Section:GDN 1N PaGe:5 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 18:02 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Guardian •
Notting Hill carnival 5
‘It’s buzzing and full
of laughter and love’
Page 11Reading and Leeds
Post-GCSE bacchanal
fi nds its conscience
Page 17Just one in 10
teenagers hit
rest, exercise
and screen
time targets
Widow of DPD driver who
died after fi ne for hospital
visit is faced with eviction
Robert Booth
Social aff airs correspondentThe widow of a gig economy worker
who died after skipping hospital
appointments is facing homelessness,
further highlighting the impact of
insecure employment.
Ruth Lane has been served with
an eviction notice after falling into
rent arrears since her husband Don,
53, collapsed and died from a heart
attack related to diabetes. At the time,
in January 2018, he worked as a driver
for the parcel delivery fi rm DPD.
Don Lane had been charged £
by DPD when he missed work to
attend a hospital appointment and
subsequently missed three other
appointments because he was afraid
of further charges. Before his death he
collapsed twice while working.
Lane was treated as self-employed,
so his family were not able to claim
a death in service payment , from
which many employed workersbenefi t. H e had no life insurance and
i n recent months his widow’s fi nan-
cial predicament has grown steadily
worse. Despite the fact that she works
full-time, she and her 23-year-old
son, Jordan, could be homeless
within weeks.
“When I got the email [containing
an eviction notice] it terrifi ed me,” she
said. “Blind panic. What the hell am I
going to do? I was driving to work say-
ing to myself : don’t cry, don’t cry. But
I just couldn’t stop.”
DPD said in a statement that as
Lane was self-employed, “it would
be inappropriate for us to comment
on Mrs Lane’s fi nancial situation”.
DPD Group UK delivers for household
names including Next and Asos and
made £121m profi t in 2017, according
to its latest accounts. The highest -paid
director had a salary of £987,.
Ruth Lane’s landlords reduced
her rent when she said she could no
longer aff ord the small Dorset house
she shared with Don, but despite work-
ing full-time for Marks & Spencer shecannot cover even the lower cost and
has been ordered to leave.
Other DPD couriers clubbed
together to contribute half of the cost
of Lane’s £5,000 woodland burial
and funeral last year, but Ruth Lane
said DPD had provided no fi nancial
assistance.
The gig economy is growing fast,
with companies such as the mini-
cab hailing fi rm Uber and delivery
fi rm Hermes also relying on “self-
employed” workers.
About 4.7 million people in the UK
work through a gig economy platformat least once a week, according to a
study for the TUC that found the sector
ha d more than doubled in size in the
last three years.
Gig work does not guarantee the
minimum wage or offer sick pay,
holiday pay or pension rights. L egal
rulings in favour of workers’ rights
have yet to take eff ect pending appeals,
including at the supreme court.
After a public outcry at Don Lane’s
death after the peak Christmas deliv-
ery season, DPD scrapped their £
charges levied against drivers who
failed to fi nd a replacement for their
round when they wanted a day off.
DPD said: “Don Lane worked with
DPD for 19 years and was a much-loved
and valued member of our team. We
were devastated by his death and, as a
result, the company carried out a root-
and-branch review of every aspect of
our working relationship with our
drivers and introduced a series of
ground-breaking reforms.”
Ruth Lane is currently taking DPD
to an employment tribunal, arguing in
a case with 76 other couriers that her
husband should have been treated as
a worker, which would have aff orded
him holiday pay and a guaranteed
minimum wage. She is also claim-
ing that DPD’s decision to charge him
for missing work to attend hospital
amounts to disability discrimination.
DPD is contesting the case.Nicola DavisFewer than one in 10 teenagers meet
the recommended guidelines for
sleep, exercise and screen time.
According to guidelines developed
by Canadian researchers, children
aged fi ve to 17 should spend an hour a
day doing moderate to vigorous exer-
cise, no more than two hours a day in
front of a screen and get at least eight
hours’ sleep a night.
But a new study suggests only
9.7% of 14 -year -olds in the UK man-
age all three recommendations, with
more than three -quarters of teen agers
spending more than two hours a day
interacting with screens.
“Screen time was the main driver
of not meeting all three recommen-
dations, ” the authors noted.
However the idea of “screen time” is
controversial: many experts say there
is not enough evidence to recommend
a threshold for children, with recent
guidelines from the Royal College of
Paediatrics and Child Health stating:
“We are unable to recommend a cut-
off for children’s screen time overall.”
Instead they recommend parents
focus on whether screen use is inter-
fering with other activities such as
sleep and family time.
Mark Hamer, professor of sport and
exercise medicine at University Col-
lege London and a co-author of the
new research, said: “In essence these
behaviours are heavily interrelated as
the 24-hour day is fi nite, and increas-
ing time in one behaviour tends to
decrease time in another .”
The latest study, published in the
journal Jama Pediatrics , is based on
data collected between January 2015
and March 2016 from 14-year-olds in
the UK. Each participant self-reported
their average daily screen time –
including TV, tablet and computer use- and their bedtime and waking times.
Levels of exercise were monitored by
an activity tracker. Data from almost
4,000 teenagers was analysed.
The results reveal that almost 90%
of participants reported sleeping for
more than eight hours on a school
night, but only 23% said they spent
two hours or less a day interacting with
screens. About 41% of teenagers met
the recommended level of physical
activity. Only 9.7% met recommenda-
tions for all three behaviours.
▲ Ruth Lane with her husband Don,
who missed hospital appointments to
avoid charges from the delivery fi rm
PHOTOGRAPH: RICHARD CREASE/BNPS‘When I got the
eviction notice it
terrifi ed me. What
the hell can I do?’Ruth Lane
Widow of DPD driver2
Maximum hours of screen time
each day for teenagers recommended
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