Agreement over a property deal has thrown a lifeline to community services helping the disabled and people with mental health problems in Norfolk. The future of the Merle Boddy Centre in Swaffham has now been secured after a 60-year lease at a special low rate was granted by Breckland Council to Meridian East, a Norfolk-based charity. Council spokesman Melanie Baker said: “If a new leaseholder had not been found, several of these services would have had nowhere else to go.”

Women of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Caribbean descent are doing well in schools but are still being penalised in the workplace, a report suggests. The Equal Opportunities Commission found 80-89% of 16-year-olds of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Caribbean intended to work full-time. But it said they were up to four times more likely to be jobless. The CBI said better careers advice and work experience was needed but it did not accept such discrimination existed.

Less than a third of dedicated action teams provide a good or excellent service to those trying to quit drugs, the Healthcare Commission has said. The watchdog said drug treatment services across England were getting better, but more needed to be done to tackle a postcode lottery of care. It has produced a report together with The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) to assess performance at a local level.

Bupa Care Homes Ltd has today been fined £90,000 and ordered to pay £19,247 costs in a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), following the death of 95-year-old woman, Mrs Charlotte Wood from Mottingham.

{mosimage} A review of the way Soham murderer Ian Huntley is supervised in jail is under way after his latest suicide bid, the Home Office has said. Huntley was found unconscious in his cell at Wakefield Prison at 0119 BST on Tuesday after a suspected overdose. He is now under heavy sedation at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield where his stomach has been pumped.

The 32-year-old received two life terms for murdering Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham, Cambridgeshire in 2002. Prison sources told the BBC that Huntley was on liquid medication and it was unclear how he had stored medicine for his latest suicide bid.

On the occasion of a major lecture on social exclusion by the Prime Minister, Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, which it is hosting this week, the Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Lord (Richard) Best called on those forming Government policies to take a balanced view in debates on tackling disadvantage.

Our sovereign value: fairness This lecture takes us to the wellsprings of progressive politics. It is about our sovereign value: fairness. It is about potential never explored; talent torn-off unused, the inability to live a life free from the charity of others. The objective is timeless: we want to expand opportunities so that nobody whatever their background or circumstance should be left behind.

NHS bosses in West Sussex have revealed more details of cost-cutting plans which have enraged protesters who fear the loss of A&E and other services. West Sussex Primary Care Trust (PCT), which officially comes into being on 1 October, will cater for 762,000 people. But unless changes are made to the county’s hospital services, it will have a £94m deficit by 2008. The PCT said on Tuesday it wanted to treat more patients in local urgent care centres or in their own homes.

An NHS mental health trust in Leicestershire is cutting back services as it struggles to meet a government debt-cutting target. Leicestershire Partnership Trust, which is facing a £7.3m overspend, is closing several wards and three day hospitals temporarily to cut costs. Other cuts include using CT scans rather than more expensive MRI scans.

Councils are failing to support child criminals who are released from prison, a report has claimed. The Howard League for Penal Reform said young inmates were being “sidelined” because of a tendency to regard them as “undeserving of mainstream rights and services”. Its report pointed out that town halls had a duty to care for such children on release from jail.