Episode 6 Inside Out

Hi, I'm Elaine Dunkley, and welcome to Inside Out.

Over the next few weeks, we will be bringing you in-depth

reports on some of the best stories from around England.

Coming up: What happened when a town lost

Our team has been to Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, where drivers

are street drifting and it is against the law.

And, David Whiteley discovers how a city disappeared

Britain's lost Atlantis gives up some of its secrets.

The UK was once famous for its thriving coal mining

communities but they faced massive change since the closure

Amongst them, a small town of Shirebrook in Derbyshire.

For ten years it has been the home of Sports Direct,

and as a result it has seen an increase

in the number of people from Eastern Europe

When Shirebrook lost its pit, the town lost its soul.

There's nothing in Shirebrook now, nothing at all.

When the pit was open, on a Sunday night, it was absolutely

?40 million of taxpayers' money was spent

transforming the old colliery site into a giant business park.

Sports Direct moved in, along with thousands of migrant

A big change for a small town in one of the most

Since we have had a massive influx of

people coming in, Shirebrook wasn't prepared for it.

In a tale of modern Britain, what can we learn from

Last summer, a small group of residents

Troy Kissane is a local plumber and the man

The last four years has gone downhill drastically.

People are getting disillusioned, even coming to these meetings now

I assure you we are working very hard.

Believe you me, something will be done.

It is pressure on housing which is one

of the reasons Troy says people are protesting.

They are concerned some new arrivals don't have anywhere to live.

One of the problems we have had, we have had rough sleeping.

In the summer last year, I found two tents in this area.

I reported it to the police and the police tracked them down,

found out they were two foreign nationals.

When you say quite bad, how many people did you find?

I have heard other people have found tents

Bolsover District Council told us it does not know

exactly how many people in Shirebrook are homeless

It estimates that, over the last four years,

about 1500 people have moved to the town.

Many of them rent rooms in houses once built for miners,

ironically called the New Model Village.

Steve Cathcart used to be a miner at the pit, so he has

Today, as a police community support officer, it is his job to know

what is going on, sometimes with the help of a volunteer

When you walk round there now, there is a lot of influx of Eastern

The landlords that own the houses, obviously, are carving these houses

What you see is a dividing partition in the front room

The young guy just moved in has been here two days,

I've asked him, are there any fire doors?

He's said, not at this moment in time.

Our concern is the fire risk, the safety to

In ten years, housing complaints to the

district council, like overcrowding, have almost tripled.

The police have told me they are concerned about more

Over the past four years, Carl Reid from the district council

has been responsible first for housing

We have seen one particular property in the New Model

Village where there is a partition, straight down the middle

Are you concerned about safety and housing conditions?

We are concerned about that and that will be investigated.

We get a lot of anecdotal information we are asking people

We are building, as a district, social housing.

We are one of the few that are doing it at the moment.

People say you just weren't ready for the change.

I think that is where people may have got it wrong.

Troy and the residents group are also worried

about crime but crime rates are down.

It may be down but we are getting serious crimes now.

We have had a nasty incident on Market Square where a guy got

stabbed and also a guy just over here, who followed his mum

He has just got seven years and will be deported after that.

There have been two major incidents lately.

If it was 2004, we would probably have had 15, 20 a week.

More concern for the public is around housing,

There is also defecating and urinating in trees.

The council is in the process of closing this footpath

because of anti-social behaviour, including

After complaints about drinking and urinating in the street,

since November there is a new type of ban.

20 fines have been handed out, all except one were for drinking.

Over at the doctor's surgery, the council is so worried

that the practice is bursting at the seams, it has asked

It has been told NHS England is responsible.

The Hardwick Clinical Commissioning Group,

which decides all local health priorities, has told me it

will review all health facilities here in Shirebrook.

It will then bid for funding from NHS England to try to get

Shirebrook is now a town and everyone in it has to get on.

I am working here locally in Sports Direct.

She has come in on her own back and spending a lot of time with us,

translating, to create community cohesion.

I was a soldier for 16 years, in the Polish military.

A group called Shirebrook Forward may be part of the solution.

Many organisations working together, including Sports Direct

and the residents' group, to improve the town.

They meet every few months at the Sports Direct HQ.

The district council invite us along.

For those that don't, I am Mandy Chambers.

I work for public health at Derbyshire County Council.

Last autumn, when we investigated the company's warehouse

agency working practices, we were not allowed on site

The council told us it is believed to be

the first time a news camera has ever been allowed access to the HQ.

Over the last six months, they have come

The problem is, they do not like the publicity.

We are saying to them, you need to look at the positives.

Sports Direct have chosen not to take part with the programme,

Over the last year, we have introduced a community cohesion

officer, who is working with us and our partners and people

We are investing in play facilities, we are investing in the town centre

Hopefully the penny has dropped and they are listening.

It is dangerous, it is illegal, and it

It happens late at night on the hairpin bends

Who are the Cheddar drifters and why do they do it?

Cheddar Gorge, nestled in the Mendip Hills.

It has been named as the second best national wonder in Britain

Formed by meltwater floods running through here for over a million

years, it is a beautiful and tranquil place.

They use it as their playground, pushing their cars to the limit.

You put yourself at risk, you put other people at risk,

I'll be finding out from a pro, and asking

what it would take to get these street drifters off the road

I have been involved in the motorsport

world for years, competing in the Formula Women Championships.

Drifting is all about sliding your car sideways,

from corner to corner, whilst maintaining control.

Doing it on a road like this seems insane, and highly dangerous.

These roads aren't designed for that type

You have sheer rock faces that border onto the road

Although we have not had any fatalities yet,

they could easily end up with a serious injury.

What offences are they committing by drifting on public roads?

The most common would be driving without due care and attention,

or dangerous driving, to which you could end up

That is a substantial risk to life and their liberty.

I am meeting Trent, he knows all about the secret world

They are a group who have never before spoken openly.

Trent is a university graduate and has a good job as a computer

He spends most of his spare time working on his car in here.

Drifting on public roads is dangerous.

It puts your life at risk and it puts other people's lives at risk.

In the past, when I have been drifting, we used to set alarms

and we would deliberately go and find roads and places

in the middle of nowhere, with more or less know one

Surely that will irritate the residents?

In the past, there have been a lot of complaints.

What would get street drifters off the road and onto a track?

There are not many places to go drifting.

As soon as the word drifting is mentioned,

Is the lack of available tracks the problem then?

I want to find out more about the people who

It is late at night and I have come back to Cheddar.

I am on my way to meet Trent and his friends.

They are somewhere in the Gorge in a car park.

I am feeling a little bit apprehensive.

How do the residents of Cheddar see you guys?

Well, I guess, there is a small minority who know

what is going on, sort of half, roughly, in the village.

A large amount of people see it as dangerous

Would you say that is a fair comment?

They don't really see it from our side of the situation,

sort of thing, and all the safety precautions we go through.

We work all year round and meet most nights

of the week, building, preparing the cars and putting money

We don't really build them just to smash them

up and try to harm other people, obviously.

We have people up and down and people signalling and things.

I won't get into a car if I feel at risk or unsafe.

I will only get into a car if I feel safe and know I am OK.

Is it's scary when you are sitting beside someone who is going sideways

Just another way to let steam off after work.

We are told to find somewhere to park in the Gorge and wait.

You think they are going to come into you but they seem

The smell of it is just making my eyes sting.

So, he just spun his car all the way round.

The back end nearly went into the rocks.

So, somebody was flashing like crazy then, I think to warn the person

coming down that somebody was coming.

From what I've seen, the system is working but barely.

This is not a race track, although right

now you would be forgiven for thinking it was.

It is a public road, with other users on it.

I wouldn't want to be coming the other

OK, the flashing light seemed to have

There is, of course, a safer way to do this.

He makes a living out of drifting, but not on the street,

We are using an old airfield at Westonzoyland in Somerset

and have invited Trent belong to test his mettle.

So, let's see how good a driver Trent is.

He will lead and Luke will try to copy his moves.

The name of the game is for Luke to get as close as he can

It is a good chance for Luke to see how

I can appreciate his driving skills, that's where I came from.

Three years ago I was in that position.

Yeah, it was a bit muddy and slippery to start with that,

as we went over it, it has tried out a bit more.

How can we get to you guys off the road and onto

It all whittles down to we need more places.

It is not the fact they don't exist, it is just that landowners,

As soon as you mention drift, they are not interested.

If the lads are going to come off the road, they need to have some

He is a cracking lad and a good driver.

It is a shame for him not to be able to

There is no doubt that controlling a car as it

slides around corners is exhilarating and highly skilful

and I am not surprised the drifters I

But there is a proper place to do this.

Not here, but on a track, away from other road users.

They say they are stigmatised and because of that

that aren't enough places for them to do it.

Have you thought about providing them somewhere safe?

For example, an old airfield or private land?

We would be very supportive of that and the location for these drivers.

We recognise they want to drift with their cars and they look

They invest a lot of time and money into them.

If there were another location available, we would be

So, perhaps, if we are going to control this,

the answer may lie in finding that location.

The British coast is changing all the time it is hard to imagine

what would have been liked hundreds of

David Whiteley has been to meet the people exploring beneath

the surface to reveal exactly what was there.

A beautiful, picturesque village, home to fewer than 200 people.

Hundreds of years ago, Dunwich was very different.

It was once one of the larger cities in England and,

at one point, was in the early, medieval capital of East Anglia.

Looking at what's here on the beach today, it is hard to get

an idea what it would have been like.

Dunwich actually had one of the most significant port on the east coast.

As well as that, there were buildings, chapels

and churches, as far as the eye can see.

Over the centuries, much of the city has disappeared under the sea.

That is why the lost city of Dunwich is

And a project to find the lost city has

Phil Jenman and has been managing the project.

Where we are now has the edge of the old harbour.

The cafe would have been this quite high

status religious house, called a hospital but we would probably

call it more of a hostel these days, where travellers would stop.

It is hard to believe, where we are standing,

all those years ago, this would have been a thriving,

bustling port with ships going in and out all

One of the most important ports in East Anglia.

Probably one of the top ten cities in England.

In the past few hundred years, it has been eroding.

There were a series of huge storms in the late 1200, only 1300s.

One of them knocked out 400 houses in a single

Not only did it take out a lot of the houses,

also the shingle bank behind, made it close off the harbour.

Suddenly they lost the whole economy they needed to maintain the place.

Imagine trying to dig out the harbour mouth out of this bank

They tried it and they tried it again.

It closed over and the harbour silted up.

Steep economic decline and there were not the people

Dunwich goes from being a thriving economy to what?

It would have been, if you imagine the New Orleans after Katrina,

it would have been about economic decline, empty houses,

abandoned bit of the city falling down, roofs being stripped of lead.

Real almost like becoming a ghost town by the end.

The original city started disappearing in the 1200s.

These pictures were taken around 100 years ago.

They show the last church to topple in the North Sea.

In fact, this is the only remaining gravestone of the last remaining

church to disappear into the sea in Dunwich in the early 1900.

Legend has it, on a stormy night, if you

listen very carefully, you can still hear the church bells

What is out there has pretty much remained a mystery for hundreds

For the first time, a team of researchers from the University

of Southampton has used ultrasound to reveal the lost

After three years, they have made some exciting, new discoveries.

Here you are looking at the ruins of Saint Catherine's Chapel.

David is a professor in physical geography at the University. He has

been studying and looking for Britain's Atlantis for years. You

have to imagine something like ultrasound. In no when you go into

hospital and they try to look at a baby, it is giant ultrasound in a

way. It is about generating an image of the sea bed. When you died at

Dunwich, it is pitch black. We've found the ruins of about four

churches. We have also found ruins of the building we think is probably

the toll house. Because the site is so dynamic, we have also found

shipwrecks. There is a wreck we have found which no one has known before.

Thanks to the three-year project we now know much more about the lost

city. We know there are settled here in prehistoric times. Scientists

have a clear understanding of coastal erosion from hundreds of

years ago. The fact that so much of Dunwich is under the water gives it

that rich history. It has certainly earned its place in folklore legend.

That is it. If you would like to see more stories from your area, join

the teams on Monday at 7:30pm on BBC One, or on BBC I player.