Protest by widow of M-way death man
THE wife of a man who died on a smart motorway has shown his image on a giant screen outside a police headquarters as she called for an investigation into Highways England over his death.
Claire Mercer unveiled the picture of her late husband, Jason Mercer, outside the gates of South Yorkshire
Police’s HQ building in Sheffield on what would have been his 46th birthday.
The force said it has appointed a senior officer to review evidence relating to the collision in which Mr Mercer died, along with another man, Alexandru Murgeanu, on the M1 in Sheffield after they stopped following a minor collision. But it said it is still waiting for the files from Sheffield coroner David Urpeth, who told an inquest that “a lack of hard shoulder contributed to this tragedy” and that smart motorways “present an ongoing risk”.
Mrs Mercer, 44, said she was pleased the force has committed resources to a review but she said she wanted a full investigation. She said she wanted the hard shoulder reintroduced on all smart motorways.
Highways England is proposing to amend the Highway Code in an attempt to boost smart motorway safety.
PENARTH Pavilion has been saved as the Vale of Glamorgan council is taking back control of the building from a failing charity.
The art deco building on the pier has been shut since March last year, and rumours about its future had been circulating for months.
The charity which ran the Pavilion for years, Penarth Arts and Crafts Ltd (PACL), has surrendered its lease on the building.
The Vale council, which owns the building, will take back its operation.
Any bookings where deposits had already been paid will be honoured, the council said, and the pavilion will be kept for community use.
“Exciting plans” for what the council plans to do next will be revealed in the next few weeks.
Council leader Neil Moore said: “The council, along with the National Lottery Community Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, invested a significant amount of grant funding to create a community facility on Penarth Pier.
“As a council, we remain committed to ensuring the Pier Pavilion building can operate for that purpose.
“As a council, we will honour any event bookings taken for which deposits have been paid. It is hoped that the directors of PACL will be in direct contact with anyone in this situation to provide advice on how to contact us to discuss these arrangements.
“I will be presenting a report to the council’s cabinet shortly setting out these arrangements formally.”
The Pavilion is home to a cafe, cinema and is also used as a wedding venue.
Last month, one newly-wed couple feared they had lost their deposit to get married at the building, and struggled to get a clear response from PACL.
Last November, Waterloo Tea left the cafe at the Pavilion. Then before Christmas, the Vale council started discussing with PACL and the National Lottery about how to keep the building available for the people of Penarth.
Deputy leader Lis Burnett said: “At the outset, the aim of the council was to ensure that the pavilion could be retained for community use. In leading and being at the forefront of the discussions, this was the guiding principle for the council.
“We have also ensured that work has begun on putting in place a plan for operating the pavilion as soon as conditions allow.
“These plans will provide a mix of community uses, and we are looking forward to working with a range of partners and community groups to shape the way forward for this iconic building.”
The pavilion was renovated in 2013 with £4m of lottery funding. The National Lottery worked with PACL for years to “safeguard the building”.
Andrew White, director of the National Lottery Heritage Fund in Wales, said: “We are in the final stages of discussions with the Vale of Glamorgan council about transferring the operations of Penarth Pier Pavilion over to them.
“Penarth Pier Pavilion is an iconic and much-loved structure which has been supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the last 12 years, during which time we have worked closely with PACL to safeguard the building for current and future generations.”
THE parents of a 16-year-old schoolgirl were told to say goodbye to their daughter after she was resuscitated twice and began to turn black from sepsis before she made a miraculous recovery.
Ellie Harris fell ill with sepsis in December 2019 after spending four days with a high temperature and vomiting.
Mum Katrina Harris said by the fourth day Ellie had taken a turn for the worse and was starting to act delirious, so she and Ellie’s dad, David, rushed her to their GP.
Katrina said the doctor took one look at her and immediately called for help from colleagues, and an ambulance was on its way as Ellie entered cardiac arrest.
Ellie, from Church Village, near Pontypridd, was blue-lighted to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant where she was resuscitated twice.
“All I remember was we were going into the resus area after her and she was just going black with all rashes on her.
“We were ushered off to one of those Wish Upon a Star rooms and I thought, ‘I know what these are for.’ I can’t remember walking downstairs to see her, they said, ‘Unfortunately we don’t think there is anything else we can do.’
“It was just absolutely horrendous. They said, ‘Call your family to say their goodbyes.’ The family was rushed down and the next thing the consultant said, ‘We think she meets the criteria for ECMO,’” explained Katrina.
An ECMO machine is a special life support machine which works your lungs and heart for you so you don’t have to. It was hoped this would take the pressure off Ellie as her internal organs had begun to fail from the sepsis infection.
There are only five places in the UK, none in Wales, where ECMO machines are available, and they cost around £100,000 to use per patient.
“A team of about five or six doctors and consultants came down from Chelsea, they hooked her up to the machine and blue-lighted her up to the hospital there,” said Katrina.
Ellie spent 10 days on the ECMO machine, and her family were told she had a 60% chance of survival. There were two other teenagers in a similar situation to Ellie on the machines at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea at the time, and sadly one of them passed away while Ellie was there.
Ellie said: “No one knew if I would survive the long journey to London, but a couple of hours later, the doctors called my parents to tell them that I’d made it.”
Ellie, who is now 17 and has returned to school at Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Garth Olwg, doesn’t remember anything from the time she was taken to the GP up until a couple of days after she came off the ECMO machine.
She spent 10 days on the machine in London, and said the first day she was hooked up there she was actually supposed to be on a school trip to the city.
“My friends found out I was in hospital when they were on the bus to London and they were really upset. When they got there they went to a church and got all these praying stones. And my best friend Katie came up to visit me in hospital on Christmas Day.”
Ellie spent Christmas and New Year on life support before she was able to return to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, where she was told her recovery could last until March.
Miraculously, Ellie spent another 10 days in hospital before she was well enough to go home and returned to school in March 2020 before the country went into lockdown.
“My physical recovery was fine, I got back to normal in a couple of months, but I used to have nightmares and panic attacks at night. I would always think: what if I had died?” said Ellie.
She has since seen a psychiatrist to recover from the PTSD she developed after going through the traumatic experience. She is also looking forward to starting to play for Cardiff City ladies later this year.
“It was just an absolutely horrendous time,” added mum Katrina.
When Ellie came around, one of the first things she remembers is seeing her dad’s face, and a touching photo captured the moment she reached towards him.
Since then, Ellie and her family, including brother and sister Jay and Rebecca, have been dedicated to raising awareness of the symptoms of sepsis in young people and teenagers.
The family’s local rugby club, Beddau RFC, also held a fundraising event in February 2020 to show their support for what Ellie had overcome.
Ellie shared her story with the UK Sepsis Trust and is raising money for the Royal Brompton Hospital, where she was treated on the ECMO machine.
She added: “I am extremely grateful for all of the nurses and doctors, and my family and friends who have helped me become stronger.”
To make a donation visit www.rbhcharity.org/fundraisers/ellies-ecmoappeal
AT his lowest point, Chris Lewis found himself sleeping at the building site where he worked.
Waking up in the dust before the others arrived, for the former postman it was a world away from the life he once had, at a time when he was still processing the loss of his mum at only 57 years old.
It’s a situation few can imagine, and one that led to five years sleeping rough, staying on friends’ sofas and eventually sleeping in a church he would have once passed daily on his delivery rounds.
But now Chris has finally got a place he can call home once more, after being given the keys during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a video call from his new home, Chris, 40, is full of enthusiasm for the future. With his key worker by his side, he explains he is learning IT through Cardiff and Vale College – catching up on the technology that has escaped him in the past five years – and hopes to go on to study Spanish.
As someone who first found work a week after leaving school, he is desperate to throw himself back into employment.
But he is also frank and honest about the chain of events which saw him give up his home in Trowbridge, Cardiff, and return to his family home in a state of shock.
Chris, who is from Ely originally, said: “I was a postman for the best part of nine years, Grangetown was my regular run.
“I had a place, I had my own council place, and I was doing really well. But my mum had brain cancer – when my mum passed away it was around five Christmases ago now I think, it was on Boxing Day. She was 57, she had three grade four glioblastoma tumours.
“If she was still OK now I’d probably be still living in Trowbridge.
“I gave up my place to move back in with my dad, so it sort of all stemmed from that really. I moved back into the family home.
“I felt really sorry for my dad, we both helped each other. But it didn’t work out, I think he took it [my mum’s death] badly – my mum and dad were married for almost 45 years. It just sort of broke down from there.
“In the end I left, as it wasn’t really going anywhere. I just left, I had to move on. It wasn’t something done lightly, I didn’t want to give the place up, but I wasn’t thinking straight to be honest. It wasn’t a wise thing to do looking back on it.
“I left from there and I was staying here, there and everywhere and just one thing led to another.”
While there were occasions where Chris did find himself with a roof over his head, there were other times when he wasn’t so lucky.
Going from place to place, living hand to mouth, he also remembers a time where he was desperately trying to hide his situation for fear of losing his job.
Chris said: “I was working on a building site and I was actually living on the building site I was working on. I was getting up an hour before everyone came into work to put everything away and I was pretending I was going home and coming back in, but it’s really hard and it’s really demoralising. You need somewhere to live and work.
“I juggled it for a bit, I was going to a B&B on the weekends, but it’s really hard, you do need somewhere to live if you’re going to work.
“It’s not nice, working on a building site full of dust and c**p all day and then having to live there as well.”
Reflecting on the stigma of being a rough sleeper, he added: “I don’t get it so much now, but what I did used to have was people staring at me or following me around and stuff when you’re going places. People do have a stereotypical view.
“Even though I did sleep on the streets a bit, I’d try and take care of myself, I didn’t walk around with a sleeping bag draped over me and all that kind of spiel, I’d try to fit into everyday life and try and be as normal as I could.
“I think I’ve blocked it in my mind. You’re just living day-to-day, hand-tomouth. I have a better life now, everything is better.”
Luckily, things began to change for Chris after meeting an old friend who volunteers with the Cardiff council outreach services.
After going to a local church to stay, he was later offered a room at the OYO hotel in Cardiff, along with those with nowhere else to go during the coronavirus pandemic.
Since March 2020 more than 200 rough sleepers have been assisted into accommodation by Cardiff council. A total of 314 single people have been helped into permanent accommodation, 180 into social housing and 134 into the private rented sector.
In recent months the number of rough sleepers is down to single figures in the city, although this can vary, compared to around 80 people in September 2019.
Chris said: “I was staying with friends a bit, I think, friends and family, but what led up to me getting into that hotel was I met up with an old friend who does a lot of volunteer work with the church, and he said you can stay here for a bit if you want. “I was working with the outreach team and the council and I went from there into the OYO hotel.
“It was a good stepping stone really. If I hadn’t have gone there this wouldn’t have happened so I can’t really complain.” Now, eight months after moving into his new home, Chris can finally start to plan for the future. With the stability of a permanent address and Universal Credit, his priority is to find a part-time job to get back into work. Describing his new home, Chris said: “It was fantastic really, it was a long time coming. I don’t know what to say, it was great. It was something I was really looking forward to, I was offered a few places and a few fell through, but the best one came through in the end.
“I was a bit apprehensive about it at first but it all worked out in the end, so I’m happy.
“Now I’m just doing an IT course and I’m going to try to do a Spanish course after that if I can. That’s why I’m there, to try and get a part-time job, to get back into work. I was a postman for years and I’ve always had outdoor work, building and things, so it’s just something different. Everything is computer-led now isn’t it, so I thought I’d just do something like that to try to get a part-time job and take it from there.
“I worked for years, I worked within a week of leaving school so I just want to try and get back to that now. I’d work in Tesco, I’d work in an office, I’d work anywhere really.”
Currently, Cardiff council is running two Housing First projects – one supporting rough sleepers, one supporting prison leavers. Working alongside partners the Salvation Army, who also operate a Housing First scheme, there are a total of 46 “live” Housing First tenancies in the city.
Together the projects are aimed at supporting rough sleepers who are
I had a place, I had my own council place, and I was doing really well. But my mum had brain cancer
Chris Lewis
entrenched in a cycle of homelessness and short prison sentences to allow an individual to live in an area they want with no need to prove they are “tenancy ready”. To help this happen, those involved in the project also have the help of a flexible support worker for as long as they need it.
With the project predominately using private rented properties, the council now wants to hear from landlords who are interested in working with them to provide even more accommodation.
One of those people who is already helping is Yaseer Hafiz, lettings director of Cardiff-based Nova lettings agency. Through working with Housing First, he helped match up a landlord with Chris in a situation that helps them both.
According to Yaseer, with systems in place to arrange payment through Universal Credit, and support available to both Chris and his landlord, the arrangement has already proved a success.
Yaseer said: “Even though we don’t work that closely with Chris, we just provide his housing, we can see the difference in him from the day he got the property to now – he’s a lot more confident day-to-day talking to us and dealing with paperwork.
“We’re trying to help where we can. I know it’s difficult for some tenants trying to find housing in the circumstances that they are coming from and where they have ended up. It’s great to see someone like Chris trying to get back on track simply by having a roof over his head
“I know some landlords are reluctant, but we had a landlord looking for a longterm solution and this was it.
“Landlords are looking for tenants to pay the rent and to help look after the property and if we can help people along the way that’s great. We have more and more landlords looking to rent their property with Housing First.”
Chris added: “They’ve been brilliant. They’ve been absolutely brilliant Housing First, fantastic. It’s not often someone exceeds your expectation is it, but I can honestly say it’s happened.”
If you can offer Chris a job, or if you are a landlord who wants to find out more about Housing First, you can get more information by emailing housing. first@cardiff.gov.uk
TELEVISION rugby reporter Lauren Jenkins says that social media users must be made to confirm their identity after the BBC’s Sonja McLaughlan was subjected to online abuse following Saturday’s Guinness Six Nations game between Wales and England.
England Rugby and the Welsh Rugby Union have sent support to McLaughlan, who described how she had been reduced to tears by abuse on social media after her post-match interviews that included questions to England captain Owen Farrell and head coach Eddie Jones.
The Principality Stadium clash, won 40-24 by Wales, was dominated by two controversial refereeing decisions.
And former Cardiff University student Jenkins, who works as a freelance reporter and presenter for the BBC, Premier Sports and Welsh channel S4C, says social media anonymity can no longer be allowed to happen.
“For me, the only way is getting users to confirm their identity,” Jenkins said.
“The sad thing is that calls for identity verification have been around for years and we don’t seem to be getting any closer to that.
“But it is a multi-layered issue. Some predict that could discriminate against the poorest in society. I think around a billion people don’t have official identification.
“I would say I limit my (social media) use these days. I think twice about tweeting things and probably am less controversial than I would be in person because I can’t be bothered to entertain the responses. “Twitter can be a really awful beast sometimes and no-one should ever be reduced to tears for doing their job.
“It can actually be quite a lonely job at times. In this environment you are often alone watching the match and yet suddenly part of a million different households with just a few minutes to cover what was a ridiculously-eventful match. “It is unbelievably tough and Sonja has years of experience.
“The thought that the very first thing she encounters after that is a wave of abuse is very sad.”
The Welsh Rugby Union has joined England Rugby in condemning social media abuse directed at England players and members of the media following Saturday’s encounter.
England prop Ellis Genge revealed he had been subjected to death threats after footage surfaced of him apparently neglecting to clap the victorious Welsh players off the pitch following a match that Wales won 40-24.
In a statement, the WRU said: “We are hugely disappointed and saddened by the social media abuse directed at opposition players and members of the media following the game at the weekend.
“As a rugby community, these individuals have let us all down. This has to stop. It is not acceptable.”