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Background: The 2022/23 influenza season in the United Kingdom saw the return of influenza to prepandemic levels following two seasons with low influenza activity. The early season was dominated by A(H3N2), with cocirculation of A(H1N1), reaching a peak late December 2022, while influenza B circulated at low levels during the latter part of the season. From September to March 2022/23, influenza vaccines were offered, free of charge, to all aged 2–13 (and 14–15 in Scotland and Wales), adults up to 49 years of age with clinical risk conditions and adults aged 50 and above across the mainland United Kingdom. Methods: End‐of‐season adjusted vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates against sentinel primary‐care attendance for influenza‐like illness, where influenza infection was laboratory confirmed, were calculated using the test negative design, adjusting for potential confounders. Methods: Results In the mainland United Kingdom, end‐of‐season VE against all laboratory‐confirmed influenza for all those > 65 years of age, most of whom received adjuvanted quadrivalent vaccines, was 30% (95% CI: −6% to 54%). VE for those aged 18–64, who largely received cell‐based vaccines, was 47% (95% CI: 37%–56%). Overall VE for 2–17 year olds, predominantly receiving live attenuated vaccines, was 66% (95% CI: 53%–76%). Conclusion: The paper provides evidence of moderate influenza VE in 2022/23. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Existing cross-cultural research on animal welfare often overlooks the way that policy and law are not the exclusive domain of central government. This can result in an over-simplification or misrepresentation of the true situation. The political culture and institutional arrangements for governing the modern state are more complex than a "one-size-fits-all" approach. It is argued that cross-cultural research needs to give greater attention to differences within as well as between unitary states. Specifically, it needs to examine developments in constituent nations and territories. Here we illustrate this by drawing on new research in the United Kingdom, and examine how 'devolution'—or decentralized government for Wales and Scotland—is providing contrasting opportunities for NGOs, campaigners, and the public to lobby to improve animal welfare policy based on local practices, beliefs, and demands (collectively known as the "political culture"). Our findings show how this is important because it results in contrasting animal welfare policies and laws in the constituent nations of the UK. It is argued that extant cross-cultural research on animal welfare often overlooks or gives insufficient attention to new governance theory, civil society, politics, and the realities of devolved or (quasi-)federal, multi-level governance in the modern state. This paper synthesizes relevant social theory and draws on new empirical findings of civil society accounts of campaigning on animal welfare policies and law in the United Kingdom. It is presented as a corrective to arguably reductive, earlier unitary state-based analyses. Our core, evidence-based argument is that cognizance of civil society activism and the contrasting institutional governance structures and political cultures of constituent nations in unitary states—such as the UK—are providing opportunities for the territorialization of legally grounded animal welfare regimes, and culturally distinctive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding in 2021 has highlighted the increased risk to national resilience. This is against a backdrop of the UK climate projected to become more extreme over the next few decades. This paper considers the notable river and surface water flood events within England and Wales during 2021 and examines the performance of the Flood Forecasting Centre in highlighting the flood risk to our customers. We reflect on team debriefs as well as feedback and surveys from our customers. We distil our learnings and make connections with improvements in our underpinning science, forecasting tools, products and services. Finally, we highlight challenges associated with surface water flooding and suggest how we may collectively start to overcome these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of dyslexia identification has increased significantly over the last two decades. Yet there is debate over whether there are distinct biological and cognitive differences between those with literacy difficulties and the subgroup of people identified as dyslexic. This is the first paper that provides evidence for this ongoing debate by investigating the socio-demographic factors, outside biology and cognition, that predict whether a child is identified as dyslexic in the UK. Using secondary data from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study, this paper examines the socio-demographic factors that predict whether a child's teacher identifies them as dyslexic at age 11. Gender, season of birth, socio-economic class and parental income are found to be significant predictors of the dyslexia label. Therefore, factors seemingly unrelated to the clinical aspects of dyslexia influence whether a child is identified as dyslexic in England and Wales. This suggests that label may not be evenly distributed across a population; furthermore, it may also indicate that resources for support may not be fairly allocated. The findings further support the argument that a 'dyslexic sub-group' within poor readers is created due to the impact of environmental factors. The results from this national-scale study thus questions the reliability, validity and moral integrity of the allocation of the dyslexia label across current education systems in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British supermarket-panel data suggest no increases in overall sales and purchases of alcohol following COVID-19 lockdowns, yet survey and mortality data suggest otherwise. This paper attempts to unravel the paradox. Based on purchase data of 79,417 British households from Kantar Worldpanel, we undertake controlled interrupted time series analysis of the impact of COVID-19 confinement introduced on 23rd March 2020, and variably applied during 2020, compared to purchases during 2015 to 2019 as controls. We also undertook Poisson regression analyses to estimate if changes in purchases differed by household socio-demographic and economic factors. Excess off-trade household alcohol purchases (expressed as grams of ethanol) following the introduction of confinement, were 29.2% higher (95% CI = 25.8% to 32.5%) for the post-confinement months of 2020, being larger until mid-July 2020 (37.5%, 95%CI = 33.9 to 41.26%) when pubs re-opened with restrictions, and smaller (24.6%, 95%CI = 21.6 to 27.7) thereafter. During the time of complete pub closures, and fully adjusting for no on-trade purchases, household purchases of alcohol did not change when compared with the same time period during 2015–2019 (coefficient = -0.9%, 95%CI = -5.6 to 3.8). Excess purchases from 23rd March to 31st December 2020 varied by region of Great Britain, being higher in the north of England, and lower in Scotland and Wales. Excess purchases were greater in the most deprived households, compared with the least deprived households. Excess purchases increased substantially as the amount of alcohol normally purchased by a household increased, with the top one fifth of households that normally bought the most alcohol increasing their purchases more than 17 times than the bottom one fifth of households that bought the least alcohol. That the heaviest buyers of alcohol increased their purchases the most, with some independent impact of socio-economic disadvantage, might explain why reported alcohol problems and recent alcohol-related death rates might have increased. A conclusion of this is that alcohol policy to reduce high consumption of alcohol, and the availability of help and treatment to reduce alcohol consumption become more important during extraordinary times, such as COVID lockdowns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decarbonisation of heating in the United Kingdom is likely to entail both the mass adoption of heat pumps and widespread development of district heating infrastructure. Estimation of the spatially disaggregated heat demand is needed for both electrical distribution network with electrified heating and for the development of district heating. The temporal variation of heat demand is important when considering the operation of district heating, thermal energy storage and electrical grid storage. The difference between the national and urban heat demands profiles will vary due to the type and occupancy of buildings leading to temporal variations which have not been widely surveyed. This paper develops a high-resolution spatiotemporal heat load model for Great Britain (GB: England, Scotland a Wales) by identifying the appropriate datasets, archetype segmentation and characterisation for the domestic and nondomestic building stock. This is applied to a thermal model and calibrated on the local scale using gas consumption statistics. The annual GB heat demand was in close agreement with other estimates and the peak demand was 219 GWth. The urban heat demand was found to have a lower peak to trough ratio than the average national demand profile. This will have important implications for the uptake of heating technologies and design of district heating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]