A woman has died after a dog attack in a house in east London – with police seizing two XL bullys from the property.

The Metropolitan Police said the victim was a woman in her 50s and the attack happened in Hornchurch on Monday afternoon.

“Police were called to Cornwall Close at around 1.12pm… to reports of a woman attacked by a dog,” a force spokesperson said.

“The woman was treated by medics from London Ambulance Service, but sadly she was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Due to the threat posed, armed officers attended. After assessing the situation, officers were able to safely seize two dogs.

“These were registered XL bully dogs and prior to officers’ arrival had been contained inside a room in the house. They did not leave the house at any time during the incident.

“The family of the woman, who was the owner of the dogs, are being supported by officers.”

London Ambulance Service sent crews, an incident response officer and a helicopter to the house.

From 1 February, it became a criminal offence to own the XL bully breed in England and Wales without an exemption certificate.

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Anyone who owns one of the dogs must have had the animal neutered, have it microchipped and keep it muzzled and on a lead in public, among other restrictions.

The government move to ban XL bullys followed a series of attacks on people.

“Workers united, will never be defeated!” a man shouts into a loud hailer. He is part of a crowd marching through the streets of Manchester in a May Day parade, organised by some of Britain’s biggest trade unions.

The sun is shining and there’s a festival atmosphere, as his fellow marchers hold aloft placards about workers’ rights and fair pay.

Among the marchers is Jason Wyatt, a steelworker from South Wales. He is here to shine a spotlight on what’s happening in his hometown of Port Talbot, where several thousand of his colleagues are facing redundancy.

There’s applause as Jason takes to the stage.

“They are trying to destroy the livelihoods of 2,800 people,” he says. “Port Talbot is the last bastion of heavy industry in South Wales. We have to fight.”

There has been a steelworks in Port Talbot, which sits on the south coast of Wales, for 125 years.

These days the large, sprawling site is owned by Tata Steel, an Indian company which employs around half of its 8,000 workforce in Port Talbot.

The local economy is heavily reliant on the manufacturing sector, which provides approximately a fifth of jobs in the area, according to Welsh government figures.

But the British steel industry has struggled to remain competitive in a fierce global market, and that means uncertain futures for communities like Port Talbot.

In 2019, the UK produced seven million tonnes of steel, behind seven EU nations – including Germany’s 40 million tonnes. Meanwhile, China produced 996 million tonnes.

Steelworks also cost huge amounts to run because they use massive amounts of energy.

The Port Talbot plant has, by far, the biggest bill and uses as much electricity, for example, as the whole of the city of Swansea a few miles along the motorway.

The sums do not add up, says Tata Steel. It claims its UK business loses £1m a day.

The other huge issue facing the company, and its Port Talbot plant, is how polluting it is. The steelworks is the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Britain.

And Tata thinks that by moving away from its existing coal-powered blast furnace to a greener way of making steel – using scrap metal as fuel – it could reduce the UK’s entire carbon emissions by around 1.5 per cent.

The UK government has agreed to pay Tata £500m towards the building of a new electric arc furnace.

But to do that, Tata says it needs to shut down the two remaining blast furnaces, resulting in the loss of 2,800 jobs.

The drive to go green is costing jobs in Port Talbot. And that’s a dilemma that companies across the UK – and around the world – are facing.

“Tata are asking people to save the business with a forfeit in their jobs. It’s awful,” says Jason, who has worked at the Port Talbot plant for 25 years.

It is estimated that around 1.3 million workers in carbon-intensive so-called “brown” jobs will need to adapt to cleaner technologies and processes, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

But the numbers on the cost of going green are disputed.

The TUC estimates that 800,000 manufacturing and supply chain jobs could be axed without support from the government.

While the Climate Change Committee, an independent body set up by the government in 2008, says anywhere between 8,000 and 75,000 jobs could go in the transition.

The government says the UK is the first major economy to halve its emissions – and is leading the way in the transformation of the energy industry, with over 80,000 green jobs currently supported or in the pipeline since 2020.

“Much of the transferable expertise from industries such as steelworks and oil and gas will be crucial for the transition to net zero,” a government spokesperson said.

“And our Green Jobs Plan will ensure we have the sufficient skills to tackle emerging and future workforce demands across the economy.”

Inside the plant, it’s hot and the smell of sulphur hangs in the air, a by-product of the manufacturing process. Peter Quinn is leading Tata’s move to green steel.

He says the idea that its arc furnace could be up and running in four years is still “approximate” and that consultations with stakeholders, including the workers, would need to be completed first.

The unions and local politicians have called on Tata to keep one blast furnace operational while the new one is built. But Tata says that is not cost-effective.

Quinn says the only other option is abandoning steelmaking in Port Talbot altogether.

Jason thinks Tata should opt for a more gradual transition that would avoid the need to make redundancies.

“We’re not opposing the green steel agenda,” he says. “What we’re opposing is the way in which we’re transitioning.”

This shift is already impacting his family. His son, Tyler, is 19 and had hoped to apply for an apprenticeship at Tata.

“I’m at a point in my life where I need to start securing my future, buy a house and settle somewhere,” says Tyler. “But it’s too risky now to think that there are opportunities [at Tata] for me.”

As Jason and his family take a windswept walk on the town’s beach with their dogs, their gaze is drawn towards the harbour where the cranes used to unload iron ore from around the world, dominate the view.

But out to sea, hope could be on the horizon. There are plans for a huge wind farm in the Celtic Sea with enough wind turbines to power four million homes.

And Tata hopes it can make the football pitch-sized platforms that the turbines will sit on.

But this potential new chapter in the story of Britain’s journey to a greener economy still seems too far away for the steelworkers.

Ashley Curnow, a divisional manager for Associated British Ports in Wales, hopes the towns along the shore like Port Talbot will benefit from the new development.

“I understand there’s an immense amount of worry at the moment throughout the community, and I think our role in this project is to deliver the project, as soon as we can and bring those job opportunities forward.”

At home, Jason and his family reflect on what the future might hold.

His wife, Stacey, thinks Tata is treating its workers unfairly.

“I think it’s wrong what Tata Steel are doing to their workers. They don’t really care about how it’s going to affect people and their families.”

“It’s a hard time for all of us,” Jason adds. “We’ve got to fight to protect our livelihoods”.

The UK’s sewage system should be upgraded to reduce the risk of people ingesting human poo when they swim in rivers and the sea, a new report backed by chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty has recommended.

The evidence base that people have become ill because they ingested traces of sewage while swimming remains “thin”, Sir Chris said as he unveiled the report, which was produced by a group of engineers.

But Britons are increasingly taking to the water to swim, surf and paddle, and some have become ill afterwards.

This increased exposure, combined with “evidence of the underperformance of overloaded sewers”, may increase the risk of people orally ingesting human faecal organisms, the engineers said.

It comes as a fresh row over water quality broke out last week after confirmed cases of the waterborne disease cryptosporidium were identified in Brixham in Devon – though it may have come from cow faeces which leaked into damaged pipes.

It also follows recent reports that millions of litres of raw sewage had been pumped into Lake Windermere.

While sewers were originally designed to reduce health hazards, over time inspections and investments have tended to focus more on the cost and environmental impact of sewage.

Now human health “also needs to be taken seriously”, Sir Chris told reporters.

Human poo can contain salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli and norovirus, which cause diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and fever.

While emergency discharges of raw sewage have been the subject of widespread public attention and anger, they are only “half the problem”, Prof Whitty said.

That’s because some faecal organisms that can cause disease remain even in treated sewage, which is routinely released into the water.

And people are more likely to enter the water in hot, dry weather, when water levels are low and sewage is less diluted.

‘Major wake-up call’

The report, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, suggested a range of solutions to the UK’s crumbling water system, including a review of the way officials protect designated bathing waters.

It raised concerns that current bathing water quality testing – of just once a week in summer – is too infrequent and that some viruses are going undetected.

Water companies, who have been accused of chronic underinvestment, should “improve maintenance and rehabilitation of our ageing wastewater infrastructure”, said Dr Andrew Thompson from Fingleton White, who worked on the research.

The report also called on regulators to monitor not just untreated sewage going into the water but treated water too, and to make data available quickly to help people decide whether to go for a dip.

Charles Watson, chairman of the River Action campaign group, welcomed calls to improve water quality monitoring.

“Other than at the minuscule number of designated river bathing water sites, nothing is being done to provide river users with even the most basic information on the dangers they are facing.”

He said politicians should treat the report as a “major wake-up call, given the past failures to protect the public from the rising tide of sewage pollution”.

The engineers also suggested introducing incentives to members of the public to remove impervious surfaces in urban areas – like patios or paved-over gardens, which would help green cities too.

A Water UK spokesperson said: “There is an urgent need to invest in our water system. Water companies have a plan with proposals to double the current level of spending between now and 2030… Public health is a major part of the next phase of the programme, with bathing areas heavily prioritised for investment.”

The government’s environment department (DEFRA) said it will consult later this year on new bathing water rules – though this may not be until after the general election.

It added: “Alongside the Environment Agency securing over £150m fines to date and quadrupling inspections, we are already driving the largest infrastructure programme in water company history of £60bn over 25 years, which will drastically reduce spills.”