Latest 7 magazine

Phil Mills on police search of gardens for signs of serial killer, and Rock Clinic celebrates 20 years of counselling

It’s been all about the police this week. Yes, the thin blue line is set to get thinner as the Sussex force looks at cutting numbers of officers as it strives to find savings.

One senior insider told Latest 7: “At the same time, demand on our services is likely to increase – we’re bound to see a rise in crime as more jobs are lost and people find it harder to make ends meet.”
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Brighton and Hove City Council leader Mary Mears on a very influential vicar

I was absolutely delighted to hear last week that the number of young homeless people in the city has fallen by a massive 79 per cent in the last four years. This is largely as a result of some excellent ‘early intervention’ work which council officers are doing to help prevent family breakdown, such as opening a new supported housing project for teen mothers and tackling the underlying causes of youth homelessness – mental illness, drugs and alcohol dependency. This difficult, and often unseen, work is now starting to pay real dividends.
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Phil Mills on Bognor tragedy, payback time for local criminal, and Olympian values for schools

It was an anniversary people would have preferred not to have remembered but a similar tragedy brought the terrible events flooding back.

Four-year-old Keira Madden, “a princess” as her father described her, was found dead at her home in Felpham, Bognor, at the same time her mother Cathy, 40, fell to her death from Seven Sisters cliffs near Birling Gap, not far from Beachy Head.
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Brighton and Hove City Council leader Mary Mears salutes the armed forces

Last week I took part in a promotion for the Council’s Armed Forces Day and our new Heroes Welcome scheme at Sussex County Cricket Club. Heroes Welcome is a national scheme which allows businesses and other organisations to sign up and show their appreciation and thanks to the British armed forces by offering serving servicemen and women discounts, service upgrades or some other form of special acknowledgement. We are co-ordinating a local Brighton and Hove scheme and, even at this early stage, we already have in the region of 25 businesses who have signed up. If anyone is interested in supporting Heroes Welcome then please see www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/heroeswelcome. Read the rest of this article »