Hello and welcome to our programme. Within the next half an hour we will bring you some of the highlights and original journalism from our show over the last week. On tuesday, we exposed the shocking conditions that some families in the capital city of the fifth largest economy in the world, london, are living in. Families in the last remaining block of flats of a huge regeneration scheme in barnet are coping with cockroaches, damp, mould and flooding. While drug addicts inject heroin on the stairs. Residents told us exclusively they feel they are being left to rot. Sean has this exclusive report. We cannot carry on living here. We are not leading how people should be living. The whole building is not secure, anybody can walk in. People using drugs, injecting in the area. They dont care. They dont care, they do not have to live like that. It is put up and shut up and be grateful for it. Regardless of how you live. When did you first see the cockroaches . About a year and a half ago. Coming up on nearly two years now. They were massive, they were all on the side, all my counters. In my microwave, they were in there. In the bathroom. They were absolutely everywhere. We cannot carry on living here, we are not living how people wish to be living. My doctor is now worried that ive got the ocd, because i can clean up to five hours day. I physically could not eat in here. Because of the cockroaches . Yes, it made me feel sick. It made me feel dirty. Ive seen them in my cupboard. Im not prepared to use a cup that was in my cupboard, because theyve been on it. My son has been bitten in the eye. I have had infections from them in my eye, my daughter has been bitten by them. When my daughter finds the cockroaches, she tries to keep it quiet, because she knows, she warns me that there is a cockroach and she says mummy, dont cry. Dont cry. You dont have any rights, really. Barnet homes can move you to another region. You dont a choice. To another regeneration. We have no rights. It is put up and shut up. And be grateful for it, regardless of how you live. The whole buildings not secure, anybody can walk in. Look. None of these, nothing is connected any more. They have completely shut it off. So, we have everyone and anyone walking in. We have a Whatsapp Group with all the majority of the residents and tenants here. We have just got a whatsapp saying that one of the peoples next door neighbours was burgled today between 7am and 11am. Just before she was burgled they saw many of the heroin addicts on the stairway. They were watching the building, as they were leaving. We have been complaining of, obviously, what has been going on, that we have been having loads of drug users in the stairway. Walking through our corridors. Are you 0k . Water. Drips down and then floods. This is where the level, up to here, is where the level comes up to. I have water come through, basically, and it sits behind the wall. I have black mould, which i had pictures for and i have had black mould since 2015 all they up until 2018. I had Barnet Council out to test the wall and they said to me that it is perfectly safe my children to breathe in. Barnet homes have tried to make it out that it is my fault that i have the mould. Im not doing the correct things to circulate air through the property. But this is not about air, this is not condensation, because this is the only wall that i had the mould come in through. And that is the outside wall. I paid for the anti mould paint and wallpaper, i paid over £200 for it. I didnt get reimbursed by barnet homes or Barnet Council. They dont care. They dont have to live like that. Theyre knocking this down, they dontt want to put money into it. We are social cleansing at its best. We should feel deserved to have this place that we should be happy that we live in these conditions and that our children live like this. But they genuinely do not care. Ive had enough, really. Ifelt like i was not being listened to by Barnet Council. I felt like they were telling me one thing and other people another, so then i started knocking on every Single Persons door, took their numbers, popped them in a Whatsapp Group and now everybody chats. Everybody has come together like a community now. Who are you driving out to give this spanking, brand new, shiny regeneration to . Who are you doing it to . People with money. You are not looking at the people who have lived here for 10, 15, 11, how many years. They just think that they can just leave it to rot to the ground with us people in it. So, now, as we are coming together as an association, now as were coming together as a group, we are now being listened to. Everyone has either the same problems, so many have the same sort of problems and now theyre setting up and listening, because in our last meeting over 50 people turned up and they were not expecting that. Now, they have to sit up and listen. Following our report we tried speak to someone from conservative controlled Barnet Council or someone from barnet homes, not a Single Person was available. We did manage to get Brian Coleman to come on, he was a conservative member of Barnet Council between 1988 in 2014 and a former mayor of the borough, while lots of the planning and work in this Regeneration Project happened. We also heard from annie, who you saw in our film, and director ken loach, who, in 1966, directed a landmark film that highlighted the devastating impact of homelessness on a young mum and her children. Mr coleman, thank you for stepping up. Could you live in a flat like that . Absolutely not. Why should annie . That is why we are developing the estate. A vast amount of regeneration has already taken place and it is a huge success story. Pause that. So, you could not live in a flat with damp or cockroaches or drug addicts injecting outside yourfront door . No. So, why should annie . Well, these issues should be dealt with. Obviously barnet homes not going to spend vast amounts of money on a block of flats that is going to be brought down into years time. You can see the logic of that. You are unsecured tenants, you knew you were unsecured tenants only with them. Does that mean they. That was always going to be short term. Let me get a word in, does that mean they do not count, . No, of course it does not. So, why are you making that point . Because the council owes them nothing at all. When you moved in. Not even basic, hygienic, safe Living Conditions . You moved in for a year, two years, you have now been there for five years. Some tenants have been there for ten or 16 years. You know, you have lived there for a long time. But you are an unsecured tenant and you do not, unfortunately, all the existing tenants have been re housed, but the unsecured tenants have got to make their own arrangements. But yes, the drug dealing should be dealt with, of course it should. And the cockroaches and the pest control, all that should be dealt with. And a competent landlord to do that. What do you say to Brian Coleman . I do not know what to say. We should not have to live like that. Why should we have to live like that with our children . Why cant barnet lock the doors . The door systems have not worked for 25 years. Sorry, you say that rather proudly. I mean, that is outrageous you were in powerfor 16 of those 25 years. That is why barnet has worked day after day to try and redevelop the estate and it has taken an inordinate amount of time. Several planning applications, several developers have come and gone. It all collapsed in 2008 at the time of the recession and we had to go back to the drawing board. But barnet is finally delivering, notjust on this estate, but in other vast estates, where we are now building the new housing. Some lovely new housing, mixed tenancies. But we will not go there. Social and private owners, as well. It is a mixed estate. Annie, are you likely to get one of those lovely new flats . No. I have not been promised anything. I have been there nearly five years. That is fine. On the barnet website says if you stay there for five years are a secure tenant. Let me bring in ken. What do you think of this . I think it shows contempt of people. I could weep. And could people watching the film. I mean, to live with cockroaches, to live with damp, with the kids getting asthma, to be told you do not deserve anything, the council owes you nothing. It is disgusting, Brian Coleman. It is disgusting. I am sorry, you outsource the maintenance to a private company which you hold, you one hundred percent own, it is capita . What are they doing . They are meant to be maintaining this. What they do . How are they earning their profits . These private companies, if they cannot even secure the flat as they are. What links this to grenfell is the contempt for people who seem to have no power. Absolute contempt. Doesnt care if theyre in a fire hazard, doesnt care if they live in the most squalid conditions, that a story britain. That is tory britain. Its disgusting. You have a political agenda and that is fair enough. No, are you stilla member of the conservative party . Yes, funnily enough i am. I am a member of the conservative party, proud to be so. The conservatives have been delivering new housing environments for all our existing residents. They delivered it in the west, an 18 story block. For a private residence and social housing tenancies. Anyone who can allow people to live in these conditions, really has no humanity. You are allowing it. It is there now. Annie is there. Its the last block. Why didnt you maintain it . Well, we are maintaining it. You are not maintaining it. Why are you not maintaining it . It is going to be demolished in two years. Why arent you maintaining it . These are people, you know, they are not your servants, these are people. A matter of budgets. Budgets, you cant even kill cockroaches . You cant get rid of the damp . I am afraid you treat people with contempt. That is just not true. We have spent hundreds of millions on housing and barnet. We have seen the evidence. The evidence is there. That is the last block on a dreadful 19605 estate. These are People Living there now. Theyve been living there for years. They are living with cockroaches, could you live in cockroaches with your kids . Could you live with your kids getting asthma . No, you couldnt. But you allow these people to be in that situation. I think you are a disgrace. Would you like, i mean, youre not in Barnet Council any more, although the reason youre here is because she had a leading role, over 16 years, when lots of this regeneration is going on. Would you, on behalf of Barnet Council, want to apologise to annie and those living there . I do not speak for Barnet Council any more. Of course, the cockroaches and the drug dealing, all that is just not acceptable. It should be dealt with. You are accepting it. No, i am not. But it is there. Sorry, i should not be speaking for annie, because she is more than capable of speaking for herself, but im afraid you make people angry and justifiably so. Annie, can i ask you, barnet homes have apologised to you and other residents, they say we are extremely sorry that a number of residents in marsh drive are currently living in homes that quite simply fall well below the standards we expect. We fully appreciate how difficult this must be for the residents, particularly for those with young families. Do you accept that apology . I find it hard to. I really do. Because every time i have written to Barnet Council and i have expressed how they are making me feel, i have had medical letters go in, my children have been bitten, it has always been ignored. And when i did a subject access request a couple months ago and got everything back, all of my information was missing. The last thing they told me to do was take them to court. Well, they had a meeting with residents last night. Barnet homes had a meeting with residents, what was said there . They said that they will tackle the pest control, send people out to come and put the bait down. Sorry. No, it is all right. I mean, do you think that meeting happened because they knew we were doing our report today . Maybe, yeah. I mean, we send an e mail, we did invite the ceo of barnet group to come, he couldnt make it yesterday. But he has met with us, back in september. We invited the senior members of london borough of barnet to come, because we want secure tenancies. Aw. We want our doors locked. Why are you saying aw like that . Because you want secure tenancies, i am afraid secure tenancies just not on offer. Why are you so unsympathetic . It is not make sense. What does make sense . Are you a human being . You sound so casual and dismissive. They are unsecured tenants. No language, public or private. You are shouting at everyone in the studio sorry, you know, i have come on here to defend bennett council, because they did not want to. You can see why they did not want to appear, they thought was a stitch up. There is no stitch up. We went into a block of flats, we fell into what was there, the residence built as openly. We are reflecting accurately what it is like for annie to live in this block flats. In what way is that a stitch up . It is not good enough. Well, you ask the leader of the council, he is the one who said it is a stitch up. I am sorry, your unsecured tenants, you knew the deal when you moved in. You did. We had no choice. We were grateful to take the places, but we did not know about other cockroaches. We were not aware not our electrics were underwater. You knew the deal. This is in the context of a massive housing crisis. So, people like annie have no choice, they have got kids, they have to live somewhere. So, to put the, in this discussing accommodation is atrocious. Butjust think, last christmas there were 130,000 children, homeless children, in b bs, and hostels, and then there is the hidden homeless. People sofa surfing, people crammed in at the back of gardens and as a whole new housing policy based on Council Housing, real council real Council Housing with secure tenancies, where everyone has a decent home. Nobody should live in these conditions and that is the only way a Major Political change at the top. Next, Molly Russell was just 11; when she took her own life in 2017. When herfamily looked into her Instagram Account after her death they found distressing material about depression, suicide and self harm. After a committed campaign by her dad, instagram pledged to remove all posts about methods of suicide and self harm, including pictures, drawings and curtains. And cartoons. Mollys dad believes instagram is partly responsible for his daughters death and he has taken his campaign to take up social media, silicon valley. I have been talking to him and to two 13 year old girls, aoife and trinity, about their experiences on line. Since your daughters death, what have you learnt about the power of social media . There are many things that i have learnt since molly has died. The first of them is nothing to do social media, i think thats the prevalence of Mental Ill Health. I was lulled into a full sense of security, i thought it was something that did not happen that often, it happened probably to other people in a misguided way. But there are figures that showed that Something Like one in four of us was suffer an episode of Mental Ill Health in any given year. It is really quite common. So, i think the first thing that is important for as all too know, particularly young people as they are growing up, is it is a must to be expected that at some point in your life you have a bad day. I think were used to that. And then, when you know that, it is important to know how to react, because i suspect molly found herself in a bad place and she was always someone who was very good at solving her own problems, she was very independent. Gorgeous and warm an adoring and would ask for help,but if she can sort things out for herself, she would. My belief is she, as many youngsters would, she looked for help on the internet, because that is about you find all sorts of lovely answers. And she may well have received tremendous support and good advice, but among that, good advice and support, she found harmful content. She found it very easily and she found it in places that i had no idea such content with excess. She found it on public platforms such as instagram. And content that, in the end, helped persuade molly to end her life. Ian, i want to introduce you to aoife and trinity, they are both 13. When you hear ian speak, what do you want to say to him . It isjust compelling, really. What youre doing is absolutely incredible. It is incredible. It is amazing and the fact that youre doing it and helping so many other people is incredible. It is really inspirational. My sincerest apologies to your loss. I cannot imagine what youre going though. I think i cannot imagine what im going through and im going through it. So, it is just something that, the reason we are doing it, we discuss for a long time as a family whether or not to talk about mollys death publicly. The only reason we decided to is to hopefully prevent other such waste of your life. You just turned it into something so positive. Which is amazing. So, can i ask, have you ever come across things you do not want to have seen on social media . Yes. Quite a lot, to be honest. There are things that you are not looking for and you, you, it can even may be comedy and it can be joked about, when it really shouldnt be. It is very suggestive. What can be joked about . Suicide and self harm . Suicide and self harm, like, even just the smallest things, it is definitely very normalise. It is sort of, like, well, it is monday morning, oh, i want to kill myself. It is things like that,. You have seen things that say things like that . Yes. Seen it in a comedic way, it is a joke. And it really shouldnt be. It is not something to be joked about. It is built up a full time, really, ican imagine. It is built up a full time, really, i can imagine. Just think that repeated a lot, with definitely gate all on your mental health. I think any parent who is bereaved by suicide will inevitably blame themselves. For the rest of their lives. Do you . Yes, every day. It is not a job of a parent to outlive one of your children, so inevitably you feel you have not done yourjob properly. You may understand the reasons behind that and logically you might think lots of things have led to the death of your daughter, but ultimately as a parent you will spend the rest of your day blaming yourself. And in the case of molly specifically, there were signs that we took to be the normal signs of a iii year old. Molly had two older sisters, she spent a little bit more time alone in her room. Just like her sisters before her. She was a keen, keen horse rider, but she give up horse riding earlier in the year, saying that she had plateaued, she was not improving enough. So, she wanted a break and then go back to it, which undertake a reasonable reason for doing so. But they are all signs that with the benefit you had just talked a little bit more about. I always say that there were a handful of tiny signs that when we look back with hindsight, all the lesser clues line up now they look quite a positive clear at the time. There were big gaps between them and each isolated thing was very hard to spot. Do you talk to your parents about how we were feeling . All the time . Or do you keep to yourselves share with friends . I would not say i keep it to myself necessarily, i would not say i keep it to myself necessarily, but not allthe time. It is one of those things, when someone says how are you doing . And you just say im doing it. It is almost like a. It isjust conversation. Im good, thank you. How are you . You want to say im fine, that is a normal thing to say. One of the things we think we should have done as a family, instead of saying are you ok, molly . She would answer and find exactly whats wrong . If we thought she was a bit more quiet than normal, because that might encourage her to stay well, actually, i am having a bad day today. Was there any point you were like that is not like her . Was there any point or was itjust a shock . The worst point, which is huge again when we look back at it, was we went to a family party with af ew people that we did not know and molly was very, very quiet entirely spoke it was a barbecue party, the end of the summer and she did not say early much to anybody. And that was probably the biggest clue that she gave anyone, but again, it was the sort of behaviour we had seen other teenagers, early teenagers, so it is so hard to pick normal behaviour from that searches depressive behaviour. If you think you might need some help or support after that conversation, then do go to our action line. There are lots of organisations that will be able to help you. That is that for this week. And a reminder, you can contact us victoria bbc. Co. Uk at any time. Thanks for watching. The weather has certainly been causing some headaches and there today. We have had lots of travel disruption, trees down, power cuts, as well as several fireworks displays cancelled this evening, t. Particular across southern england. This picture comes from a sussex weather has also been a bit of heavy rainfall. Certainly enough to cause significant travel disruption. As we had on three into this evening, the rain and went will be easing, but we still expecting a bit of disruption to last with the of today. Alternatively five that we have this area of low pressure sitting across central part of the uk. Slowlyjeff into these, i sebastian the south and today north of that centre of low pressure. So, strong winds to come across parts of southern england, south wales, as well. A0 to 50 mile per gas later this afternoon. 50 to 60 mouth per hour across northern scotland, combined with some heavy showers, as well. The heaviest of the charmers and strong as ovens the heaviest of the charmers and strong as ovens were the heaviest of the charmers and strong as ovens were gradually eased through this evening. It becomes much less when the overnight and not as wet first thing tomorrow morning still, because it is a mist and fog patches developing here and there. Particularly in northern ireland, north west england and into wales was not temperatures well to about 60 degrees. Tomorrow will be a different billing data stops still have low pressure with us, but it is starting to fill, not as many as the bite on the map through tomorrow. Still if you blustery showers. Areas likely to see the showery rain include parts of eastern scotland and northern england. A much improved picture for the likes of east anglia and the south east, through the midlands and towards northern ireland, as well. Mostly dry, with a return to a little bit of sunshine and much less mandate than today. Temperature rise, ten to 14 than today. Temperature rise, ten to 1a degrees. Still reasonable amount to the day and sunday and things will tranquil dirt through the coming week. Here is monday, quite a few showers across parts of scotland. Also some slow moving, heavy showers and thunderstorms in southern and western parts of england. A bit of sunshine between the showers monday and temperatures about 9013 degrees. Then, we are satisfied the unsubtle spell continuing to much of the week ahead. Here is the outlook. Still some showers, single figures today middle part of the week. We have got some Colder Weather on the cards. Perhaps a little bit more brightness at times, too. Goodbye. This is bbc news, im shaun ley. The headlines at 5pm. South africa are victorious in the Rugby World Cup final, beating england 32 12 at yokohama in japan. Its disappointment for england fans, with the team unable to find the form that saw them through to the final. South africa deserved it. It was a disappointing game to watch, because there was simply not enough rugby being played. Hey, itsjust a game of rugby, mate, its all good. The government halts fracking for gas in england until there is evidence the controversial process is safe. Nicola sturgeon accuses Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn of running scared of a tv debate with her, and says
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