23/12/2016 South East Today

Welcome to South East Today, I'm Polly Evans.

After disturbances at Swaleside Prison,

the local MP tells the minister staff there are overworked

They have got to pay prison officers what they are worth.

defences for a Kent community devastated by floods in 2013.

We're live tonight in the village of Yalding.

Footage emerges of a rail union official calling

for the overthrow of capitalism - an MP calls the comments a disgrace.

The Kent midwives who take their expertise to Ethiopia every year,

helping to significantly reduce mortality rates.

And Herne Bay's cosy crew is back in full effect -

knitting Christmas scenes for post boxes across the town.

Prison officers are underpaid and would be better off

working in warehouses - that's what a Kent MP has told

the Prisons Minister today after inmates at HMP Swaleside took

over a wing of the jail during disturbances last night.

The jail on the Isle of Sheppey has been branded

'dangerous' in the past, with inspectors saying staff

After 60 prisoners took control of a wing of the prison last night,

the local Conservative MP Gordon Henderson has

said the ratio of staff to prisoners there is too low.

Swales side prison for days before Christmas, 2016. The chance, no

face, no case, suggesting prisoners thought they could remain anonymous.

Nobody was injured and most of the prison was kept under control. One

of the triggers was thought to be when prisoners discovered they would

be locked up in their cells longer than expected over Christmas. It is

a really dangerous situation for our members and prisoners also. What

happens is they start to escalate violence, grouped together and the

prison staff realise they are well -- they are becoming outnumbered and

the situation is volatile. They know the business well and can generally

calm them down using polite persuasive techniques. The prison

sits in a remote part of the south-east, housing some of the most

dangerous men in the country. The local MP praised the start today,

saying there should be more of them. He added this. There is a lot of

employment in the area and in the pipeline. It is more advantageous

for a prison officer to go and get a job in a warehouse where they will

earn more money. I raised that this morning. They need to papers and

others is what they are worth. The starting salary for a prison officer

is ?20,500. A relative of three inmates said today that the

prisoners human rights were not being respected. A report in July

concluded that too many prisoners were locked up during the day. 69%

of them felt unsafe and big use of force in the prison was high. Last

night incidents have echoes of 12 hours of rioting in Birmingham just

a week ago and at Bedford and Lewis before that. The Home Office said no

extra prison officers had been sent to HMP Swaleside as a result, but

extra training would happen. It has been concerning the general public

to see this on the television, gaining a real insight into what

prison life is like. For those of us that work in the sector, we have

been expecting disturbances such as this for some time as conditions

have worsened over the last few years. The Ministry of Justice's

investigation into what happened here last night under way.

The MP Gordon Henderson who we heard in John's report told us

there is a problem recruiting officers at Swaleside.

There are more than 1100 prisoners held at HMP Swaleside.

There are 138 prison officers in charge of them.

According to the Prison Officers Association,

there are vacancies for 40 further officers.

John, are these figures in line with the national average?

According to the prison officers Association, Polly, they are and

that is what is worrying them. Let's crunch them a bit more. 138 members

of staff but that is the member and the team, if you like. In any one

day, that figure could be as low as 58. That means one prison officer

for 20 prison -- 20 prisoners. They say that is not good enough. The

government seem to be taking this on board, recently recruiting they

would -- recently announcing they would recruit 2100 more officers.

They know what the problem is, with scenes like we have just seen in my

report on the news in the evenings, who is going to want that job? As

bike to the prison officers Association's boss what he thought

of Gordon Henderson's comment and he was 100% behind them, saying

salaries need to be higher to attract people into the job. In a

moment, signs of improvement in the health trust which had severely

underestimated the threat posed to patients.

During Christmas 2013, flooding devastated parts of Kent,

The government recently announced action to protect homes there -

but residents say it is 'too little, too late'.

?2.4 million is being provided to protect homes

It will go towards defending around 330 properties.

It averages out at ?7500 per property.

Ellie Price joins us live now from Yalding.

Ellie, people there suffered serious flooding in 2013.

They had been hoping for major works,

Yes, Polly, and that is basically the prostration here. Those plans of

preventative measures up and down the surrounding rivers well what

many people here had their hopes pinned on. This money is for

households to individually protect themselves but many around here have

already taken matters into their own hands, often out of their own

pockets. And the bursary they would rather forget. 200 homes flooded as

water swept through Yalding and the surrounding areas. In the New Year,

the environment agency says they will do a survey for every home at

high risk of flooding and that residents will have ?7,500 to spend

on protecting their homes. This is actually part of the blood defence.

We have got these for all three of the outside doors here. The money

could be used to install measures like this, measures many residents

already have in place. The bottom beta of bricks were treated with

some stuff to make them less porous. We have got fouls which stop the

effluent -- we have valves which stop the effluent coming out of the

downstairs loo and into the kitchen sink. It was up to this bar on the

fence. The top? For many residents remembering the flood three years

ago, they are realistic about the future. If you are going to make a

property resilient, it is going to flood anyway, so you need to make it

properly resilient, not piecemeal, and ?7,500 per property is not going

to go very far. The government had announced a blood defence scheme

back in 2014, but in August, residents were told that simply

wouldn't work and instead it would be more effective to shore up houses

individually. Despite disappointment in the village about the sums

available, the environment agency insists their plans will make a

difference. There are other things we can do, looking at whether we

build small embankments or walls around communities as well, ensuring

communities are as resilient as possible. We need to look at ways to

keep the power on if there is a flood. Community resilience is much

wider. Thankfully, residents here are confident these images will not

be repeated this Christmas but they are less positive about the future.

To give you some idea of how bad it was back in 2013, the man that lived

in this house here said the water level was right up here. I spoke to

another homeowner just up the road he said he had come up with the only

solution he could think of to avoid flooding in the future. He is

selling his house. There is no doubt that they are great for hearing

Yalding, but not necessarily for the environment agency money. They are

grateful that it is not raining as hard here as it was in 2013.

A Sussex police officer who advertised himself for sexual

services on an adult website while he was off sick

39-year-old PC Daniel Moss was based in Hastings

when he was suspended from duty at the beginning of December.

Today, a public gross misconduct hearing at Sussex Police found

he had behaved in a manner to discredit the police

A father from Rochester who has been fighting to get his son home

from Poland for more than a year has been reunited with him.

Eight-year-old Max Bagnall has not seen his father Alex

since his mother took him back to her home country.

Despite a Polish court ruling in March that Max should be

returned to his father, it has taken until now

It is understood that Ms Majda has been arrested in Poland.

A Sussex mental health trust, recently criticised

in an independent review, has improved according

Earlier this year, the Sussex Partnership NHS Trust

was told it severely underestimated the threat posed by

In today's report, inspectors from the health watchdog

the Care Quality Commission said services at the Sussex Partnership

NHS Foundation Trust were: Good for being caring and responsive.

And they added that: Child and Adolescent mental health wards

But they also highlighted the need for improvements in managing

It's disappointing that the report overall is requires improvement but

we were very close to achieving good and I believe in the CQC and they

have given a commitment to come back soon and I will -- I'm very

optimistic that it will be good when they do come back.

Inspectors identified a number of issues where the trust has been

told to make improvements including eliminating the use of mixed sex

wards for adult and psychiatric intensive care patients,

making sure all patients have updated risk assessments

and ensuring that all medicines are handled safely.

It is good that they were praising the nursing staff in certain areas

like child and adolescent mental health, because it shows that with

the right incentive it can be turned around. We have concerns that it

still has failures in the community mental health services for adults

and we are particularly concerned as to whether enough work was done in

seeing that families were involved. Our Health Correspondent Mark Norman

is here now and Mark, the charity there saying

it is worried about the Trust not talking enough to

the families of patients That's right and that's because this

goes back to that review in October when the trust were really

criticised. It involved ten killings committed by patients of the trust

and the review said some of those killings were preventable and

predictable. That's because the families had been raising concerns

over many years and the trust had simply not listened or acted. The

trust were told to get much better at involving families and carers and

to embed that across the trust. Today's report wasn't looking at

that but it did touch some of the issues and the charity said not

enough was being done as they felt. There will be a new boss of the

trust in the New Year and I think he will be much happier taking over the

trust after this report and he would have been a year ago.

A video's emerged of a senior official of the rail union the RMT,

calling for an "overthrow of capitalism" to create

Steve Hedley, who's the Senior Assistant General Secretary, made

the comments on the television network, Russia Today.

It comes after eight months of disruption and strikes

on Southern Rail over the role of the guard on the train.

One MP has called his comments "fundamentally

Train experts say both sides in the dispute are political

and have their own agendas. Maria Ramos reports.

Amid the rail strikes suffocating the South of England... Bold

comments have been made about his union's aims. Our union, it is clear

in our pull-back that we are in a -- and antagonistic relationship with

the bosses. We want to overthrow capitalism and make it a socialistic

society. These comments have been met with outrage by a Kent MP. I

think it is extraordinary that somebody who claims to represent the

views of the United Kingdom decides to go on Russian television to admit

that what he is a chilly doing is holding 300,000 people hostage now

and southern rails. Other political aspects of the strike really

relevant? The workers on southern railway, whether they are gods are

not are probably not political. They feel they have a grievance but the

bosses or the government in this case like to use that as an excuse

so as not to address the issue. At Crawley station, we showed commuters

his interview. I thought that was a scandal. I really did. An excuse for

what they are doing. It is a big issue, obviously, but overthrowing

capitalism, I don't know if that is the way to go? I don't mind over

growing capitalism, but what I am saying is that it's not affecting

them themselves, it is affecting us because we have to go to work.

Commuters face more southern rail strikes from the 31st of December to

the 2nd of January. They New Year but no new resolution.

Well, BBC South East Today is hosting a special

special Question Time-style debate about the ongoing crisis

on Southern's rail services on Sunday the 8th of January.

If you live or work in the south east and want to be

in the audience, send an email to [email protected]

with your name, address, daytime phone number and how

A Kent MP has told the Prison Minister today

that there are not enough prison officers in Swaleside Prison,

and they need to be paid more - Gordon Hendersen's comments come

after after inmates at the prison took over a wing of the jail

the lovely sound of the Rochester Cathedral choir who will have a very

special rendition of once in Royal David's city for us.

And although it stays very windy for the weekend, Christmas Day itself

will be very mild and mostly dry. Are the details for you later in the

programme. -- I'll have the details for you.

One of the highlights of the BBC's Christmas schedule this year

is Call The Midwife, when the nurses travel

to South Africa to help out at a mission hospital.

For a group of midwives from East Kent, the fiction became

a reality eight years ago, when they were invited to Ethiopia

by the country's health minister - to help save the lives

The group were shocked by the conditions they found

in the hospitals there - and have been back every year since,

helping to significantly reduce mortality rates there.

Amanda Akass has been to meet them at their home in Thanet

It's more than 6000 miles away from Thanet and in terms of health care,

Ethiopian could be in another century. But for this group of East

Kent midwives, its challenges have become very familiar. Women are more

likely to suffer death through haemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, have

difficult labours, obstructed Labour's, Labour is becoming very

long, so instead of having a baby within perhaps 12 or 18 hours, they

may still be in labour day or two later. In their first trip back in

2012, conditions were atrocious. This lady, the court have come down

below the baby's head. Good for her, but for the baby, not so good. But

the group's practical hands-on training is really making a

difference. Two units. As somebody gone to get it. Hurry up, we need

the blood. We go there and then later we go back and the midwife

will run to us saying, look at our notes, look at what we do. Look at

our hospital, how we have improved it. So it is very good to see them

putting into practice what we taught them. 750 Ethiopian mothers died --

die in childbirth out of every 100,000 children born in 2005. That

has halved over the last ten years. Although that is far, far higher

than the UK, where the figure is only nine. The conditions at the two

new hospitals are very basic. We saw a young woman in hospital who had

got pre-eclampsia, very high blood pressure, at the end of her

pregnancy. She went on to have Atlantic fits. All she needed was

some medication and then she and the baby would have lived but they

didn't have any medication and editor in a room on her own, on a

mattress on the floor, and she fitted and died. That was for the

lack of something that cost only ?7. It is things like that that further

on to do more. The preparation is already in place for their next trip

in March. They call themselves the cosy group, their aim to create

cheer across Herne Bay. The decorations have been so popular

that the number of cosies, as they are called, has more

than doubled to thirty and are drawing sightseeers

from across kent. Christmas is all stitched up in

Herne Bay. Every postbox in the seaside town has been transformed

into a woolly wonder. This is all grey shade. If you can follow a

pattern, it is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. And if you

haven't got a pattern, you make it up as you go along. Each Christmas

topper takes a month to make. They come in all shapes and sizes,

crocheted. The idea was to create a giant pudding and then I thought, we

will have a carol singer and have him saying, bring us a biggie

pudding. He was meant to stand aside but it wasn't good enough, so he had

to stand on the top. Last year we made 11 and we had a massive

response to that, really. Lots of ladies saw them and wanted to join

the crew and do some knitting and decorate the postbox, so this Deal

we have made 30 and one lady has made five. The idea was to spread

some Christmas cheer across the town and it has certainly done that. It

is just such a lovely community idea that we have come to have a look. I

think when you pass by, even if you are in your car, you smile as soon

as you see it. You see lots of people taking photos, so it has been

a very positive thing for the town. We don't get that in Sussex. I've

not seen that at all. I think it would catch on. A town dressed for

the festivities helping spin a yarn this Christmas.

Christie is in Herne Bay now. People have been travelling from all over

the place to see these things, haven't they? They have proved

incredibly popular. A couple today came from Uckfield in East Sussex

and a mother and son who had driven from Ashford. You may not know but

there is actually a topper trail, so if I show you very quickly, you can

literally go round, oh my golly, it is so windy out here, you can go

round and see all 30 of them. This one is my favourite, the nativity

scene, that was stolen last weekend but it has been returned, as you can

see. Thank you. You might want to get that laminated for this weather.

Throughout the year we've been speaking to celebrities who live

in the South East and those who've been passing through...

We always like to ask them to share a festive Christmas

message with us all - today we're kicking off with acting

A very Merry Christmas to all the BBC South East viewers. Have a

wonderful time. I would like to wish all of you are very, very happy

Christmas. Hi, I am Rick Astley and I'd like to wish all the BBC South

East viewers a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year. Lots of love.

Ah, lovely. Snow globes there. But no sign of snow. In fact, possibly

the warmest Christmas and record? It is

very windy and very mild as we look toward the Christmas weekend. Today,

we had gusts of wind and excess of 40 mph. Storm Barbra is to the north

of us but mostly it is dry for us. There aren't any warnings in place.

Earlier we were dry but there is a band of rain coming in, intensifying

through the first part of this evening, but because of the strength

of the winds, it will go through quickly and behind it we have

clearer skies. The winds will be picking up, so we shouldn't see a

frost, but even so it will feel bitterly cold with the winds making

it chillier than the minimum temperatures. It is a decent day for

Christmas Eve if you have shopping to do. Decent spells of sunshine,

with those tightly spaced isobars indicating the strength of the wind.

Gusting along the south coast at 30 to 40 mph. Temperatures by the

afternoon raging between eight and 11 degrees. A pleasant afternoon. As

we go from Saturday into Christmas Day itself, we are going to be

seeing a warm front bringing a bit more cloud cover with patchy drivel

at times. -- patchy drivel at times. We start Christmas Day with

temperatures already at around eight or 10 degrees. Very mild. Mostly we

will stay dry as we had the D-Day and by the afternoon, yes, it will

be blustery, but the afternoon could see highs of around 14 degrees. The

warmest Christmas and record was 15.6 degrees. As you go into Boxing

Day, a band of rain clears through, it is chilly but settled as you head

through Boxing Day. Perfect for a walk.

Thank you very much, Rachel. Join me. I am lamely on the sober. We are

going to leave you -- I am lonely and the sober. We are going to leave

you with a beautiful carol. Have a very Merry Christmas.

Cash he came down from Earth to heaven