judicial pension scheme.

In our report titled ‘Fee-paid judicial litigation’, we set out 6 scenarios to show how MOJ’s proposed methodology for calculating pension entitlements would work for certain groups of eligible judges who began their fee-paid service before 31 March 1995.

Our report was submitted to the Central London Employment Tribunal as part of MOJ’s response to the 7 November 2018 legal judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case of O’Brien v Ministry of Justice.

Proposed remedy: Options and choices

MOJ’s proposed remedy for fee-paid judges who were in service before 31 March 1995 depends on the pension scheme that a similar salaried judge would have been eligible for. The examples show the various options available for different categories of fee-paid judge.

Increased clarity

MOJ’s proposed remedy is necessarily complex, because the issues which are being remedied are themselves complex. Our scenarios aim to give a clearer indication of how the proposed methodologies would work in practice, to help the Employment Tribunal and eligible claimants assess the proposed remedy design.

Our worked examples are based on hypothetical fee-paid judges across 3 of the relevant pension schemes, and with differing levels of qualifying service. In our examples we set out detailed calculations for each hypothetical judge’s total pension entitlement, reflecting the different pension options that would be available under the proposed remedy.

Illustrative information

The scenarios included in our paper are illustrative only and should not be used as a ‘scheme guide’ for an amended fee-paid pension scheme. MOJ’s earlier updates to the Employment Tribunal were published on 18 February, 20 March, 20 May and 22 July this year. GAD’s report should be read in conjunction with these updates.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Decision letter and Inspector’s Report for a called-in decision.