13/01/2014 Inside Out East Midlands

Tonight on Inside Out East Midlands, if you've bought a cheap second hand

car, just how safe is it? We speak to the victim of one rogue trader

who says he's lucky to be alive. If the petrol fumes, it could have

exploded at any time. One little spark and the car could have gone

up. Also tonight, Des Coleman hops on his bike for a very good cause.

Why am I taking part in this cycle ride? It is to help raise funds for

this charity that is very close to my heart. And Ben Jackson discovers

Leicester's underworld. The number of complaints from people who have

bought second hand cars is so high, a national commission is

investigating the problem. The Citizens Advice consumer helpline

gets more calls about independent used car traders than anything else.

And the prosecution of one aggressive Nottinghamshire dealer is

a reminder of just how wary we should be. Sarah Sturdey reports.

The end of the line for these old bangers. But there are plenty still

on the road that shouldn't be. And at what cost? This is the worst case

that I have come across in my 25 years with trading standards.

Somebody has fitted that tyre onto a wheel that they know should not be

used. You would expect the car being sold at that price, to be

roadworthy. Some old cars on sale are only fit for scrap. If a car

dealer is't honest about how safe the car is to drive, they're

breaking the law and putting the driver at risk. Like many people, Ed

Taylor is on a tight budget. So he bought a W`reg Ford Focus from a

dealer in Sutton in Ashfield with 90,000 on the clock. He paid ?690

and set off on the 25`mile drive home. There was not any fuel in it

so I asked for directions to the nearest garage. It cost me about ?70

to fill it up. On the way home I thought it was odd that the fuel

gauge was dropping spectacularly, more than it should have been for a

car with a relatively large fuel tank. Ed managed to reach his home

town of Bingham and the nearest local mechanic, where Ben Mayall

took a look. I have never seen anything as dangerous as that in 30

years in the motor trade. The was a whole in the petrol tank the size of

my little finger and fuel was spraying across the exhaust, and the

whole back of the car was covered in petrol. The petrol fumes could have

exploded at any time, one little spark and the car would have gone

up. The man who sold the vehicle was a second hand car dealer called

Kevin Hempsall. I was so horrified that I spoke to Kevin Hensel about

the car and I asked him to come down and sort this out, because it was so

dangerous. And he became very abusive on the phone, very serious

threats, that he would have my legs taken, and his words were, I have

made money off the punter, you are going to make money off the punter,

all happy, what the f`ing hell's the problem? Hempsall traded from here

in Kirkby in Ashfield. And at a second site, Trade King Car Sales,

in Sutton in Ashfield. It's now just a makeshift car park. Mr Taylor

bought his car here. So did Tia Ford. She wanted to learn to drive

in it. But the ?590 Renault Clio broke down as her mum drove it home.

I remember that night, when it got stranded, on the way home, and it

broke down. I am glad to see the back of it. It was on my garden for

nine months. Radio cassette, no, the electric windows do not have

handles. The advert stated the mileage was 90,000 miles. Tia went

back to sort it out. Kevin Hempsall came towards me in an aggressive

manner and told me to get off the premises. It was very distressing. I

was not convert the premises. It was very distressing. I was not

comfortably driving any more. Tia was a 21`year`old recent graduate

when she bought the Renault. Insurance premiums are high for

young drivers, which can mean less money in the pot for a first car.

The insurers is so high for the younger ones now. You expect

whatever price that you pay for the car, it should be safe for you to

drive on the road. The Nottinghamshire trading standards

team, led by Sarah Houlton, built the case against Hempsall. There was

a big hall here. Just there. `` hole. This car was bought for ?520.

It needed ?2,000 worth of repairs. This is one of the worst cars I have

seen, from the sheer number of faults on it any one of which would

make it not roadworthy. If that brake pad wares, you have got a very

high risk of accident and injury. And you can see that that is almost

rotten right through, the suspension, and if that failed, that

could quite easily cause a crash. Mansfield Magistrates' Court was

told that another buyer who returned to complain was locked in a room by

one of Hempsall's salesmen. One single mother went along with her

sister and young for your daughter to complain and she ended up getting

locked in the office by one of his employees for ten minutes. The

police investigated allegations of false imprisonment, but there was

insufficient evidence to prosecute. In total, Hempsall was fined just

over ?10,000 and ordered to pay compensation of more than ?6,500.

The 17 offences included selling unroadworthy cars, misleading

customers and using aggressive practices. There was no apology for

his eight victims outside court. I think everything has been said in

court, I think. Hempsall's still allowed to operate

as a used car dealer. Here he is at work. The business is now called

Coxmoor Motors in Sutton in Ashfield. Just around the corner

from the former Trade King Car Sales. Hempsall's name is on the

website. As a result of the case, trading standards checked 20 other

dealers. Four were misleading customers like Hempsall. At the

moment we are seeing a worrying trend of these older cars being sold

where traders are not doing the necessary checks and also trying, as

in this case, to evade the possibility and when customers go

back to complain, they are not honouring their obligations for the

force in the cars, as well. `` the faults. The body which represents

second hand car traders, the National Franchised Dealers

Association, say they're concerned Hempsall has found it so easy to set

back up in business. They're urging buyers to find a dealer who belongs

to a recognised trade association. Make sure that you go to a reputable

place. Get somebody who knows things about cars, and have a good look

over it, first. I have seen some real horror stories out there in the

motor trade. So if you're buying a cheap car how do you make sure it's

safe to drive? Andy Brosnahan inspects cars for a living. He knows

what to look out for. We took Ed Taylor to meet him. The first thing

you should do is look at the engine oil and the coolant. It is

imperative. If you are getting cross contamination, water in oil, oil and

water, you have got potentially expensive engine repair. Take the

car for a road test and do a minimum of five miles. It is important to

check the documents, the V5 registration document, the MOT, and

check for evidence of accident damage or damage such as this, and

always check it in daylight, in dry conditions. In the meantime, the

national commission aimed at giving buyers more protection from

unscrupulous second hand car dealers is due to report its findings in the

Spring. It is unfortunate that there are plenty of good people in the

motor trade who have a bad reputation because of people like

Kevin Hempsall, and the way that they carry on their business. When

you buy from a trader, you expect that they have done the checks

necessary to make sure that it is safe. It does not bear thinking

about. I have got a one`year old son, and if I had been out with him,

it would not just have been me that died, but a young child would have

been taken away. With Government cutbacks to the voluntary sector,

many charities are having to rely more and more on donations,

generosity and goodwill. But when we heard that our own Des Coleman, not

best known for his athletic ability, had volunteered for a charity bike

race, we wanted to know more. And it turned out to be an intriguing story

about pioneering parents in Nottingham fed up that their

children were being marginalised. Well, just ten miles to go. Why are

my taking part in this? It is to help raise funds for this ` School

for Parents. It is a charity that is very close to my heart.

My lad Mitchell was born with cerebral palsy. And, like many

parents in that situation, we didn't know where to turn. School for

Parents bridges that gap, providing help and support. Cloudy weather.

That is it. The charity is based in Sneinton, Nottingham and began their

pioneering work more than 30 years ago. Our little strapline is, School

for parents enabling children, empowering parents. And I think that

is what we do. For mothers like Rachel Lane, who's joined me on the

cycle ride, the charity was a godsend. Her daughter Alice was born

with paraplegia, a weakness on one side of her body. Rachel's reaction

was typical. I've shot all of my family out. I'd tell anyone. I'd

kept it quiet for eight months. I couldn't tell anybody until I had

come to terms with and then told everybody. `` eyeshot all of my

family out. I felt like nobody in the world understood. Just wanted to

shock the curtains. Tom was born with Down's Syndrome, and Caroline

will never forget the hurtful and dismissive comments of one doctor.

Just after his diagnosis, the paediatrician said to me, you can

leave him here, you know. You don't have to take him home. And... I

thought, good grief, what's child have I got here? Where somebody is

saying, you don't have to take him home. But when we came here... It

wasn't just what it did for Thomas. It was all the soft things that it

did for me. It really made me feel that there was hope. You know, the

parents of these kids often say they feel disappointed about the level of

treatment that is on offer. They feel lost, marginalised, but here at

School for Parents, it is the mums and dads who are put right in the

centre of the action and they are the ones regarded as having the most

important influence on their child's development. The parents

come to us a couple of hours a week. We can't do everything for

them so the idea is, we teach them a developer and way they can use

within their home, so it is the stuff parents can do at home and the

more they do it at home, the better the outcome for the children can be.

Once you have got over the shock, and then you have gone through your

own grieving process, then you start to realise that if you don't try to

get over it, your child will be missing out and going backwards.

This is us here, this is the situation, and it is me and her

dad's job to make sure she has as fulfilling life as possible her

limitations. It is willing nice to come somewhere here way you see

other children and parents so you know you are not the only one. He

has cerebral palsy. He was deprived of oxygen at birth so he sustained

quite severe brain damage. We are aware that he needs physio and

exercises and the guys here give us that and the tools to take home to

know we are holding him properly and when we are stretching him, we are

doing it properly. Hopefully it will ease the pain he has been in. School

for Parents uses the principles of conductive education to unlock the

potential of these damaged children. They need to find and build new

pathways of doing everyday things, such as eating and sitting and

looking and lifting your head. And this is what conductive education

does. It helps them to build a new pathway to coordinate movement.

Often these kids are effectively excluded from swimming because of

their disability, but because of School for Parents, it has thrown

that away. It is somewhere where we are not different. We are with

people similar to us and they have similar experiences, the lows. When

you suddenly discover you have a child who can't quite do all the

things you expected that all the other children can do, you don't

quite know what to do. I'm having more fun than the little

ones! But it has lots of benefits, doesn't it? It is amazing. Something

everybody can join in, the whole family, and that is what the

children of `` with special needs need. It is hugely beneficial.

Well, halfway point! I really should have done some more training and few

of the doughnuts! It is a great day out for the family but sadly, some

of the children who go to School for Parents will never enjoy the simple

joys of a bike ride. When twins Olive and Tilda were born,

everything seemed perfect. They were crawling, talking and having fun.

But then Olive began behaving rather strangely. Olive was diagnosed with

Rett's Syndrome, an extremely rare condition that almost exclusively

affects girls. Olive started to have a problem with spatial awareness. I

would offer her a biscuit and she would look at it and look back at me

and I didn't understand what it was the first thing I thought that was a

bit unusual and a bit different. Babies with Rett's develop normally

for around 18 months and then parents face the agony of watching

their child regress. We literally had to watch live just lose the

ability to crawl, lose her words, lose the ability to use her hands.

The last word that she lost, and if it was in a film, you would say that

is too corny, it was goodbye. And that was cruel. Let Olive choose.

You have to let Olive choose with her eyes now. It was like we lost

her for a while, wasn't it? But we do feel now, through the different

communication strategies we are using, that we can communicate with

her so much better. You were looking at that one, when shoe, Olive? The

friendship song. `` weren't you? School for Parents has taught Paul

and Janie how to handle this distressing condition and manage

Olive's needs. We bring it all together in a play session to help

us 0 together in a play session to help

us develop those skills to be able to support our daughter and do it at

home. With help, Paul and Janie are coping, but it's hard for Olive's

twin sister Tilda. She definitely feels the loss. Because she tells us

that, you know, Olive cannot play with her, and she tells us Olive

cannot do that with her because she has Rett's syndrome.

Being the parent of a disabled child can feel like you're on a punishing,

gruelling race that will never end. But at least my charity bike`ride is

about to finish. Well, I am glad that is over what it has been fun.

Hopefully we've gone some way to raising the ?200,000 a year School

for Parents needs to keep going, so it is a never`ending struggle to

raise money. But the parents are determined to make it work. Well, if

you want to know what his son is doing, he is now a drama student, so

he may well be following in his father's footsteps.

Finally tonight, not far from here, archaeologists recently found the

world's oldest railway tunnel blocked by a rockery. It linked this

canal to Derbyshire's limestone quarries, which just goes to show we

never know what's right there under our feet. BBC Radio Leicester's Ben

Jackson has been investigating some secret subterranean spaces that are

shedding new light on the past. I've lived and worked in Leicester

and Leicestershire all my life and thought I knew the area inside out.

But the discovery of Richard III's skeleton in the city made me wonder

` what else might be hidden below us? 0 0

With the help of historians and archaeologists, I began to dig

deeper and discovered a world once inhabited by kings and servants and

witches. A world which has been with us for 2,000 years, and we can still

travel through it today. What an amazing place! It was the Romans who

built the first known underground network. Excavations under the Roman

Baths revealed there were several tunnels. So, Richard, we have come

here to look underground at the tunnel. Where is it? Well, we are

technically 0 tunnel. Where is it? Well, we are

technically underground, in that the Roman period, at that time, in the

bathhouse, it would have stood two metres above us, so if you come in

from the exercise hall, into the bath block. So, 0

from the exercise hall, into the bath block. So, hang on, if arrested

over here... The floor would be under here? `` if I stood? Yes.

There would be a mass of water stored in a water tower and it was

going to flow through the baths, through the plunge barbs and hot and

cold rooms. It eventually flows out into the river. This is the Newarke

in Leicester, and it was under here that an even more elaborate drainage

system was built in the 14th century. The fact is, this hasn't

been open for ten or 15 years and we have never seen down here? No,

nobody has ever had the chance. We are going to be the first to

photograph it. It is incredibly exciting. It is. It will be

fantastic to get a record of how the structure has survived. The tunnel

here outside De Montfort University is almost four metres deep and we

can't go down there because there's simply not enough oxygen. But we can

lower a camera into the tunnel. The assumption is, it runs all the way

down to the river and there is a whole series of smaller drains.

Doesn't it make you want to get down there with a sledgehammer?

Absolutely! If we could take that all down and see what was behind

there... It is incredible! We have no idea how extensive the network of

tunnels and passages was in medieval Leicester. What we do know is that

they are shrouded in legend and tales of the unexpected. The

best`known involved a witch called Black 0

best`known involved a witch called Black Annis who lived in a cave just

outside the medieval city boundary. She would use the subterranean

system to travel into the city, coming out under Leicester Castle.

This was a storage area under what used to be the kitchens in Leicester

Castle. Wow! It is a very gloomy, dank space. There is a story that

Black Annis was a witch or demonic figure living in the hills where the

sandstone came from, so the sandstone itself has a connection to

the myth, and she would hang around outside the castle looking for small

children to capture. The underground passages are not all as scary as

that. Right under where I work there is a remarkable example of a quite

different hidden network from the 12th century ` cellars which were

sometimes linked by secret passages. This is amazing. Yes! I have talked

about this so much, and to actually be in it! So, tell me, what is this

cut in the wall? This is the original entrance inside. We have

one side of the doorway here and the other side marked by the larger

stones. What would that leads to? Well, there was a passageway that

run along for at least five metres and we think either there was a

flight of steps or a ramp that gave access. So, again, we have a third

underground, two thirds above ground and used for what? Probably buy for

`` probably for storage of goods by merchants and so on. More and more

uses were found for the hidden spaces down below. At Ashby de la

Zouche, a tunnel linked the castle and the kitchens and utility areas.

As the Parliamentarians laid siege on the Royalists in the castle in

1645, the tunnel played a crucial role in the year`long battle.

So this was absolutely central to the castle surviving? That is

right. We're walking along and you could have had a whole trail of

soldiers walking along. There wouldn't have been any lights when

the soldiers were coming through. It would have been absolutely pitch

black for them. Here... Into the tunnel. So it is aided for bit dark

here! `` a little bit. We believe it was extended during the Civil War as

a route 0 was extended during the Civil War as

a route underground from 0 was extended during the Civil War as

a route underground from this particular tower to the Hastings

tower so that people could escape through here all soldiers could use

it to move from one side of the castle to the other, safely

underground, without muskets firing at them from the opposition forces.

The tunnel at Ashby is impressive. But for sheer scale and size, the

mile`long railway tunnel at Glenfield, buried deep in the

countryside, is breathtaking. It must have been a feat of engineering

to build this 180 years ago. It is difficult for us, particularly

within our health and safety culture, to have any kind of concept

on the conditions that were experienced by people here. You have

a darkness that is absolute lack. You have miners working with

candles, a couple of guys working at the coal face, three or four working

the `` behind, people got run over by wagons, crushed by ground

movement. The contractor fell down a constructor shaft in 1831 and was

killed. It was the Victorians who created the most complex underground

system in Leicester. They built miles of sewers. We know they reach

out in all directions across the city from the clock tower. And the

sewage was processed at Abbey Pumping Station.

This is big, meaningful, gigantic Victorian engineering, isn't it?

That is right. It is almost like being inside a giant car engine.

They did build these things to last as well, didn't they? They could not

afford them to break down. If these engines stopped, the city would

drown in its own sewage. The interest 0

drown in its own sewage. The interest in 0

drown in its own sewage. The interest in Leicester's history

reached fever pitch last year, with the discovery of the remains of

Richard III. The Leicester underworld has many secrets which

have not yet been uncovered. It is a very exciting time for Leicester.

Since the remains of King Richard were found, it has really captured

the public imagination, so maybe the next big story will be Cardinal

Wolsey at Abbey Park or perhaps there is a story as well about King

Lear and the fact that he might be entombed somewhere in the River

soar, so we never know what will be the next big story of Leicester. Now

the hope is that archaeologists and historians will get the funding to

go deep into these impressive underground wormholes. And that may

tell us much more about how we've been living 0

tell us much more about how we've been living and working on two

levels for at least two thousand years.

Ben Jackson revealing a side of Leicestershire we've never seen

before. Remember, if you've got an untold story, you can always email

me. Next Monday, an energy special.

We're with the British Gas detectives as they hunt down the

power thieves. All the power used to these two meters has not been billed

as it appears. They are getting it for free... For now.

Hello, I'm Ellie Crisell with your 90-second update.

The PM has backed fracking. He's promised councils incentives if they

let companies drill for shale gas. Critics have called the offer a

bribe, but the Government claims the process will give us cheaper energy.

More at 10pm. The biggest public inquiry into

child abuse in the UK has begun in Northern Ireland. It's looking at

care in church and state-run homes over 70 years. More than 400 people

have asked to give evidence. Mark Bridger was convicted of

murdering April Jones last May. Today, he dropped his plan to appeal

a whole-life sentence. The five-year-old's body has never been

found. Is Britain on the verge of an

obesity crisis? The National Obesity Forum says the problem is worse than

thought. It wants urgent action to change eating habits and called for

doctors to be more proactive. A hat-trick for American Hustle at

the Golden Globes. It picked up three awards including Best Actress

and Best Supporting Actress. British film 12 Years A Slave won Best Film

Hello, I'm Simon Ward in the East Midlands.

Tributes from friends of a Leicestershire man who died saving

his two sons from drowning in Australia. Andrew Priestly from

Market Harborough pulled them out of a rip tide.

And people in Nottingham say they are shocked funding for an

insulation scheme has been pulled. British Gas