Exclusive: Defra warned three years ago of farmland contamination by water firms’ sewage-derived product

Government ministers have ignored Environment Agency pleas to tighten rules on the use of sludge fertiliser for three years, despite the regulator having said that water company attitudes towards the substance are “akin to fly-tipping on to agricultural land”, it can be revealed.

Sludge, sometimes referred to as biosolids, is a byproduct of the sewage treatment process that is sold by water companies to farmers as a low-cost fertiliser.

The seaside resort has become a byword for coastal deprivation but its youth say there’s a world of creativity bubbling under

• Photographs by Polly Braden

Michael knows exactly how he feels about his home town of Blackpool. “It’s just brilliant,” he says. Walking along the beachfront past people soaking up the sunshine on benches and kids playing in the sand overlooked by Blackpool Tower, he throws out his arms with a huge grin. “For me, it has been an amazing place to grow up. I don’t understand why anyone would talk down their home town. If you feel shit about your town, you’re going to feel shit about yourself, right?”

Michael’s life may be going places – he’s studying fashion at college, is making music and has a part-time job entertaining visitors at the Sea Life aquarium – but he knows his positivity about Blackpool isn’t shared by his peers in the town.

Michael in the Sea Life aquarium, where he works part-time

Kick It Out makes ‘moral case for change’ as it finds staffs do not reflect the ethnic makeup of their local communities

Premier League and EFL clubs were required this year to report details of their workforce diversity data for the first time under a new Football Association regulation. This was aimed at promoting greater equality of opportunities, but even people working in football are hard-pressed to find the numbers.

The clubs dutifully published the results of their internal surveys on 1 June, other than Manchester United owing to a website glitch corrected a few days later, but the silence from the sport regarding the findings has been deafening. None of the FA, Premier League or EFL commented on the data or published a summary of the findings, indicating that the drive for greater transparency has its limits.

As questions are asked about the bestselling memoir, is the demand for hope-over-hardship stories outstripping reality?

Was the story always, in hindsight, just a little too good to be true? A middle-aged couple, brutally down on their luck after bankruptcy and a terminal diagnosis, escape their troubles on an epic walk round the South West Coast Path, finding comfort along the way in the kindness of strangers. Billed as an “honest and life-affirming” story of prevailing against the odds, The Salt Path became first a bestseller and then a blockbuster film, starring a windswept Gillian Anderson. Though it was never really my thing, I knew plenty of people for whom The Salt Path genuinely resonated, with its romantic central theme of being (as the film’s director, Marianne Elliott, put it) “reformed by the elements” of a blustery English seascape.

If it seemed a bit unlikely that a dying man could be rejuvenated by a strenuous trek involving wild camping in all weathers – well, getting readers to suspend their disbelief is what good storytellers do, and The Salt Path’s Raynor Winn was definitely good. Arguably, as I said, too good.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Thousands of people are killed each year by floods – and climate breakdown is making them more likely

Deluges of water are washing away people, homes and livelihoods as extreme rains make rivers burst their banks and high seas help send storm tides surging over coastal walls. How dangerous is flooding – and what can we do to keep ourselves safe?