Body Found In Hyde Park

Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service were called to reports of a body discovered in the Serpentine, Hyde Park on Wednesday. The Marine Policing Unit recovered the body from the water. Whilst officers await formal identification they believe it to be that of Anthony Soh. Anthony was last seen on Tuesday, 22 March, around 11pm in the grounds of Imperial College, London, where he had been socialising with friends. The death is being treated as non-suspicious at this time.

Radical Approach To Drugs Recovery Piloted

Eight areas in England will test innovative new ways to help drug addicts recover and achieve a sustained recovery, Public Health Minister Anne Milton announced today. The areas have been selected following a competition to pilot a Payment by Results (PbR) scheme set out in the new Drugs Strategy 2010. It demonstrates the Government’s commitment to go further, faster on improving the recovery of adults by incentivising the system around outcomes. This will mean that providers will no longer be paid simply on process activity but on the outcomes they achieve - such as being free of dependence or back in work. This will mean a renewed focus on giving clients the support they need to tackle the very individual problems they face in integrating more fully in society. The pilot sites will now start work on designing systems that reward providers who support individuals to recover from their dependence by using clear outcomes for the individual, their families and communities. The successful pilot sites which have been invited to pilot the scheme are: Bracknell Forest, Enfield, Kent, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Stockport, Wakefield and Wigan. Each of the successful areas put forward innovative ideas for new payment models for drugs recovery that will take forward the PbR approach. Later this month the successful pilot sites will start work with the cross government PbR drug recovery project team to begin co-designing the detail of the pilots, with the aim that they are up and running from October 2011.

Certificate of Approval Scheme Abolished

Parliament has approved the Remedial Order that will abolish the certificate of approval scheme. This means that the scheme will end on 9 May 2011. At present, any migrant who is already in the UK and is subject to immigration control must apply for a certificate of approval before they can get married or register a civil partnership in this country (unless they are getting married within the Anglican Church). The government is now seeking to remedy the declaration by the UK courts that the scheme is incompatible with Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Additionally, changes made following rulings from the courts have weakened the scheme, and it is no longer an effective method of preventing sham marriage.

(BMcN/GK)