Social services officials admitted yesterday that they had made a “procedural failure” and were guilty of a “non-existent risk assessment” in the weeks before a lodger killed a mother and her two daughters when he set fire to their home. Health officials had notified Oxfordshire County Council that Darren Carr, 24, was living as a lodger with a family in their area. He had earlier been released from a psychiatric unit at Fairmile Hospital, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Carr’s plea of being guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility was yesterday accepted by the prosecution at Birmingham Crown Court after an earlier adjournment Sentencing was adjourned until next week. The zoo owner John Aspinall said last night that his keepers would be going back into tiger cages “very soon” after he won another victory against the council which has tried to ban his “hands-on” policy. An industrial tribunal in Ashford, Kent, agreed to Mr Aspinall’s request to change the terms under which staff can enter tiger enclosures.

New guidelines agreed at an earlier hearing had stipulated that a minimum of two keepers must be in a cage at the same time, but Mr Aspinall said this had proved to be “unworkable”.
Mr Aspinall, 70, said : “The keepers will be going back in with the tigers very soon. “However, the fact remains that there are crippling inequalities in our global village and it is hard to see an end to the sufferings of many people unless those who possess are prepared to give to those who are dispossessed a chance to start again.”The churches also believe that the run-up to the millennium will lead to a mood of national reflection in Britain.. It has made eight recommendations which it hopes will come early enough to co- ordinate responses among English churches.The main Christian churches have long campaigned against Third World debt, which they regard as the exploitation of the poor by the rich. “We recognise that this a very complex problem with no easy solutions,” Bishop Reid said yesterday. People of Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths have said to us that it is thoroughly understandable that Christian values should predominate then.”
The bishop led a steering party for Churches Together in England, an umbrella body for almost all the Christian bodies in the country. “Without Jesus there would be no millennium to celebrate.”

He added: “The millennium is, as the chief rabbi himself said, a specifically Christian festival. “It’s our party,” said the Bishop of Maidstone, the Rt Rev Gavin Reid, yesterday.

Writing in the profession’s journal last week, Mr Mears said: “An excellent idea But how exactly?”Leading article, page 16. An exodus of staff has begun at the society’s headquarters in Chancery Lane, central London.His future as the profession’s leader could have been sealed at the women’s conference, when he outraged an audience of solicitors and barristers by denying the existence of sex discrimination in the profession and lambasting discrimination “zealots” who thrived on “grievances and heresy-hunting and use minorities as raw material for their whinge factories”.Ironically, Mr Mears was recently forced into defending existing Law Society policy on conveyancing fees, following the formation of a breakaway Solicitors’ Association which is demanding an end to predatory pricing. In reality, the move to get rid of Mr Mears and Mr Sayer is likely to garner significant support from within the council.The pool of names from which other contenders for the three key posts might be drawn include Michael Napier, a high-profile personal injury lawyer and Lesley MacDonagh, managing partner of the city firm Lovell White Durrant. As well as the hosepipe ban, which brings East Yorkshire and the remaining parts of North Yorkshire into line with the rest of the region, the company has announced a new pounds 70m investment package in an attempt to avoid rota cuts this summer.. A slate of candidates to oust the Law Society’s maverick president, Martin Mears, and his deputy Robert Sayer, is being planned by opponents in the wake of inflammatory remarks by Mr Mears at a women’s solicitors’ conference. Mr Mears’ declaration that allegations of prejudice were “nonsense” at the conference earlier this month is likely to go down as a turning point in a chequered 10 months as leader of the society’s 70, 000 solicitors.
The figure being strongly tipped to stand against him for the presidency is Tony Girling, a Kent solicitor and long-standing member of the society’s 75-strong ruling council and the current deputy vice-president.While neither Mr Girling nor any of the other names circulating for the vice-president and deputy vice-president posts are expected to declare their hands until nearer the 5 June deadline for nominations, a group of strategists is expected to formally announce in the next few weeks a “grass-roots” movement to identify challengers.The object is to counter Mr Mears’ claim that only he stands for the small and medium-sized firm that has taken a hammering during the property slump Mr Girling’s firm operates a series of small offices. The company has faced criticism from Ofwat, the industry’s regulator, over its poor leakage and supply record.

The extra provision followed the announcement that profits in the first half of last year rose 75 per cent to pounds 189m.Meanwhile, last night in the Yorkshire Water area a hosepipe ban was extended to cover the whole supply area in an attempt to stave off the drought which is already threatening the region. But homes with garden sprinklers or swimming pools will now require water meters across the whole region.Severn Trent, which last month joined the takeover battle for South West Water, said the easing in controls was due to a pounds 150m drought investment programme. Announcing the move yesterday, Severn Trent Water thanked its customers for helping to conserve supplies after the ban was imposed during last summer’s drought.
In March, restrictions were removed from the five other counties under the company’s control. The relaxation in restrictions comes into force in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire with immediate effect.