No, a Lancashire hospital has not banned staff from saying 'it's raining cats and dogs'
Royal Preston Hospital has been at the centre of a media storm this week
Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.
Today we provide some context to a story published by online outrage generator The Telegraph a week ago - about the trust which runs Royal Preston Hospital.
At our titles, we have no problem whatsoever in highlighting failures at hospital trusts when they happen. The public deserves to know when failures happen and what is being done to address them. Over at The Blackpool Lead, we have done this extensively and will continue to do so.
But sometimes we see the nationals peer into our county, publish something which stretches the truth to breaking point, and have to look into it. So that’s what we’ve done.
And no, nobody has been banned from saying ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’. But you probably knew that bit.
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Lancashire briefing
🕳️ One of Lancashire County Council’s own members is aiming to take the authority to court over the condition of the roads that it is responsible for maintaining. County Cllr Michael Lavalette, an independent who represents the Preston Central East division, is searching for a solicitor willing to mount a so-called ‘class action’, designed to recover the cost of vehicle damage caused by potholes. He said that the Progressive Lancashire main opposition group – of which he is a part – wants to increase the chances of success for individual motorists who make claims against the county council after ending up out of pocket as a result of defects in the road. The Reform UK-run authority stresses on the form that drivers have to complete as part of that process that the majority of such compensation attempts are “successfully defended” – in other words, County Hall does not have to pay out.
🩺 Accident and emergency patients at the Royal Preston Hospital wait less time for a bed on a ward when medics are on strike, new research has found. A study by Lancaster University discovered that admissions from the emergency department (ED) came, on average, five hours quicker during stoppage periods than on non-strike days. The biggest improvements were seen when it was resident doctors – previously known as junior doctors – and consultants who had walked out. Sixty-one days of NHS industrial action were assessed between January 2022 and April 2024 – 40 involving resident doctors, 11 concerning nursing staff, 10 related to consultants and seven by ambulance workers. Resident doctor and consultant strikes coincided on four occasions in that timeframe, which saw an unprecedented number of walkouts in long-running disputes across the health service over pay and conditions. The median waiting time for admission to the Royal Preston from its A&E fell from 18 hours 4 minutes during ordinary periods of operation to 13 hours exactly when strikes were on. The study examined the waits only of those ED patients who were subsequently taken into hospital after their visit, not those who were discharged from – or passed away in – the department.
💩 The Environment Agency (EA) has responded to claims that it is not fit for purpose and has not adequately monitored air quality at a stinking landfill site on the Fylde coast. The government body acts as the primary environmental regulator for operational landfill sites in England and for the past two years has been monitoring the Jameson Road Landfill Site in Fleetwood. Long-suffering residents have had to put up with odorous emissions from the site, run by Transwaste Recycling and Aggregates Ltd, for two years and have called for the site to close. Aside from the vile stench of rotten eggs, some residents have complained of nosebleeds, headaches and breathing problems. Despite the complaints, EA says it is holding Transwaste to account.
No, a Lancashire hospital has not banned staff from saying ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’
By Luke Beardsworth
A hospital trust in Lancashire found itself unexpectedly in the news this week after GB News, the Daily Express and LancsLive all followed the Daily Telegraph in publishing a story which screamed words and phrases had been ‘banned’ to avoid offending foreign patients.
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, which runs Royal Preston Hospital and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital, had carried out the training in 2024 to help staff communicate clearly with all patients under the banner of ‘inclusive language’.
But such phrases are a red rag to the angry bull that is The Telegraph in 2026 and they led on the idea that saying ‘it’s raining cats and dogs is culturally insensitive.
The Lancashire Lead, much like The Telegraph but unlike those gleefully rewrote the original story just enough for Google, obtained the document and - unsurprisingly - found that the section the article focuses on makes zero references to offending anyone.
Instead, it warns that some phrases which may seem every day - like ‘its raining cats and dogs’ - may not be understood and therefore the advice is to avoid them.
No words are banned in the document.
Speaking with The Lancashire Lead this week, a spokesperson for the trust said: “Points made within The Telegraph’s initial article, and in those that have since run off the back of it, are misleading in a number of ways.
