:00:05. > :00:10.This week, I'm in Saffron Walden in Essex, and this is what is coming
:00:10. > :00:14.up on tonight's Inside Out. They say they are strapped for cash,
:00:14. > :00:20.but tonight we reveal our councils are sitting on millions of pounds
:00:20. > :00:24.that could be used for roads, schools and affordable housing.
:00:25. > :00:29.Just affordable houses for local people. Somewhere to live in the
:00:29. > :00:35.town you were brought up in. For farming sunshine in Norfolk.
:00:35. > :00:38.The future could be bright but now this has been stopped in its tracks.
:00:38. > :00:44.And we go up in the air over Cambridge to reveal our history
:00:44. > :00:54.buried under the ground. These are our three surprising
:00:54. > :01:04.
:01:05. > :01:07.Welcome to Saffron Walden. On Inside Out we have discovered that
:01:07. > :01:13.our councils are sitting on millions of pounds in unspent
:01:13. > :01:17.funding. Richard has been to meet a family from here in Saffron Walden
:01:17. > :01:24.who want to know why money allocated for affordable housing
:01:24. > :01:27.has not been spent. The new development. It is not
:01:27. > :01:30.always popular. Not everybody fancies a new superstore on their
:01:30. > :01:37.doorstep, and even much-needed housing is not always welcomed by
:01:37. > :01:45.locals. So, one way councils can sweeten that pale of controversial
:01:45. > :01:48.development is to demand community facilities in return. -- that pill.
:01:48. > :01:56.Playgrounds, roads and schools can benefit from new development by
:01:56. > :02:00.what is known as a Section 106 agreement. It is effectively a
:02:00. > :02:06.contract which can mean that developers hand over thousands of
:02:06. > :02:12.pounds to councils in return for securing planning permission. So
:02:12. > :02:17.anything from cycle paths and affordable housing can get built.
:02:17. > :02:27.Which makes you wonder why some of our councils are sitting on tens of
:02:27. > :02:32.
:02:32. > :02:37.millions of pounds of unspent Saffron Walden in Essex. One of the
:02:37. > :02:40.most beautiful, most picturesque towns in the East. It is also one
:02:40. > :02:49.of the most expensive and affordable housing is tricky to
:02:49. > :02:55.find. Meet the Trimnals. With a 7- month-old baby and another on the
:02:55. > :03:00.way, it is not easy in their two- bed flat. One room is not big
:03:00. > :03:04.enough for two children, is it? And we would like a little garden
:03:04. > :03:08.and somewhere with more space. their chance of getting more space
:03:08. > :03:14.seems unlikely. There's lots of competition for council house
:03:14. > :03:24.places. A two-bed house with a garden. How many bid for that
:03:24. > :03:29.house? 64. We are over 20, so we are obviously way at the bottom of
:03:29. > :03:34.the list. And that list is currently around 1,000 people-long.
:03:34. > :03:39.They pay it �700 a month for their flat and buying is out of the
:03:39. > :03:43.question. We look into getting a mortgage and the most we could get
:03:43. > :03:48.his �90,000. You cannot buy anywhere here for that. Maybe a
:03:48. > :03:54.studio. But when you have a family... So a month, due art
:03:54. > :04:01.Saffron Walden born and bred. How frustrating it is for you? -- Simon,
:04:01. > :04:06.you are Saffron Walden born and bred. Very frustrating. The council
:04:06. > :04:11.in Uttlesford received a cut -- received a bit of a windfall. The
:04:11. > :04:16.report left the council with �2.2 million to be spent on much-needed
:04:16. > :04:22.are affordable housing in the Uttlesford district. And housing
:04:22. > :04:28.they could afford it would really help Simon and Lucy. What is the
:04:28. > :04:36.cheapest you have found? This one. 139,000. We just cannot afford it.
:04:36. > :04:41.It is one Bagram and we cannot even afford that. The cheapest two-
:04:41. > :04:45.bedroom is 270,000. It is out of our price range completely.
:04:45. > :04:51.Remember, though, there is all that Section 106 cash to help with
:04:51. > :04:56.affordable housing. But that �2.2 million earmarked for affordable
:04:56. > :05:03.housing still has not been spent. Eight years on, it is sitting in
:05:03. > :05:07.the coffers at Uttlesford District Council. So what is going on? Why
:05:07. > :05:14.has the council been sitting on this money for the past eight
:05:14. > :05:18.years? Since 2005, we have delivered 370 homes for people in
:05:18. > :05:22.housing need. But you have not spent the money? We have not needed
:05:22. > :05:27.to because we have been able to access government money in order to
:05:27. > :05:30.support that Delivery Program. you have over 1,000 people on your
:05:30. > :05:34.waiting-list desperately-needed housing. Why have you not built
:05:34. > :05:38.these affordable houses? You have the money! I have just said we have
:05:38. > :05:43.been building those houses. The constrained has not been a lack of
:05:43. > :05:50.money. It has been availability of sites on which development can take
:05:50. > :05:54.place. But that does not wash with Simon and Lucy. Unbelievable!
:05:54. > :06:02.Something needs to be done. It is not fair. People are crying out for
:06:02. > :06:05.housing. Nothing is being done. It is terrible. But we discovered
:06:05. > :06:09.Uttlesford is not alone. A Freedom of Information request has revealed
:06:09. > :06:18.that over the past decade, more than �600 million has been
:06:18. > :06:25.collected in Section 106 funding by councils in the East. But over �200
:06:25. > :06:29.million remains unspent. So, despite our councils facing massive
:06:29. > :06:33.cuts in funding, despite the recession and despite the need for
:06:33. > :06:39.community facilities, one third of all money received from developers
:06:39. > :06:43.in the past 10 years remains unspent. And one of the big
:06:43. > :06:48.problems we uncovered was keeping an eye on the cash coming in. This
:06:48. > :06:52.professor is a planning expert. Recent cuts mean that there are
:06:52. > :06:57.probably fewer people to actually do this monitoring and project
:06:57. > :07:05.management work, so ironically, we have got a large pot of money but
:07:05. > :07:09.not the means to spend it. And poor monitoring brings more problems. We
:07:09. > :07:14.discovered some councils have been handing back Section 106 cash to
:07:14. > :07:22.developers. Over �2.5 million in the East. Essex County Council
:07:22. > :07:27.recently handed back �726,000. But that's not all. They also had the
:07:27. > :07:35.worst record of any council in the East of all sitting on Section 106
:07:35. > :07:40.cash. �42 million of unspent money. Although they deny that this is a
:07:40. > :07:43.problem. Actually, we have committed 28 million of that for
:07:43. > :07:47.expenditure on a variety of different project. You have
:07:47. > :07:51.committed it but you have not spend it? It is in the process of being
:07:52. > :07:56.spent, as you would not want us to rush out and spend money
:07:56. > :08:01.frivolously. It is being carefully spent on planned project in Essex.
:08:01. > :08:04.But the fact is, you have handed back over three-quarters of �1
:08:04. > :08:09.million to developers because deep -- you did not get around to
:08:09. > :08:12.spending it. How can you defend that? In terms of our programme of
:08:12. > :08:18.expenditure, we are careful about the planning we do and we make sure
:08:18. > :08:23.we get value for money. If we find we had underspent as a result, but
:08:23. > :08:26.we have still delivered the infrastructure we need, then, quite
:08:26. > :08:30.frankly, and think we have done a good job for the citizen and for
:08:30. > :08:38.everybody concerned. And it would be improper of us not to return
:08:38. > :08:42.that money to a developer. Nice answer. But is it true? We were
:08:42. > :08:49.later told the cash has been handed back because the deadline for
:08:49. > :08:53.spending it had expired. The Local Government Association represents
:08:53. > :08:59.local authorities across the UK. And it does not approve of handing
:08:59. > :09:03.back Section 106 cash. I am not going to try to defend that. It is
:09:03. > :09:08.not excusable, particularly at the present time, when we have a real
:09:08. > :09:11.need for that kind of investment and for jobs. The important thing
:09:11. > :09:15.is that they have a monitoring system in place which the council
:09:15. > :09:19.knows how much is coming in, what it is supposed to be spent on and
:09:19. > :09:23.when it needs to be spent, so they do not have to give it back. Some
:09:23. > :09:26.councils in the East do have good monitoring and plenty of Section
:09:26. > :09:32.106 money does get spend. But it is a very mixed picture across the
:09:32. > :09:39.region. Meanwhile, back in Saffron Walden, the hunt for affordable
:09:39. > :09:44.housing goes on. And the Stansted millions remain unspent.
:09:44. > :09:48.Something needs to be done. Yes. They need to build houses for local
:09:48. > :09:58.people. So we have got somewhere to live in the town we were brought
:09:58. > :10:01.
:10:01. > :10:07.Append. But when that extra cash One member, it is always great to
:10:07. > :10:14.hear from you if you have a story for us. -- remembered. You can send
:10:14. > :10:18.us an email. Later on, how a bird's-eye view can
:10:18. > :10:24.reveal hidden secrets from the past. You would walk over there and you
:10:24. > :10:34.would not be a way you were walking over a 4,000-year-old burial site.
:10:34. > :10:34.
:10:34. > :10:39.Harvesting energy from the sun is a great idea. More and more people
:10:39. > :10:43.are putting solar panels on their houses. But what about the serious
:10:43. > :10:47.crop of energy? Fields full of solar panels enough to power
:10:47. > :10:54.thousands of homes. Up until February, it was a great business
:10:54. > :10:57.The last government offered big subsidies for solar power and it
:10:57. > :11:00.wasn't just householders who saw the attraction of having solar
:11:00. > :11:04.panels on their roofs. Similar to the solar farms across Europe like
:11:04. > :11:06.this one in FrancE. UK businesses also saw a chance to develop the
:11:06. > :11:10.first ones in this country, Where they would supply electricity to
:11:10. > :11:13.the National Grid. It seemed like the perfect business
:11:13. > :11:16.plan - take over low grade farming land like this and instead of
:11:16. > :11:23.planting crops fill the fields with solar panels, enough to power
:11:23. > :11:29.thousands of homes. But farming sunshine is now in doubt, and this
:11:29. > :11:33.project may not now even get off the ground.
:11:33. > :11:37.It is June and I have come to this site at Snetterton in Norfolk to
:11:37. > :11:41.meet PV Farms director Richard Atkin. This site is one of two his
:11:41. > :11:45.company has planning and British investment for. But this project is
:11:45. > :11:48.potentially in tatters. That's because in February the government
:11:48. > :11:51.pulled the plug on commercial ventures of this kind by slashing
:11:51. > :11:58.the subsidy known as the feed in tariff - from nearly 30p to 8.5
:11:58. > :12:01.pence per KW hour. It announced that the new rate would start on
:12:01. > :12:06.the first of August. So you got planning permission for
:12:06. > :12:10.this in January so then what happened? Well then the fast track
:12:10. > :12:12.review came along and put the car bosh in it and by that I mean the
:12:12. > :12:16.review effectively froze it destroyed the confidence of the
:12:16. > :12:19.investors it basically meant we had to start cutting corners we had we
:12:19. > :12:23.have a situation now that effect lively this could go on one way or
:12:23. > :12:33.the other if we don't get this done in six weeks we stand to loose over
:12:33. > :12:41.
:12:41. > :12:45.�400,000. A significant part of me feels this may not happen and if
:12:46. > :12:48.you think that in terms of having so much invested in it. And that is
:12:48. > :12:57.from an emotional perspective as well, it is quite literally heart
:12:57. > :13:01.breaking. Richard and fellow director Chris
:13:01. > :13:04.Meacock have six weeks to get their business going in order to meet the
:13:04. > :13:14.old rate or they say they will loose everything - all because a
:13:14. > :13:15.
:13:15. > :13:20.change of government brought a change of mind.
:13:20. > :13:23.8.5p is unworkable it is a minus. You have a viable solar industry
:13:23. > :13:33.and lots of enthusiastic people like us who want to take advantage
:13:33. > :13:33.
:13:33. > :13:38.and they just decided to kill it. To matters worse after the funding
:13:38. > :13:41.was slashed their British investors pulled out because it was too risky.
:13:41. > :13:44.In order to turn their field into a power station by August the company
:13:44. > :13:52.has to get around two major obstacles new investors, and an
:13:52. > :13:55.electricty connection in time. But all may not be lost, they have been
:13:55. > :14:01.looking at ways to get their electricity off the field quickly
:14:01. > :14:04.and may have found an answer. To get the site accredited and what
:14:04. > :14:07.we have to do initially there isn't enough time to get the grid
:14:07. > :14:11.connections installed we have to do something called a private wire and
:14:11. > :14:21.for this particular site we have to get over to the pump house which is
:14:21. > :14:21.
:14:22. > :14:25.just over there and what that will do is to bring over power.
:14:25. > :14:28.So why did the government make these huge cuts? Before the
:14:28. > :14:32.February announcement there were no PV solar farms in this country but
:14:32. > :14:34.lots of companies were planning them. This the government says
:14:34. > :14:43.would have sucked up the money intended for householders having
:14:43. > :14:46.solar on their roofs. If I put it to you that this was
:14:47. > :14:50.meant to be for domestic use it was mean to be a small time scheme to
:14:50. > :15:00.try and interest people but it was taken over by big industry to make
:15:00. > :15:05.
:15:05. > :15:10.a profit what do you say to that? What you mean this big company you
:15:10. > :15:13.see before you a couple of developers. Not a domestic unit
:15:14. > :15:20.though. It is not a major power company but PV Farms is still a
:15:20. > :15:23.business. We asked renewable energy expert Dr
:15:23. > :15:27.Keith Tovey from the University of East Anglia why the government has
:15:27. > :15:30.ring-fenced the perks to stop this kind of business from thriving.
:15:30. > :15:40.When we arrived Dr Tovey has just had some panels installed on his
:15:40. > :15:48.
:15:48. > :15:54.own roof. We need to decide where our priorities are. It is more
:15:54. > :15:59.cost-effective to go for wind farms the than solar. It would cost four
:15:59. > :16:07.times as much to go for the big seller farms compared with the wind
:16:07. > :16:17.farms. This scheme is aimed at homeowners? That's the way should
:16:17. > :16:18.
:16:18. > :16:22.be. Chris and Richard have worked round the clock to become
:16:22. > :16:25.operational. They managed to get investment from Holland and from a
:16:25. > :16:28.company from the Czech Republic who also will supply the panels. Today
:16:28. > :16:34.with just two weeks before the deadline the Czech company moves
:16:34. > :16:37.onto the site at Snetteron. So this is really positive you have
:16:37. > :16:40.got something in the ground you must be relieved? Yes hugely, six
:16:40. > :16:43.weeks ago this is an absolute miracle in comparison to what we
:16:44. > :16:47.had previously. Just days before the deadline the company manages to
:16:47. > :16:53.get an initial connection. Their site at Snetterton is small with
:16:53. > :16:57.2000 panels but their farm at Carlton is bigger much bigger.
:16:57. > :17:00.I went back at the end of September to see it. Spanning over 25 acres
:17:00. > :17:06.Carlton has almost 18,000 panels and the capacity to power 5,000
:17:06. > :17:09.homes. It is one of the biggest in the country and could make
:17:10. > :17:12.�1.2million a year. The solar industry believes that the
:17:13. > :17:16.government has missed a trick by turning its back on large scale
:17:16. > :17:21.developments. The government insists it was never meant for such
:17:21. > :17:24.schemes. Chris and Richard believe it's a
:17:25. > :17:27.missed opportunity for the UK. It has meant that instead of
:17:27. > :17:30.British companies investing in their business it is now financed
:17:30. > :17:34.by foreign investors, and part owned by them too which means much
:17:34. > :17:37.of the profit will go abroad. We had a British fund, a British
:17:37. > :17:41.installation company and it was going to be refinanced after five
:17:41. > :17:43.years by a British bank but what we have instead is the feed in tariff
:17:43. > :17:46.which is supporting the project which would have filtered through
:17:46. > :17:56.into our investors and banks are being moved over to the
:17:56. > :17:59.
:17:59. > :18:03.Czechoslovak Republic. We asked the Climate Change
:18:03. > :18:06.Minister Greg Barker for an interview but he declined. But he
:18:06. > :18:09.did provide us with this statement. I have acted to stop large scale
:18:09. > :18:11.solar farms potentially soaking up all the funding. This would have
:18:11. > :18:14.increased costs on bills and prevented householders from being
:18:14. > :18:17.able to access exciting small scale technologies like solar in the
:18:17. > :18:21.future. This week though the government is
:18:21. > :18:26.to back-track again. It now says the subsidy paid for domestic
:18:26. > :18:36.installation is unsustainable. It is announcing another review. But
:18:36. > :18:39.
:18:39. > :18:49.these sites are ready for operation. This represents over a year of our
:18:49. > :18:52.
:18:52. > :18:57.lives. We are very pleased, an amazing achievement. It is a viable
:18:57. > :19:00.contribution to the economy. Only a few solar farms have been built, as
:19:00. > :19:03.the fledgling commercial industry was stalled by the cuts in subsidy.
:19:03. > :19:12.And now it seems likely that the domestic industry will also be
:19:12. > :19:17.affected. When you think of archaeology, we
:19:17. > :19:21.think of something crouching down low to the ground, brash in one
:19:21. > :19:24.hand scraping away the dead. As I have been finding out, you don't
:19:24. > :19:29.have to necessary get that close to the ground to find out what is
:19:29. > :19:33.there. Sometimes the higher up you are, the better.
:19:33. > :19:36.If the fields which cover most of East Anglia could talk what a story
:19:36. > :19:38.they'd have to tell of the things they've witnessed through the ages
:19:38. > :19:42.- Viking Raiders, Anglo Saxons, Romans, the English Civil War,
:19:42. > :19:52.American Air Force bases. But these swathes of corn, barley and wheat
:19:52. > :19:52.
:19:52. > :19:56.have begun to reveal secrets that have remained hidden for centuries.
:19:56. > :20:04.To find out what they are, you cannot do it from down here, you
:20:04. > :20:07.have to be up there. Ben Robinson has two loves
:20:07. > :20:10.archaeology and flying. And as one of Britain's handful of Aerial
:20:10. > :20:13.Archaeologists he combines them both. And he has discovered you can
:20:13. > :20:18.see things from the air that you never even knew existed from down
:20:18. > :20:21.on the ground. Word War One aviators were the first to spot the
:20:21. > :20:24.potential that a bird's eye view of the world could have for
:20:24. > :20:34.archaeology and following the war Britain began to see its history
:20:34. > :20:38.
:20:38. > :20:48.and landscape in a whole new light. This is the sort of thing you could
:20:48. > :20:48.
:20:48. > :20:56.stumble over on the ground. From the air you can see it. You can
:20:56. > :21:03.pick over definite shades there. This is a civil war for us, dated
:21:03. > :21:13.to 1644. It gets very interesting when you can see something that is
:21:13. > :21:16.
:21:16. > :21:23.not then a show poor form. Does ring tos, -- those rings, that's a
:21:23. > :21:31.burial ground. It is surviving Underground, the crop is reflecting
:21:31. > :21:41.it. You would never see that from the ground? You would walkover it,
:21:41. > :21:50.
:21:50. > :21:56.you would never be aware. From the air shines out. At some point
:21:56. > :22:02.someone does a pit here. We are sitting in a prehistoric pit. It
:22:02. > :22:07.started to fill with a very different kind of soil. It has
:22:07. > :22:16.rotted vegetable matter in it. It is not like sterile sand. It is a
:22:16. > :22:25.different colour. It is like a dot on a TV screen. It is responding to
:22:25. > :22:33.what the roots are doing underground. Over sandy soils to
:22:33. > :22:43.crops will be a little more stunted. That means that pits and ditches
:22:43. > :23:00.
:23:00. > :23:09.will show up. Fortunately our ancestors have drawn a more of them.
:23:09. > :23:14.That looks like a multi- phase settlement. One interesting thing
:23:14. > :23:19.is this formal entrance going into it. You don't often see that.
:23:19. > :23:24.do you think they would have created that? Status. It looks like
:23:24. > :23:30.they put animals in there. They would have a fund all entrants. It
:23:31. > :23:35.is easy to get their men. Maybe it was a form of thing. Trying to make
:23:35. > :23:40.visitors feel small. discoveries made from the air can
:23:40. > :23:48.be extraordinary. One survey carried out in Bedfordshire turned
:23:48. > :23:58.up 300 archaeological sites. All of those red dots there were sites
:23:58. > :24:00.
:24:00. > :24:05.which were discovered. Those are all sides! -- sites. That was just
:24:05. > :24:13.in one day. There is loads more to discover? Yes a lot more, it will
:24:13. > :24:18.keep me going for the next 50 years. New techniques in aerial surveying
:24:18. > :24:25.are emerging all the time. The shots let people look through trees
:24:25. > :24:31.to the ground below. When they are identified, they need to go back to
:24:32. > :24:41.more traditional methods. We are getting flint tools from all
:24:41. > :24:44.periods. This is a serrated blade. That is very sharp. These were
:24:44. > :24:54.bronze pots there were found together, they are from the Bronze
:24:54. > :24:59.
:24:59. > :25:05.Age. That has been imported from the Alps. We are finding deposits
:25:05. > :25:10.of human skulls all along the riverside. At the far end of the
:25:11. > :25:14.rage, where we died in 2007, we are finding the rest of the bodies on
:25:14. > :25:21.top of the ridge. They were butchering the bodies. There are
:25:21. > :25:27.great chop marks there. They bring them to the riverside, and toss the
:25:27. > :25:32.heads in the water. Why would that happen? God only knows. It was a
:25:32. > :25:41.way of disposing of them. People used to think they threw the whole
:25:42. > :25:45.bodies into the water. It sounds pretty grim to me. You must be
:25:45. > :25:55.pleased that thanks to your passion, your aerial photography, it led to
:25:55. > :25:57.
:25:57. > :26:01.this site being excavated. What do these things mean? It shows the
:26:01. > :26:06.wealth of material that comes out when you have a concerted campaign
:26:06. > :26:11.of excavation. It is very far, very meticulous, it pays dividends.
:26:11. > :26:18.don't think that investment would have been made if they had not been
:26:18. > :26:21.for the Arab photographs. -- aerial photographs. It is not only new
:26:21. > :26:26.photographs that can lead to discoveries. Different crops
:26:26. > :26:35.respond in different ways. Pictures taken half-a-century ago can reveal
:26:35. > :26:39.traces not visible under modern planting. This is the first
:26:39. > :26:46.catalogue, the first photograph. Let's check the catalogue, we can
:26:47. > :26:51.see it there. 27th July 1945. Cambridge University has one of the
:26:51. > :26:57.largest collections of aerial photographs in the world, nearly
:26:57. > :27:04.nor 0.5 million. Can they find any clues, that would not be spotted
:27:04. > :27:12.today? We can always find something new. You can never extract
:27:12. > :27:18.everything from a photograph. There are always knew things to find.
:27:18. > :27:23.wonderful image, almost overhead. There is an open field system
:27:23. > :27:27.surviving among us all the enclosure of farmland.
:27:27. > :27:31.University's archive is available online. You can also use satellite
:27:31. > :27:41.maps on the internet to make our own discoveries. What have you
:27:41. > :27:43.
:27:43. > :27:53.found here? This is an area in the Fens, strange tree like patterns.
:27:53. > :27:56.
:27:56. > :28:03.They are very clear. That is going back to brunch age -- Bronze Age.
:28:03. > :28:08.There is loads of stuff that people can find just looking online.
:28:08. > :28:13.and more is available online for people to look at, and to discover
:28:13. > :28:17.new things about the past. Fairbairn, nothing will ever take
:28:17. > :28:26.away the thrill of spotting something new from the air. -- for
:28:26. > :28:34.Ben. That's it for tonight. If you
:28:34. > :28:39.missed it you can catch it on the iPlayer. Thanks a lot.
:28:39. > :28:43.Next week, a special report telling a their mother's fight to get her
:28:43. > :28:48.abducted children back from France. In recent years the number of child