27/02/2017 London News

A very good evening from BBC London News, I am Riz Lateef.

First tonight, a warning that a hard Brexit could severely damage

the capital's ability to build thousands of affordable homes needed

Figures from the Mayor's office show around

one in four builders in London is from the European Union.

Our political correspondent Karl Mercer has the story.

Valentine and Georgian are a long way from home,

From Romania, they've been here nearly four years,

that's helping power the capital's construction industry.

When people come here for the first time, they think London

is something amazing, but it's not like that.

When you come, you start to make something here, it's not easy.

You need a lot of power to make something here.

Because you need the money, for all this you come here.

Today, City Hall has released figures that show these

They say there are something like 350,000 construction

Of those, some 95,000, or 27%, are from the European Union,

a further 3% are from other European countries,

14% from other coutnries around the world.

Eastern Europeans are the absolute lifeblood

of the construction industry, especially in London.

Our experience is that there's a perfect storm coming -

we want to deliver more homes, we want to supply more homes,

but frankly without the construction workers and with

imports becoming more expensive, you're heading into a perfect storm.

The Mayor has sent ambitious targets for housebuilding,

his team today warning that anything that puts workers off

Without them, you would not be able to meet the target that you have set

yourselves of building at least 90,000 affordable homes by 2020?

We have very challenging targets to meet,

and we know it's going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

We know it's going to be hard to get there,

and I think this really underscores the fact

that a hard Brexit would make that job a lot harder.

You won't be able to do it without them, will you?

We need to make sure we avoid a hard Brexit,

so that we have those highly valuable, EU nationals contributing

towards our efforts to increase building in London.

You're not going to answer yes or no, are you?

I think we need to avoid a hard Brexit.

MPs were also asking the same question

of the Housing Minister in Parliament this afternoon.

If there is a mass exodus, if you like, what will be the effect?

I don't really want to speculate on that,

because I don't think that's what's going to happen.

The Government is very, very clear that our priority,

as soon as we get the negotiation under way, is to secure

the status of British citizens in the EU and EU citizens here.

People like Valentine and Georgian, helping London's building industry

while it works out how to train more British workers.

Two Met Police officers are set to keep their jobs

after they stopped off at a McDonald's before

in how they dealt with the case in which a woman committed suicide.

Jim Wheble joins us with the details.

Tell us more about the emergency they were responding to.

Well, this focuses on events around midnight in April 2000 and 15. The

two police officers were in a patrol car, they had accepted a 999 call,

the information they were given was that a young woman, who was

psychotic, had sent a suicidal text message to a friend. She wasn't

opening her door, she was said to be a danger to herself. But the

officers drove away and went to McDonald's, had a cup of tea, did

some paperwork relating to another incident, and then under 40 minutes

later, they went to the young woman's house, they found dead, she

had hanged herself. What was said at the hearing today? Well, the two

officers admitted they had made poor decisions, but they said their

actions had not added to gross misconduct, but misconduct. Both

parties except that, even if they had got there sooner, they wouldn't

have been able to save this woman. Tellingly, the panel also accepted

their argument that they hadn't been properly trained. The officers said

they had had up to 60 minutes to respond to a category two call, not

a top priority call. As a result of this, the charge was struck out, and

tomorrow they will find out what sanction they face. Jim, thank you

very much. BBC London has discovered that

a growing number of men from the capital are among

the thousands marrying who are then outcast

by their own community. In some cases,

the motive is financial, as the groom is given a dowry

by the bride's family. Chris Rogers has

this special report. She's one of thousands of women

who entered an arranged marriage in her homeland willingly

with a British Indian. She hasn't seen him

since their wedding night. She spent all her savings

to get here in the hope of meeting him

and to get a divorce. Ritu insists she did not feel

pressured into the marriage, but the wedding took place

just 48 hours after they had met. he assured her that he would arrange

for her to join him. But the marriage broke down,

and it never happened. Why he did this?

What has he gained out of it? Not a day had come in my life

where you would really feel that you want to end this now.

Sorry. I've travelled from London to Punjab

in the north of India. It's the same journey

that every year hundreds of Indian British nationals

make, looking for a wife. there are well over 15,000

abandoned wives here. Many believe they were

married for money. Despite the dowry being outlawed

since 1961, families still offer tens of thousands of pounds

to the groom before the wedding. After the wedding,

then I arrive in London... He said, "I don't love you,

I just like you." The cultural stigma of divorce

in India can leave women Back in London, Ritu finally gets

to meet her husband in private. It was really sad

that he didn't even recognise me, he doesn't want to answer

any of my questions. Unable to secure a divorce

from their British husbands, many South Asian wives resign

themselves to life as an outcast, while their husbands face

no such cultural barriers. Now, when it comes

to last night's Oscars - the big mix-up over

the award for Best Picture But there was no mistaking

who won the Oscar In fact, it's the seventh year

in a row that a London-based company

has scooped the award. The Jungle Book was almost entirely

made up of visual special effects. This mixture of one tiny actor

and a cast of computer-generated animals was a recipe

for Oscars success. Something like 50% of

the shots were full CG. around 80% of the image

at all times is digital. It took the efforts of 800 artists

based here in London. Even for this team,

it was a big ask. We're used to not noticing

the visual effects in a film, and that's when you know you've

done your job well. Obviously, in this case,

it's the main point, A brilliant win for the people

who did Jungle Book. they conjured up this

amazing Indian jungle. I mean, it is so lifelike -

next-level visual effects, I think. Special visual effects is a category

London companies have dominated. In 2012, MPC won its first

Oscar for Life Of Pi. Framestore followed

that up with Gravity. Double Negative won two years

running for Interstellar Now MPC has won again

for The Jungle Book. It's a surrealistic experience, I

have to say. When I woke up the morning and saw

the Oscar sitting there in my house, but it's sort of sunk in a

little more, if that makes sense. MPC is now working on

a new version of The Lion King. Who'd bet against them winning again

in a few years' time? But let's find out how the weather's

shaping up with Wendy. No, a bit of shower dodging today,

and there will be more of that, but the plus side of having showers and

then some sunshine is that it looks very pretty. We had lots of lovely

rainbows throughout London today, the Weather Watchers out in force,

looking for pots of cold, one in Canary Wharf, who knew?! As we go

through the week, that familiar mix of sunshine spells, some white

weather, at first quite chilly, because the temperature at the

moment is falling under clearing skies. Temperatures close to if not

at freezing, so watch out for eyes and a foot first thing tomorrow

morning. But for most of us, it will be a dry enough commute with some

spells of sunshine, breezy from the outset, but don't be fooled, later

on you might get caught in a shower, and they may have a wintry element

as well, temperatures resolutely in single figures. As we go through the

week, it will calm down a little bit at times, Wednesday mostly dry, a

lot of cloud around, rain coming through after dark, then a brief

ridge of high pressure on Thursday, perhaps with some sunshine, the

breezy as day of the week, then more rain on Friday. This is the bigger

outlook for the weekend, low pressure after low pressure after

low pressure, another behind me, and as you can tell that means unsettled

over the weekend. John Hammond has the weather for the

rest of the country. According to one man-made

definition, spring begins in a couple of days, but in reality

weather does it own thing at its own pace. This was taken in Midlothian,

a funny old day, some lovely rainbows, downpours, burst of

sunshine, and out of the breeze it felt a little bit springlike. At the

moment we have clusters of cloud crossing the country, generating

wintry showers, clearer gaps in between allowing sunshine by day,

but overnight that means dropping temperatures, already a frost in

some