Afternoon.

It’s Thursday 17th September: a life-extending breast cancer drug is finally coming to the NHS in England, gambling adverts are in the firing line and communities are being given money to build their own energy projects.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1789, British astronomer William Herschel discovered Mimas, one of Saturn’s moons. Mimas is now best known for the enormous crater covering much of one side, which gives it an uncanny resemblance to the Death Star.

Around 1,000 women a year in England are set to gain access to Enhertu, a breast cancer treatment that can extend the lives of some patients with incurable disease.

The drug is already used for some types of breast cancer, but the NHS will now offer it to women with advanced “HER2-low” breast cancer. That means their cancer cells have small amounts of a protein called HER2, which Enhertu is designed to target.

NICE, which decides whether medicines offer enough benefit to justify their cost to the NHS in England, rejected Enhertu for these patients in 2024. It was already available in Scotland and several other countries.

A new confidential price deal and changes to how NICE assesses some medicines have now cleared the way. Trials found the treatment extended patients' lives by close to seven months on average compared with chemotherapy.

A House of Lords committee is calling for a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising, arguing that the current rules aren't doing enough to reduce gambling harm.

It wants restrictions covering television, online ads, social media, sponsorship and other forms of promotion. Advertising at horse and greyhound racecourses could be exempt, while the government would decide whether lotteries should be too.

The committee estimates that between 1 million and 1.5 million adults in Great Britain experience problem gambling, and argues that the explosion of digital advertising has left existing rules behind.

The gambling industry has argued that tougher restrictions could push customers towards illegal operators, although the committee says it isn't convinced. For now, nothing is actually being banned. This is a recommendation to the government, which will decide whether to act on it.

Communities are being offered £30m of support to help develop and build their own renewable energy projects, from solar panels on public buildings to village wind turbines and small hydro schemes.

It is the first part of the government's People’s Power programme, which eventually promises up to £1bn to support more than 1,000 community and locally owned energy projects across the UK.

The idea is fairly simple. Instead of renewable energy being built nearby with most of the financial benefit heading elsewhere, local councils and community groups can own projects themselves. The wider plan will also give communities the chance to take stakes in larger renewable projects.

Not every village is about to acquire its own wind farm. The initial funding is largely there to help projects get through the expensive early stages, including planning and development. Still, for communities that have spent years looking at wind turbines without owning so much as a blade, it could mean more of the benefit staying locally.

Around 860,000 households in Northern Ireland will receive an automatic £63 electricity discount from 6 October. It applies whether you pay by bill or use a prepayment meter, and there are no forms to fill in. The support partly reflects the temporary VAT reduction on household electricity being provided in Great Britain, where Northern Ireland's different energy system means the same policy can't simply be copied across.

The UK economy has apparently been slightly better at getting stuff done than we thought. The Office for National Statistics has changed how it measures productivity, essentially how much economic output is produced for each hour worked. Its new method suggests productivity grew by an average of 1.3% a year between 2009 and 2019, rather than the 0.7% previously estimated.

That doesn't make Britain's long-running productivity problem disappear. Growth still slowed sharply after the 2008 financial crisis. But the ONS now thinks the size of that slowdown was roughly half what its previous figures suggested.

Thousands of Barclays staff are pushing back against plans requiring most employees to spend at least three days a week in the office from October, up from two for many workers. Unite, the union representing most of the bank's UK workforce, wants exemptions for some carers and long-distance commuters, as well as help with the extra cost of travelling in. 

Barclays says spending more time together improves collaboration. Its employees appear keen to collaborate on a letter disagreeing.

England's wild salmon population has fallen to its lowest level since records began. The Environment Agency says 95% of the country's main salmon rivers now have populations below the level needed to sustain them, up from 88% last year.

The decline isn't just an English problem. Atlantic salmon spend much of their lives at sea, and populations have been falling across the North Atlantic. In the past, 15 to 20 out of every 100 young salmon migrating to sea would return as adults. Now it is just one or two.

English Heritage is training volunteers to use traditional scythes to look after wildflower meadows at some of its historic sites.

The decidedly low-tech lawnmowers are being introduced partly because they cut grass without the noise, fuel or heavy machinery of modern alternatives, while allowing volunteers to manage meadows more carefully for wildlife.

The first recruits will be let loose at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset, where they're also learning to monitor rare shrill carder bees. After several centuries of technological progress, Britain has apparently arrived back at giving people a large blade and pointing them towards the long grass.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

We're independent, completely free and rely on readers spreading the word to grow. So if you have a friend who'd enjoy five minutes of news without all the noise, forward this email their way. It genuinely helps.

And if you're that friend, hello. You can subscribe here.