Ministers committed to ending rough sleeping by the end of this year. An inquiry into how a serving metropolitan Police Officer was able to abduct and kill Sarah Everard has concluded he remained on the force because of failures in recruitment and vetting. The inquiry said red flags were missed at the three Different Police forces where Wayne Couzens served over several years. He was off duty when he kidnapped the 33 year old in march 2021. He is now serving a whole Life Sentence for rape and murder. Her killing by a serving Police Officer prompted a widespread outpouring of anger and grief and sparked demonstrations over concern for the safety of women. The chair of the inquiry said that without a radical overhaul of Police Vetting and recruitment there is nothing to stop another Wayne Couzens operating in plain sight. We are expecting the full Police Response shortly but we have heard an Opening Statement from Chief Constable Gavin Stevens who said the harrowing murder of Sarah Evera
that from the very beginning they thought this missing persons investigation, they treated nicola as high risk because she had specific vulnerability. they later clarified all that by telling us what those vulnerabilities wear. they said that nicola had alcohol issues and that she had struggled with the menopause, and that they had resurfaced in recent months. that provoked a lot of reaction. you heard that tweet from the home secretary. what followed was a lot of criticism, which perhaps the force was not expecting, from a number of groups who felt deeply uncomfortable that this kind of information was being released to the public, details of nicola s private life, three weeks into the investigation, and the questioned whether it was relevant, whether they had to do that at all. so the force was under a lot of scrutiny. lancashire police did inform nicola s family they were about to do this. they said that nicola would not have wanted that kind of information to be released.
energy bosses have held talks with the government to discuss plans to help customers struggling with soaring bills. ministers are promising more help in the coming months. a british man accused of being a member of the islamic state group is remanded in custody charged with terror offences. and the crisis of local swimming pools. the bbc finds more than 60 have closed across the uk in the past three years. hello. welcome to bbc news. welcome to bbc news. a&e departments in england had one of their worst months ever injuly, with record numbers of patients waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted. this is from the latest monthly performance data from nhs england. and the number of people waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a new all time high. 6.7 million. the ambulance are dealing with the most urgent cases took an average of 29 minutes longer took an average of 29 minutes longer to respond than injune. shadow health secretary wes streeting has told the b