Episode 2 How Safe Is Your House?

Every year 5,000 people die in household accidents across the UK.

And three million others end up in A & E.

The scale of some of the potentially fatal hazards in all our homes

is shocking.

And the actions of the dodgy

and deceitful few who put lives in danger is scandalous.

Every one of us is at risk. Take a look around and ask yourself...

How safe is your house?

You might not know it, but dangers exist in all our homes.

So in this series, we're going to reveal where you are most at risk

and how you can stay safe.

I'm Mark Clemmit.

And with the help of DIY SOS's Mark Millar,

we'll be hunting down the dangerous tradesmen whose hazardous work

leaves households all over the UK in lethal condition.

I really don't feel comfortable in this part of the building.

This is not safe.

No, don't do that, you're in enough trouble.

I'm Angellica Bell and I'll be with the agencies at the front line

of the battle to keep all our homes safe 24/7.

That's really toxic. Really toxic.

I am absolutely astounded that anybody would want to put that

on their skin.

And we'll reveal the deadly dangers that lurk in your home.

Argh!

The items that I found have the potential to end life.

Tonight, we tackle a growing pest problem that threatens our health

and the safety of our homes.

We know they're under the floor space and in particular

they're in the play area and they're in the front room.

You hear about Weil's disease, it's a concern for me

that that could affect the children.

And we reveal the surprising hazard that is one of the biggest causes

of serious injuries in our homes.

..one, go!

TUMBLING DOWN STAIRS

That was very scary.

But first, there are an estimated 7,500 gas engineers

working illegally in Britain and every year they install

a quarter of a million appliances in our homes,

putting all our lives at risk.

It's a huge problem, but how many of us know

what questions to ask the people

we invite into our homes, to carry out gas work, to make sure

they are qualified and aren't putting us in danger?

You have to have a certificate, I forget the name of it, sorry.

They have to prove who they are and have identification.

They've got like an ID card and they've got a number.

The qualifications they have to have have changed from what it used

to be to something new

and I have absolutely no idea what the new thing is.

It used to be CORGI registered, now it's something else.

Is it Gas Safe or something like that?

As far as I know it's CORGI registered,

it might have changed but if it has, I haven't heard about it.

To carry out gas work, you have to be Gas Safe registered -

they're the organisation that took over from CORGI.

Anyone who is not registered who carries out gas work

is breaking the law. No ifs, no buts.

If engineers aren't Gas Safe registered, there's no way

of knowing if they're properly qualified

and the work they do in your home is safe.

But Andrew Barnes of APB Home Services in Milton Keynes

has been carrying out unregistered and illegal gas work for years.

I'm going to ask the question, when was it last serviced?

He was recently fined and given a conditional discharge

for carrying out illegal gas work since 2006.

But two months after his court case,

he was still advertising to do it online.

A quick call to Gas Safe confirmed he still wasn't registered.

Surely he wouldn't be so stupid as to still be carrying out

illegal gas work.

Would he?

To find out, we're going undercover.

We've rented a house and invited him to take a look at a boiler which,

with the help of Gas Safe engineer Mike Griffin,

we've rigged with a fault.

What I've done is, I've let the pressure out of the expansion

vessel and out of the system itself.

-Can anybody deal with this kind of problem?

-No.

Once you take that cover off, you need to be Gas Safe registered

to work inside that area or even just to take that cover off.

Let me clarify. You're talking about this outer shell here -

-once that comes away, you have got to be Gas Safe registered?

-Yes.

Because it's part of the room seal of the boiler.

Because the cover also acts as a seal on modern boilers,

if it's not replaced correctly, there's a danger that deadly

carbon monoxide gas can leak into your home.

And before we find out if Andrew Barnes is still carrying out illegal

and potentially dangerous gas work, Mark Millar has been investigating

how this lethal gas can strike any of us without warning.

-Hi.

-How are you doing? I'm Mark.

-Come on in.

When Jan Collins had an extension built on her family house

in Cheshire, she had a gas fire fitted in the room.

But once the job was done, things started to go seriously wrong.

Over a number of weeks, I started to feel very tired.

And what was unusual was the types of headaches I started to get,

these were excruciatingly painful.

And incredibly bad nosebleeds

and I couldn't understand why this was happening to me.

At what point did you notice there was a problem with the fire?

My husband just happened to be sat in here one Sunday

morning and noticed a blackening of the brickwork of the fireplace,

"This shouldn't be happening.

"Why don't you call a chimney sweep in during the week?"

which I did, and as soon as the chimney sweep saw the size of

the fire and the aperture, straightaway he said, "That's not right."

Then he then did a smoke test which found that more than 50%

-of the carbon monoxide fumes were coming back into the room.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

Fortunately, Jan noticed the problem with her fire in time

and she's had it ripped out and this new one safely installed.

What I've since learned,

and I had no consideration of this at the time, was that it's not

just about whether they're Gas Safe registered,

it's making sure they're Gas Safe registered for the appliance

in which you want them to work on. He was Gas Safe registered

but only to work on boilers, not to work on fires.

To be Gas Safe registered, engineers have to take a rigorous

exam for every type of appliance they work on.

And the details of what exams they have passed are set out

on the back of their Gas Safe ID card.

What I wanted was an apology.

This guy has compromised my health,

he's compromised potentially my life and the life of my family.

And as you can imagine, my husband was out for making him

acknowledge that he'd made a mistake and for him to say, "Yes,

"I've done something bad here and I'm really sorry."

Unregistered gas engineers put lives at risk.

And although Andrew Barnes isn't responsible for what happened

to Jan, he has carried out illegal gas work for years.

We want to make sure he works safely by exposing him,

so he takes the exams and gets himself on the Gas Safe register.

But if he does break the law again, we will also be handing over

our footage to the authorities, which could mean a fine and prison.

# Oh, I think I smell a rat

# Oh, I think I smell a rat... #

That rat is massive.

Rats spread dangerous and life-threatening diseases

and attack the fabric of our homes.

We've got chewed wire, we've got exposed water pipes,

we've got horrendous amounts of faeces and urine.

As more and more rats become resistant to the poisons

we put down, the danger they pose to all of us is increasing.

Today, I'm joining pest control officer Justin Holloway

as he answers a plea for help from a family in Swindon.

-Hello, good morning.

-Morning.

Mark and Lisa have got a serious rat problem

and are desperate for Justin to rid their home of these dangerous pests.

I have to say that your house is spotless, I'm actually quite jealous.

I'm surprised you have a rat problem.

What are the things that concern you most?

For me, we know they are under the floor space

and in particular they are in the play area

and they are in the front room, which means

they're in close proximity to the children when they're playing.

You heat about Weil's disease, it's a concern for me that that could affect the children.

Weil's disease, or leptospirosis, is a bacterial disease which can

cause flu-like symptoms such as...

And in extreme cases can lead to...

How can you catch it?

You can catch it by being exposed to the urine of the rat.

The Leptospira bacterium is within that.

And if, for example, the children have any cuts or abrasions,

and they become exposed to damp urine, it's possible that

could enter their bloodstream through that cut or abrasion.

-This potentially is serious.

-Yes.

It's a situation that needs to be managed, for sure.

To solve this rat problem,

Justin needs to stop them from getting into the house.

And the search for their entry point starts in the playroom.

-So what can you see from here?

-First of all, we've got droppings.

We know they're travelling in this direction, that they've been here.

They're relatively fresh given the glistening of the surface.

What we've also got here is chewing to the wire.

So the rats have been chewing away here quite happily.

That'll give rise to the electrics tripping, there is inconvenience

with that, there's cost, you need an electrician to come sort this out.

And there is risk.

When rats chew through and expose wires,

they leave our homes at risk of house fires.

But with no obvious entry point to Mark and Lisa's house

under the playroom, the search moves to the lounge.

We're having a look at the internal structure to see

if we can see anything that's obvious.

We can see the footprints and the droppings,

but it doesn't appear to be emanating from here.

There's no immediately apparent entry points that I can see.

-That's for sure.

-In this part of the building,

I've gone all the way up to this fireplace

and filled all of the holes they could possibly have come through

with expanding foam and steel mesh.

They could be quite carefully secreted behind one of these areas.

They could be popping out further along this floor.

I think what we now need to do is to move our investigations to

the outside sewer system.

If you do have rats in your house, it's best to call

the professionals as soon as possible, because they breed quickly

and it doesn't take long for even a small problem to get out of hand.

So what have we got in here, Justin?

Well, Angellica, it's time to bring out Sewer Cam.

I can travel up to 40 metres through the sewer system,

getting a very good look at the pipework.

It's not going to be pleasant, which is why

I've got to get changed into some other clothing right now.

Because I'm not going in that hole without...

-You're going in the hole?

-I'm going in that hole, yes.

Justin is checking the sewers because they are full of rats.

And a broken sewer pipe is a perfect way for them to get into our homes.

Right, time to go in.

Angellica, if you take a look in here,

-can you see those formations of droppings?

-Yes.

There's various droppings scattered around in here,

particularly in the corner there.

You see what sort of build up we've got here, so I'm going to have

to break this through to try and get the camera up.

-I'm going to let you get on with it for a moment, yeah?

-You carry on!

While Justin is clearing the sewer so that he can check the pipe,

inside, Mark is doing some investigation work of his own.

So what have you discovered?

So, just underneath here there is a load of rubble

and debris, which means the rats have been dragging it away

from most probably this wall area.

I think this is most probably the area that they are coming in,

underneath the wall into my property.

Which is great - maybe we could get evidence with what Justin is doing,

the sewer system is all along the side of this house, isn't it?

Yeah. And we'll see what's happening down there.

This is a potentially significant discovery.

The sewer that Justin is up to his neck in runs right along

the side of the house where Mark thinks the rats could be getting in.

We'll find out shortly

if we're on our way to ridding this family's home of the wretched rats.

Every year, a million people end up in A & E because of it,

but how many of us know what the biggest cause of serious injuries

in our homes is?

Fire.

Electrical problems.

Water, maybe? Slipping over?

People leaving lit cigarettes is one that you always hear about.

Loose carpets.

Fire.

Knives or, erm, sort of kitchen appliances.

I don't know, that's a crazy guess.

The answer is falls,

with stairs being the biggest culprit.

And 27-year-old Natalie Morris from Rotherham found out first-hand

just how dangerous they can be.

I woke up about one o'clock in the morning.

I've come out of the bedroom, with it being dark

and probably being half asleep, I've misjudged it.

I remember hitting the bottom.

And I just remember just a real burning pain in my lower back.

Went for an initial X-ray and that's when he said,

"You've broken your back."

And kind of all hell just let loose at that point.

When he told me he had to do the operation,

it involved putting rods through the vertebrae, which he made

perfectly clear at any point he could hit a nerve and paralyse me.

With her only option being never walking again,

Natalie decided to have the risky surgery.

The operation was a huge success.

I'm just grateful that I was lucky.

Falls on stairs can end and wreck lives but most of us

don't realise the risks they pose.

To demonstrate how dangerous they can be, we scoured the country

for hazardous staircases.

And the worst we found belongs to Sally in east London.

-Hi.

-Sally.

-Nice to meet you.

-Can we come in? Yes, come in.

-Look at that.

These are a beautiful set of stairs but practically not so good, Sally.

No. It's a feature, design feature.

But it's not great for day-to-day living and running up and down.

It's quite obvious that there is no banister but then

so many people came over and said how great it looked

that maybe I could just live with it.

Sally knows her stairs are unsafe but, like many of us,

doesn't acknowledge the seriousness of the threat they pose.

Oh.

'Like hers, there are staircases all over Britain with slippy wood

'treads, no banisters or guards and which are dangerously steep.'

-You had to concentrate to do that, didn't you, Angellica?

-Yeah.

-It is really quite ominous and it is really steep.

-It is. It's very steep.

The treads are quite slippery as well

so you ideally need some footwear with a bit of a grip.

When I'm up, normally I wouldn't hang around at the top

of the stairs too long because the longer I'm looking down them

at where I've got to go, that just makes you more anxious.

It's a dangerous staircase, Sally, isn't it?

-They look great, though, don't they?

-Yes, but - and it's a big but...

To show how hazardous stairs can be to all of us,

we've arranged for stuntman Riky Ash to throw himself down Sally's.

We've also invited Dr Jonathan Tremmell,

a leading specialist in fall injuries,

to explain exactly what can happen if we fall down them.

How do these stairs compare to your normal challenges?

I could tumble off the side, there could be a serious injury there.

Also the impact at the bottom,

we have a window that I could go through.

From a stunt point of view, this is probably the most dangerous

staircase I will have fallen down.

Seeing Riky fall down Sally's stairs will highlight the risks

many of us run in our homes every day.

What are your impressions from the top, looking down?

I've performed this stunt over 50 times, various staircases.

But every job is different so there may be an element of danger

there, something may catch me out, one hopes it never will.

-Do you want to adopt your position?

-Yes.

Five,

four,

three,

two,

one.

Go.

Ah!

Oh...

-Oh!

-Ricky, you OK?

-Yep.

-Are you sure?

-Yeah. I'm fine. Yeah.

-OK.

Sally, how was that? Was that a bit of a shock to see that?

Er, yes, that was very scary.

I thought he'd hurt himself, actually.

That was not what I was expecting.

It was lot different. Lot different.

There's a lot of a slide in there rather than a tumble.

It just goes to show you how dangerous that staircase is.

You seemed to slide on your vertebrae, it was like you lifted...

It didn't feel as though there was a tumble,

it just felt as though, bang, that staircase just carried me.

Ah! Oh...

You can see an impact point there on the hip.

You see the elbow going in there.

Narrowly missing your head on the wall as well.

-You were quite lucky not to go over the side there.

-Yeah.

So, yeah, left shoulder blade is basically taking

the whole of your weight as you slid down the steps.

The first thing that is different about Sally falling down

the stairs, you'd have started from a standing position.

If you tripped, you'd have gone headfirst,

hit your head almost certainly on the corner of one of those steps.

And could quit reasonably have caused a serious injury

to your head or brain. You can fracture the skull but in fact,

what is more likely to happen is you will end up with

bleeding between the inside of the skull and the surface of the brain.

And that puts pressure on the brain

and too much pressure on the brain causes the brain to stop working.

-That could have been you, Sally, couldn't it?

-Dead. Brown bread.

Head injuries can kill but a stair fall can also cause broken wrists,

ankles, necks - the list is long and very painful.

But for Sally, and everyone with dangerous staircases,

there are some simple fixes.

Putting in banisters, carpeting them and installing guards

would reduce the risks Sally and millions of us are running.

How has your thinking changed?

I think I am of a mindset now where

I really need to do something about it.

Since our visit,

Sally has had the designers around and she's picked out

a toughened glass balustrade with curved timber handrail,

which will make her stairs safer.

In Swindon, pest control officer Justin Holloway is investigating

a sewer system to try and find out how the rats

in Mark and Lisa's home are getting in.

With challenges like this, we've got the little tractor

and that tractor unit just allows me to get this safely down

the sewer system, quickly to the point I need to get to.

Rats can chew through bricks, concrete and wood.

They can get into all our homes, spreading dangerous diseases

and causing damage that can lead to fires and flooding.

What exactly are you looking for, Justin?

We're looking to go up the sewer system

and we're looking for any breaks in the sewer that have taken

place through subsidence, where the clay pipes have been fractured

and rats have leveraged that to get in.

Oh, look at that!

If you can see on that monitor,

what you're looking at is the walls of the clay pipe.

And it's supposed to be perfectly joined to another pipe.

-Ah, so it's almost gone like that?

-Exactly.

So what do you expect the rat could do?

It could hop up here - that's a possible entry point.

That's significant, that's really significant.

To work out where the break in the sewer pipe is in relation to

the family's home, Justin lays the camera wire back along the street.

Somewhere around about here is where this pipe shift's taken place.

-And...

-That's the living room.

-That's where you just showed me where you dug up.

-That's right.

In that corner.

What I also noticed - whether it's relevant -

is a little bit of cracking, a subsidence there,

it might be where the ground's dropped, I don't know.

But normally if there was soil here, they would have broken straight out

of the soil, gone vertically as well.

But we've got this tarmac here,

that may be a bit of a barrier at this point.

They're just going straight underneath this lot,

made a burrow straight underneath the property.

So I think it's a conversation with the utility company next.

But before Mark asks the utility company to take action,

we need solid proof.

So we are putting a camera under the lounge floorboards to try to

confirm this as the rat's point of entry.

A week later, we're back to see if the camera footage

will confirm our suspicions.

-Morning, guys.

-Hi, Mark.

-Come in.

So, we'll just have a look.

-There it is.

-There you go.

-That's the entry point, isn't it?

This is exactly opposite the sewer issue we've got outside. Yep.

And that's clearly a very interesting area.

What's it like for you, seeing it visually?

They've caused a big bane in my life, but actually

when you see them on the TV like that, it doesn't seem so bad,

it does feel like you're watching a wildlife programme.

But obviously I don't want the wildlife programme in my front room.

-But joking aside, this is a serious problem, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

This isn't a nature programme. This is somebody's home,

if we look at these cameras we see cables, we see rats, we know

they're chewing them, so it's not funny. It's got to be addressed.

So at the moment we've got to do some serious blocking up work, that

will hopefully be a great thing for the short term

but we've got to keep our long-term aim on dealing with

-the utility company, so hopefully we can get the ball rolling.

-Yeah.

-Thank you, Lewis.

-Nice somersault!

-He's excited that we found the rats!

Aren't you? We've located where the rats are, we can sort this. Yeah!

Justin gets to work blocking up the entry point with a reinforced

concrete plug. But his efforts are only a short-term solution

and won't keep out the rats forever.

The utility company need to fix the pipe

and after Mark contacted them, they've agreed to do just that.

In Milton Keynes, illegal gas engineer Andrew Barnes has turned up

to look at a boiler we've rigged with a fault.

He's been taken to court for carrying out illegal gas work

for years, but is still not registered with Gas Safe.

So if he takes the protective cover off the front of the boiler,

he is breaking the law - again.

But he hasn't turned up alone.

The protective cover is off, but if Johnny is Gas Safe registered,

the work they are doing is legal.

We need to find out more about Johnny.

How long does it take you to learn all that then?

-So Johnny is qualified?

-Yes.

-He's not learning from you?

-No.

-Ah.

If Barnes is telling the truth, Johnny can legally work with gas

but this is a man whose word cannot be trusted.

Oh, cool.

IB...

-JIB. Oh, it's a tick.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-JIB?

-JIB is the Joint Industrial Board, it doesn't give him

registration to play with gas.

So he's just said he's Gas Safe.

-She asked him if he was and he said, "Yep."

-He did.

It was the Health and Safety Executive who took Barnes to court

and whose investigation found that he deliberately

and consistently pretended to be registered with Gas Safe

and its predecessor, CORGI.

You're...police?

Oh, right.

Who do you inspect for then?

This man has no shame.

It's impossible to believe a word Andrew Barnes says.

Time to put him on the spot.

Well, what an interesting morning, Andrew.

Nice to meet you, Mark Clemmit from BBC's How Safe Is Your House?

Johnny.

Why are you doing it? Why are you doing it, Andrew?

Why are you still taking work you're not qualified to do?

-I am qualified.

-You're not Gas Safe registered, are you?

We checked just a couple of days ago.

-You, Johnny, are you Gas Safe registered?

-No.

-You're not.

-Why are you doing, mate?

-Because I'm waiting to do Gas Safe register.

You're not allowed to touch gas appliances

-until you are Gas Safe registered.

-I know.

-You are breaking the law.

-I know that. I know that.

-Then why are you doing it?

Well, I'm waiting to do it. I'm waiting to register.

Then you must stop and get registered.

I mean, you know you're on a three-year conditional discharge.

Yeah.

-This is serious stuff, mate.

-I know.

-Do you not accept the fact...

-I do.

..that people in the sanctity of their own homes need to trust

-people like you?

-I fully accept that.

-I do fully accept that.

-Is there anything you would like to say?

There's nothing I can say, is there, really?

Other than apologies all round.

Why not sleep safely in your bed knowing you're not going to cause

householders harm?

I agree with you and it's coming within the next ten days.

We checked with Gas Safe

and they said they had no knowledge of Andrew Barnes applying to become

registered with them during the course of our investigation.

Well, in case you're in any doubt, there is the

-"Becoming a Gas Safe registered engineer" forms.

-I know all that.

-I all know that.

-You've got it all? You don't need that?

-No.

-OK.

Following our investigation,

Andrew Barnes finally got himself on the Gas Safe register.

It's good news, as he can now be monitored to make sure

his work is safe, but that doesn't mean he can get away

with the illegal work he was doing whilst he was unregistered.

We've made our footage available to Gas Safe and

the Health and Safety Executive and if they decide to prosecute him,

Barnes could be on his way to jail.