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Council branded 'hypocritical' over plastic cup usage

Local Democracy Reporting Service

Lewisham Council bought 144,000 disposable plastic cups in the 12 months ending March.

The figures have been labelled “hypocritical” by Lewisham and Greenwich London Assembly candidate for the Conservatives, Charlie Davis, since the authority last November moved a motion to ban single use plastics and in February declared a climate emergency.

The cups were bought to stock Laurence House, the Town Hall, Civic Suite and Eros House.

The declaration came a month before the FOI period ended.

But Mr Davis said the authority was not moving as quickly as others to change its practices, such as Greenwich Council, which has pledged to remove single use plastics from its buildings by 2020.

Councillor Sophie McGeevor said the council had already made a commitment to end the use of single and short term use plastic in council buildings, offices, schools and nurseries by May 2022.

But the cabinet member for environment and transport said the council had stopped restocking the cups, but much more needed to be done.

The black marks that show possible fragments of history

Neil Smith

South Cumbria journalist, BBC Cumbria

Archaeologists have started their exploration of part of the Lakes School site near Windermere.

Radar traces on paper
BBC

They are using ground-penetrating radar, producing traces like the one pictured above, where the black blodges may be fragments of concrete from the buildings that housed 300 boys liberated from Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War Two.

The Calgarth estate was originally built for people working on flying boats nearby, and after the "Windermere Boys" had lived there it was bulldozed to make way for the secondary school.

The archeological survey has centred at first on a school rugby pitch.

Operator pushing radar along ground
BBC

We've trawled through witness testimony, maps, plans, looking for information, descriptions of what these buildings might have looked like, we've overlain that on to modern maps, and that's what's given us the suggestion that one of those buildings should be here.

Professor Caroline Sturdy-CollsStaffordshire University