The annual Remembrance Sunday Divine Service, in honour of those who lost their lives in the violence of war, as well as those who served and survived these wars, was held at the Cenotaph in Jamestown on Sunday 12 November 2023.
The Right Reverend Lord Bishop of St Helena, Dale Bowers, welcomed those in attendance which included Acting Governor Greg Gibson and Mrs Gibson, the Honourable Speaker, Honourable Minister Brooks and the Chief Secretary, Ex-Servicemen and Women, persons who served on the RMS St Helena during the 1982 Falklands War and the St Helena Veterans Association (SHVA).
Following the scripture readings, read by Pastor Reuben Oliphant, the Acting Governor gave the act of Remembrance before a two-minute silence was observed. The silence was signalled by the Last Post, played by members of the First Jamestown Scout Group.
During the course of the service, prayers were led by Deacon Edgar Crowie, Pastor Anthony Hopkins, Fr Ronnie Allwright, Envoy Coral Yon, Fr David Musgrave, Deacon Clarence Roberts and Rector Darren Peters.
A wreath was laid for St Helena, Ascension and Tristian Da Cunha by Acting Governor Gibson with other wreaths being laid for the President of the French Republic, the Government of St Helena, St Helena Legislative Council, the Royal Navy, the Army, the Royal Air Force, the Merchant Navy, the Royal St Helena Police Force, the St Helena Fire and Sea Rescue Services and the SHVA. Members of the public and school children also laid wreaths.
A wreath was also laid by divers in the harbour, in commemoration of those who lost their lives on board the RFA Darkdale.
The national anthem was sung and the service was concluded with a blessing from Bishop Dale.
The Island’s servicemen and women then proceeded with a march-past parade outside the Court House.
Alongside the service on-Island, St Helena Government’s UK Representative, Mrs Kedell Worboys MBE, attended the UK’s Ceremony of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London. Also in attendance was UK Representative of Tristan da Cunha, Chris Carnegy, who laid a wreath on behalf of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
Councillor Robert Midwinter departed St Helena on Saturday 11 November 2023, to undertake a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) workshop and other overseas business.
Councillor Midwinter is scheduled to return to the Island on 28 November 2023.
Whilst Councillor Midwinter is away from the Island, Councillor Coleman will cover any urgent matters for the St Pauls district. Councillor Midwinter will remain contactable via email through cllr.midwinter@helanta.co.sh.
Chief Minister, Julie Thomas, is due to depart St Helena on Saturday 11 November 2023, to travel to the UK to attend the annual Overseas Territories (OTs) Joint Ministerial Council (JMC).
The JMC takes place every year in London and is hosted by the UK Government. It brings together elected leaders and representatives from all of the OTs, as well as UK Ministers, and provides the principal forum for political dialogue and consultation between the UK and the OTs.
The JMC will run over two days and is due to begin on 14 November 2023. The Chief Minister will also have a number of official engagements before and after the event itself. These engagements will include meetings with the Labour Party spokesperson on the OTs, Stephen Doughty MP, meetings with other OT leaders and representatives, and a roundtable with the UK Parliament Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), amongst others.
The Chief Minister will also be joined by key officials, including Governor Nigel Phillips CBE, SHG UK Representative Kedell Worboys MBE and Minister of Health and Social Care Martin Henry.
Minister Henry’s visit is being facilitated by Professor Ian Cummings, the Health Ambassador for the OTs. As well as accompanying the Chief Minister to the JMC, Minister Henry will attend a number of conferences in London and visit Gibraltar for meetings with health officials, including the newly appointed Health Minister Gemma Vasquez.
The Chief Minister is due to arrive back on St Helena on Saturday 18 November. Whilst the Chief Minister is off-Island, Minister Mark Brooks will be appointed Deputy Chief Minister.
Minister Henry is due to arrive back on Saturday 25 November. Minister Christine Scipio has kindly agreed to be the point of contact for Health and Social Care during Minister Martin Henry’s absence from the Island.
St Helena Government (SHG) and Airlink are pleased to announce that flights to St Helena from Cape Town will be returning in 2024.
The re-introduction of Cape Town flights will begin in December 2024 and run until March 2025. These will take place alongside the weekly Johannesburg flights. The weekly Saturday flight will operate from Cape Town and the weekly Tuesday flight will operate from Johannesburg.
Additional weekly flights from Cape Town provide a number of benefits, such as enhancing the potential for dual-centre holidays by foreign visitors to South Africa and St Helena and offering different options for lengths of stay for travellers to the Island.
Following discussions between Airlink, SHG and Ascension Island Government (AIG), we are also pleased to announce the flight schedule for the next 18 months. This schedule details Airlink flights between St Helena and South Africa, and the monthly inter-island service between St Helena and Ascension, until April 2025.
Tickets for travel between South Africa and St Helena are available online, via the Airlink website at www.flyairlink.com and through all IATA travel agents.
For those passengers resident on St Helena, ticket bookings can be made via Solomon and Company (St Helena) Shipping and Travel Agency at the Malabar in Jamestown. Passengers can visit the Shipping and Travel Agency in person or contact them via email through travelagent@solomons.co.sh or by telephone on 22523.
Tickets for travel on the inter-island service between St Helena and Ascension are available through the AIG Travel Office. Passengers can contact the Travel Office via email flight.bookings@ascension.gov.acor by telephone on +247 67000 ext 1111.
The full schedule of flights for the period November 2023 to April 2025 can be seen below, or found on www.flyairlink.com 362 days prior to departure.
On the announcement, Minister for Treasury and Economic Development Mark Brooks, said:
“Since last November work has been underway to add both additional flights and an additional destination during the summer months next year. This enables the restoration of the Island’s traditional link to Cape Town, one which we had for so many years under the RMS St Helena.”
“Tourism is the largest contributor to the Island economy after UK aid, so having more options for travelers, as well as people on Island, is welcomed. I’d like to thank everyone involved in getting this over the line, and in particular Airlink for their continued partnership with the Island.”
In June, the Legislative Council approved the SHG budget for 2023/24. To provide a better understanding of how that money is spent, every two weeks we’re focusing on a different Portfolio and their plans for the year. Two weeks ago we looked at the allocation for the Environment, Natural Resources and Planning, and this week we’ll be covering the Health and Social Care (H&SC) Portfolio.
The SHG budget for 2023/24 allocated £47,072,000 for recurrent and capital expenditure. Of this figure, H&SC was allocated £8,845,594. This means that of the six Portfolios included in the 2023/24 Budget Book, H&SC receives 19.5% of the SHG recurrent budget.
Of H&SC’s £8,845,594, £5,335,896 is allocated for Health Care services and £3,509,698 for Social Care services. As a Portfolio this is an increase on the 2022/23 budget allocation of £346,494, or almost 4.08%.
However, it should be noted that the actual spend for 2022/23 was £11,105,000 across the Portfolio, representing a 30.62% overspend on original budget. Overseas medical referrals, treatments and evacuations were the single biggest overspend, accounting for 72.96% of the total overspend.
The Portfolio has 315 staff roles to deliver its range of work.
What are H&SCs strategic aims?
Whilst all Portfolios contribute to the five national goals, expenditure for H&SC’s 2023-24 budget primarily supports the national Altogether Healthier and Altogether Safer goals. To deliver this, H&SC work programmes contribute to six of SHG’s 33 strategic objectives.
To support these national goals and strategic objectives, the H&SC is pursuing seven main policy priority areas within the SHG Vision and Strategy Plan 2022-2025, which are informing and directing its work programmes. These are:
Delivery of core and preventative health services
Ensuring a Safe Statutory Offer for children and adults
Primary prevention and management of chronic diseases
Promoting healthy lifestyles
Providing access to specialist and tertiary care
Providing evidence based primary and secondary health-care
Providing a health and social care governance system
From a Health Care perspective, the Portfolio recognises through its own data and the Joint Strategic Needs Analysis (JSNA), that three major risk factors are having a significant impact on the population of St Helena and leading to most of the ill health early deaths, and need for overseas referral and treatment. These are smoking, alcohol, and overweight / obesity.
This year, the Portfolio will focus on addressing these risk factors, through the following interventions:
In Social Care the demands on services continue to grow. St Helena has an ‘ageing population’ due to a combination of a falling number of births, working age people leaving the Island, and increasing life expectancy. In 2021, 1 in 4 people were now aged 65 or older, and 1 in 2 aged over 51.4. In the most recent global data, only one country has a higher median age than St Helena, meaning we have the second oldest median age of anywhere in the world.
This puts an ever growing pressure on Social Care to provide care and support, either in the community, or at one of the Island’s care facilities.
For this year, Social Care will continue to try and support more people in the community, and through short interventions, aim to decrease the number of individuals who require full time care, enabling them to remain as independent as possible for longer.
Where will H&SC’s allocation be spent?
H&SC is split into two main delivery areas, Health Care and Social Care.
In Health Care, H&SC is responsible for key functions and services related to health and wellbeing. This includes things like providing medical and dental care, making overseas referrals, managing Environmental Health, operating the pathology lab and delivering mental health services.
The Social Care sector is responsible for a range of functions and services for adults and children. This includes the management of care facilities (Deasons, Ebony View, Cape Villa and the Community Care Centre), Probation Services, Adult and Child Services, Safe Haven, as well as Outreach Day-Care and Occupational Therapy.
Currently, the largest planned expenditure for H&SC is overseas medical referrals and treatment, and medical evacuations. H&SC has secured a new overseas medical provider, and whilst this is expected to will deliver improved services whilst decreasing the cost of individual treatments, the demand on overseas medical treatments continues to rise.
H&SCs budget allocation will also cover the routine provision of a wide range of health services. This will include as many as 600 GP appointments per month, providing specialist clinics for surgeons, dietitians, sexual health and gynaecology, maternity, nurse led and child nurse led appointments, community nursing, school nursing, vaccination clinics, screening clinics, outpatient nurse triage appointments, and our mental health provision.
This will be delivered alongside our visiting specialists in areas including audiology, ophthalmology, as well as the Island’s accident and emergency provision.
The Social Care Services also support the Children and Adults Safeguarding Board by running monthly safeguarding training, policy and procedural support, early help interventions and much more.
If you would like more information about any areas of the H&SC’s work, please get in touch with Tracy Poole-Nandy, Portfolio Director, by email through tracy.poole-nandy@sainthelena.gov.sh or by telephone on 22500.
Waste Management Services (WMS) has formed a Public-Private partnership with Mr Roddy Yon to deliver aluminium drink cans recycling (known in the waste management industry as ADC), which are compacted and baled within the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) at Horse Point Landfill Site.
The MRF development was generously funded through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) under the Overseas Territories Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change Programme. The MRF became operational in August 2022 and has equipment to compact and bale cardboard, plastics and ADC.
Through negotiation with our interim cargo shipping provider, Meihuizen International (Pty) Ltd, reduced freight rates were agreed, making the export of ADC (and potentially other recyclable wastes) viable for all parties, with the first shipment planned for Voyage 7 of the Maria da Paz.
The overall goal of exporting ADC is to reduce the amount of recyclable waste being land-filled, in order to maximise the remaining useful life of Horse Point Landfill Site, which contributes towards SHG’s strategic priority ‘Altogether Greener’.
ADC can be disposed for recycling at any of the seven communal recycling hubs established around the Island, currently located at:
Half Tree Hollow – Near Leon Plato’s residence
Half Tree Hollow – Andy’s Shop
Half Tree Hollow – Solomon’s Supermarket
St Paul’s – New Ground Bus Shelter
St Paul’s – Cleughs Plain Bus Shelter
St Paul’s – Kingshurst Community Centre
Sandy Bay – Bagley’s Point
Over the coming months more communal recycling hubs will be established, which facilitate ADC, glass and plastic disposal for recycling and a brown wheelie bin for cardboard recycling will be added to all hubs.
Additionally, these waste items can disposed for recycling in the relevant bays at the Public Recycling Facility within Horse Point Landfill Site, which is open 24/7.
Marianne Wolmarans and Gary Manuel, Project Liaison Team from Meihuizen, commented:
“The initiative to establish the Materials Recycling Facility and launch the ADC recycling project is a commendable step toward a more sustainable and environmentally responsible future for St Helena. Meihuizen International is proud to be part of this crucial effort to reduce waste, increase recycling, and contribute to the ‘Altogether Greener’ vision. We look forward to continuing our collaboration in support of a green, healthy environment.”
For further information about ADC recycling please contact Mr Roddy Yon in the first instance by telephone on 61228. Alternatively you can contact Terri Clingham, Environmental Officer Risk Management, by telephone 24724 or via email terri.clingham@sainthelena.gov.sh for recycling or other waste management information.
Waste Management Services; working towards a cleaner and greener St Helena.
Three firefighters from the St Helena Fire and Rescue Service (F&RS) have recently completed training in the UK.
On 4 September, Kyle Yon, Rhys Francis and David Young embarked on an intensive eight week Firefighter Development Core Skills programme at the Fire Service College in Moreton-in-Marsh, UK.
The course is an essential programme in the professional development of firefighters, ensuring that delegates develop a robust foundation of firefighting skills
The course was broken down into a series of modules, each with their own key learning outcomes. These outcomes provide the delegates with the foundational skills required to respond, prevent and adapt to the needs of the St Helena community. The course sets the foundation for further development and a successful career in the F&RS.
Throughout the course, each module brought a different challenge where recruits learnt new skills and had to demonstrate knowledge and understanding through assessments. The delegates grew in confidence as the course progressed, displaying a variety of personal qualities and F&RS values.
Delegate receives Silver Axe Award
The Silver Axe award is a long-standing tradition across the UK fire and rescue service. It is presented to the trainee firefighter who, in the eyes of the training instruction staff, displayed and maintained exemplary standards in all aspects of the training course throughout the eight weeks.
The Silver Axe award for this cohort, of over 10 delegates, was presented to F&RS firefighter Kyle Yon.
Lee Bransby, one of the course instructors, said:
“I would just personally like to say a few words regarding the latest cohort from St Helena. All three learners have conducted themselves in a very professional manner and have been a credit to the St Helena Fire and Rescue Service. I would like to single out Kyle Yon. He has without doubt put in 100% effort over the eight weeks training, making him a well-deserved Silver Axe winner. I’ve currently been in service 35 years and at the college for over 22 years. You will appreciate in that time I have had the opportunity to train hundreds of learners. Kyle has really impressed me and I am extremely proud of his achievements. He returns with the Axe; a very proud young man with a bright future.”
St Helena Brigade Manager Alan Thomas added:
“I am tremendously proud of our three firefighters for the effort and commitment displayed throughout this eight week course, and more so to Kyle Yon for achieving the prestigious Silver Axe Award. His weekly reports showed consistency throughout the course; he absorbs information well and this has been reflected on all his levels of understanding. It has been a privileged to be part of his professional development over the years and I am so proud of his achievements. Kyle has a very promising career ahead of him. I wish him all the very best in his career path within the St Helena Fire and Rescue Service.”
On 14 September 2023 St Helena and FINN Partners, SHG’s UK-based marketing and communications agency, won a second industry-leading marketing award for Jonathan’s 190th Birthday activities that took place in December 2022.
The second annual PRCA Platinum Awards were held in London in September, to recognise and celebrate the very highest standards in public relations (PR). There, the ‘Jonathan Turns 190’ campaign won its second marketing award for the year, the PRCA Platinum Media Relations Award 2023.
The PRCA is the world’s largest professional PR association, representing more than 35,000 PR professionals in 82 countries worldwide. The PRCA Platinum Awards are designed to pit leading entries from around the world against each other, to showcase and reward the very best in global communications.
Entry is available exclusively to award-winning agencies, teams and individuals, as well as those who’ve been shortlisted in awards programmes within the past 12 months. This enables organisations and individuals to benchmark their work against leading practitioners and teams from around the world, and allows recognition and celebration of the very highest standards in global public relations.
This award comes in addition to the Gold-Standard Travel Marketing Award for ‘PR Campaign up to £50,000 spend’, which was awarded on 3 July.
Notes to editors
The PR Campaign surrounding the December 2022 on-Island celebrations for Jonathan’s 190th Birthday gained worldwide media coverage, reaching more than 474 million people. This included TV appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show in the USA, a Sky News interview between presenter Kay Burley and Governor Philips, and Teeny Lucy featuring on both BBC News and BBC News 24. Multimedia coverage ranged from CNN to The Independent and People, among others.
£2,000 was spent, within the local economy, to celebrate Jonathan’s birthday. SHG and FINN Partners then worked together under their normal contract to gain international coverage of the event, generating £4.8 million pounds of international Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE). AVE is the amount that St Helena would have had to spend on Jonathan’s birthday coverage if these activities had been paid for, rather than secured for free.
The PRCA award was collected by representatives from FINN Partners.
The Jonathan campaign was also shortlisted for European Excellence Awards 2023.
Councillor Gillian Brooks departed the Island on Sunday 29 October 2023 to travel to Iceland to attend the 5th annual Reykjavik Global Forum, in partnership with Women Political Leaders (WPL). The forum will be held between 13 and 14 November 2023.
The Reykjavik Global Forum convenes women leaders from all sectors to share ideas and solutions on how to further advance society towards female and male equality, and to promote and positively develop the number of women in leadership positions. This year’s theme is ‘Power Together for Leadership’.
During the period Councillors Brooks is away from the Island, Councillor Dr Corinda Essex will cover any urgent matters for the Jamestown and Rupert’s districts.
