12/03/2018 Inside Out London

Hello, I'm Sean Fletcher.

You're watching Inside Out London.

Here's what's coming

up on tonight's show.

Why London's commuters are deserting

the Tube in their droves.

Tomorrow's my last day

working in London.

Goodbye to the commute from hell

and to high childcare costs.

With our elderly

population set to soar, is

it time to start building

bungalows again?

Older people enjoy them because it

means that they know they

can live in this property for quite

awhile, don't have to move, they're

not concerned about climbing

the stairs or the extra costs.

And the untold story

of the secret Canary

Girls of World War II.

You couldn't have had

the Army, the Air Force and

the Navy working without the bombs

that were being made here.

Without the munitions the war

could not have been won.

Now, here's a mystery for you.

Several million people seem to have

gone missing from the capital.

For the first time in 20 years,

the number of passengers

using the Tube has fallen.

The latest figures show 20 million

fewer journeys in the

last year, even though the economy

and the population have grown.

City Hall is baffled

and the fall in tube

revenue has resulted in an order

for 27 new Tube trains being axed.

But where have all

the commuters gone?

We sent Mark Jordan to find out.

Rush hour at Oxford Circus,

and the regular Tube lock-out due to

overcrowding.

For anyone going through

this hell the very last

thing you would think the

Underground would be worried about

is falling numbers.

But they are.

For the first time in 20 years,

Tube passenger numbers have fallen.

384,000 fewer journeys each week.

And all just months

before Crossrail opens.

Even bigger falls on commuter lines,

Southwestern down 9%.

It's very serious for

Transport For London,

because of course the Underground

is the one part of Transport

For London that does make a profit,

and it subsidises all

of the other operations.

The economy is growing.

But at City Hall they

feel winter is coming.

If there is a drop-off in

the economy the first place it shows

up in the whole UK is

on the transport network in London.

So it is a very fresh

piece of information.

And no sooner had the deputy mayor

told me this, winter

came in the biggest way.

Was it a sign?

So, tough times for TFL.

We have commandeered the Old Tube

Carriage restaurant here at

Walthamstow's Pumphouse Museum.

Three wise experts agreed to ride

out the storm and help explain -

whatever happened to

the missing commuters?

It's not entirely surprising

when you look at how

expensive it is to both

live and work in London,

that people will be actively

seeking alternatives.

New York is another

example where they

are seeing a drop in passenger

numbers on their system.

Technology is changing

an awful lot about our

relationship with the workplace,

and it is disrupting the way that we

used to work.

So let's meet the missing prime

suspects in this metro mystery.

Tomorrow is my last

day working in London.

Goodbye to the commute

from hell and to high

childcare costs.

No crowds, no costs and I arrive

at work much quicker.

The bike.

And I do my bit for the London

economy right here, at home.

With falling tube revenues and

a fares freeze, its mind the Gap.

TFL just cancelled

an order for 27 new

Tube trains.

So let's meet our first missing

suspects - the exiles.

Redhill in Surrey.

I am visiting Amber Recruitment.

They specialise in luring

people out of the capital.

There is certainly

life after London.

I'm currently travelling an hour

and a half each way per day.

Jenna's three hour daily

round-trip is 15 hours a week.

It means she spends an entire

month of every year

on a train.

Then add the strikes,

the cost and the overcrowding.

I handed in my notice

in my current workplace.

She's not alone.

We've had lots of delays,

lots of cancellations.

So that will be by 10:30,

and I left at 7am.

This is the reason I am

giving up the commute.

London is where you get

the well-paid jobs.

London is where you get the status.

Where you get the better

career options.

But not so any more.

Companies down here are beginning

to cotton on to the fact

that we can nab these people.

I've had enough.

I think the time and the cost

is adding more burden, I think

children, family situations change.

I think they need to be educated

that there are good jobs locally.

Which we are doing.

We have seen, in London

and the South East, a

doubling of house prices

over the last decade,

but that inflation

is

now ebbing, indeed, in London

they fell back by 5% over the last

calendar year.

I suspect we're going to see

more of that as people

understand and appreciate

that they no longer

have to pay to be right

in

the heart of London unless that is

where they absolutely want to live.

But not all missing commuters

have left the capital.

Within a generation cycling

in London has tripled.

The future is massively

bright for cycling.

We are seeing a shift

in infrastructure, in

politics.

Apps have now made it possible

to unlock a bike anywhere

around you, take it

with you to exactly

where you need to go

and

station it there again,

and then unlock another one and take

it where you want to go again.

So by creating great

bike lanes, TFL is

losing money on the tubes.

They used to probably

use the bike lanes bus

or the tube and pay into the funds

for TFL but they are not so any

more.

So transport for London now has

a big challenge ahead of how we

are going to keep paying for that

cycling infrastructure.

And it is not just bikes.

Uber's low-cost cars

are stealing Tube passengers.

I want to move across London.

What do I do?

I get my phone out and then I either

call up and Uber and know

exactly when they are going to come,

they are going to come exactly to my

location, it is really convenient,

or I can look for a bike.

It has re-change the

relationship we have

with these modes of transport.

And of course that

is having a profound

impact on people's relationship

with public transport.

There is something of

a contradiction for TFL.

They are both the regulator

and the competitor.

For TFL this is the big problem.

We as consumers are saying

we want to use these new modes of

transport.

We don't want to have to rely

on these old modes of

transport.

Only time will tell if TFL

will relicense Uber.

most.

City Hall says off-peak

Tube travel is down

most.

If you look at the rise in delivery

vehicles in London, which

has been huge, so many people use

the Internet now rather than

actually go out and

walk round the shops.

Maybe a 5% drop off in shopping

and we have seen something

like a 2% drop-off on the tube.

But home has also

become the workplace.

A decade ago, broadband speeds

were typically at two megabytes per

second.

I've just had the latest upgrade

from BT, it has taken the

over 50 megabytes per second.

I can do everything

I used to have to do

in town now from the

comfort of my own home.

Brick Lane, and I have been invited

to the monthly meeting

of the Hocksby collective.

These lawyers,

advertisers and business

advisers usually work

alone, from home.

Because they can.

I was commuting 450 miles per week.

I think it allows me to fit my life

around my work rather than the other

way around.

The reality of making it happen

is so small, it's so easy to do.

The technology and

the systems are there.

But the impact on people's

lives is monument.

I am both more productive and happy.

The Hocksby way is

to love what you do,

so that is to work

under your own terms,

with your own work style,

in

the way that suits you best.

Most of us love the

idea of working from

home.

And increasingly bosses,

like at this architectural firm, are

realising it is good for business.

If you want numbers,

and if you think about every square

foot of office space in central

London it is

probably worth £1000.

Somebody working at

a desk, traditionally,

would take up 100 square feet.

So that desk space

is worth £100,000.

So you can see that a few of those

you need the less the cost to your

business and in a dramatic way.

Add to that Ben was losing talented

young staff due to the cost of

London living.

Hi, Charlotte.

So he introduced part-time

working from home.

It allows us to keep staff

that we might otherwise lose.

We have one employee

who lives in Darlington

who works from home

a

couple of days a week.

So for the likes of TFL this makes

a significant difference.

They have to change their

plans, in many cases

they will have to rip

up their revenue

projections and change

the

way that they operate.

All London's plans,

like the proposed Crossrail 2,

are still built on ever-growing

demand.

Beyond the M25 they have spotted

London's fall in passenger

journeys.

London does have a system

that is fit for purpose.

So what we are saying

is the North of England

must now come to the front

of the queue when it comes to future

transport investment.

The drop-off in demand

has been about 2% over

last year.

The long-term trends are still

for economic and population

growth.

Are you worried?

This is something

new so anything new

worries us.

It is just that life is changing.

Mark Jordan reporting, there.

Still to come on tonight's show...

Almost 1 million women

were called up to

make munitions, but unlike

the veterans of the Land Army, the

Timber Corps and the Bevin Boys,

munitions workers have never

received individual honours.

So more than 70 years

after they played a

significant role in the country's

victory, is it time that the

Government officially recognised

the contribution made

by the munitionettes?

With most London property developers

adopting a pile them high policy,

the bungalow has rather

fallen out of fashion.

With the UK's elderly population set

to double in the next

three decades, a recent House

of Commons report says that

bungalows could be

just what is needed.

So could single-storey living

be set for a comeback?

I went to find out.

This peaceful street tucked away

from the hustle and bustle of Acton

comes as a great surprise to anyone

who stumbles across it, because it

consists only of bungalows.

It's very unusual to

find a whole street

of them this close

to the city centre.

But since the early 1950s they have

been the dream home for

many people in retirement.

No stairs to climb

and easy access for

wheelchair users and those

who are unsteady on their feet.

The bungalow actually gave

people, because it was

quite cheap and they could often

build it themselves,

it gave people this sort

of sense of independence.

Older people enjoy

them because it means

they know they can live in this

property for quite awhile, they

don't have to move, they are not

concerned about climbing the stairs

of the extra costs,

they are cheaper to heat.

Because of my condition,

sort of thing, I've got no steps.

You don't feel cramped,

you have plenty

of room to move around.

The first bungalows

were built in Britain back

in the late 19th century, but

the idea sprang from a very exotic

location.

They are an Indian concept that

has been Anglicised.

The word bungalow

actually means of Bengal.

It is an Indian building type.

And when English, British colonial

traders went over to India they

started using that as their

model for their homes.

As more and more people went

over to India they were

bringing ideas back,

things like curries, like bungalows.

So from the 1850s, that's

when you start seeing

the first bungalows in this country.

These were holiday homes,

they were second homes,

so you had to be quite wealthy to be

able to afford that.

In the 1920s people are still having

them as weekend retreats up to

a point.

Then those people, after the Second

World War, getting on a bit,

they have got this vision

of the bungalow has

a really happy place

in

the countryside.

That is the kind of place

they might like to retire to.

And this is when you start to get

big suburban estates of bungalows.

Building bungalows en masse

in suburbia became very popular for

many years.

In 1987 alone there

were over 28,000 built.

Last year, though, there

would just over 2000.

So there has been a steep decline.

Developers aren't really

building new ones

because they are quite land hungry.

The price of land is so high that

what you can get a single bungalow

with garden on one plot,

you could probably build a couple

of houses, you could build upwards.

Bungalows are not very

good in the kind of

economic climate today.

Even if they would be very

desirable because they

are nice places to live.

Local authorities

aren't particularly

interested in bungalows.

Whether you are an individual

wanting to build a

bungalow, whether you are

a community land trust wanting to

build a few homes

to create a community

setting, whether you are

a

cooperative building bungalows,

or even just a developer building

for your local market,

it is a lot harder

for you to get planning

permission to build a bungalow then

it is to build a terraced house.

London itself hasn't tried to get

more people to build bungalows and

it hasn't tried to

stimulate the market.

But with the recent House of Commons

communities select committee

report acknowledging that with more

and more over 65 is living longer

their housing needs will need to be

met, the answer - yes, you guessed

it - start building bungalows again.

This award-winning estate is one

of several being built

or planned in Barking.

These bungalows provide social

housing for elderly and

disabled residents and were built

on land that was just lying dormant.

Barking has historically been

developed in the 50s and 60s where

it is car borne, and there are a lot

of underused garage sites.

And that is what we have

actually been using

here and a lot of these

smaller developments.

It was based on an alms house,

and I think what is

interesting, there is a sort of

contradiction between almshouses and

bungalows.

Bungalows were always built

on individual plots, and

actually what we have done

here is group them together -

bungalows or a courtyard house,

in a grouping,

because it has a sort of social

centre and focal point.

People, both the individual

and collective, was

People, both the individual

and collective, was

very much at the heart

of this proposal here.

One of the residents

here lost his leg in an industrial

accident, so climbing

stairs became impossible.

Moving here was ideal.

Sometimes you can't get your leg on,

your leg swells up.

And you can't wear your leg.

So you have to sort of go around

on your bum, sort of

thing, or on your hands and knees.

Or in a wheelchair or on crutches.

And going upstairs, if you haven't

got a stairlift, you have to...

It's horrible.

So a bungalow is ideal.

Ideal, yeah.

If I do need to use the wheelchair,

it's easy, everything is

just wide and the wheelchair

can spin round.

They've thought about it.

It is full of disabled

and elderly people.

And the design is all

right, it's fine.

It's misleading.

It looks more from outside

but when you come in its

quite spacious.

Tom, like most of the residents

here, moved from a much

bigger house, freeing up other

properties that could house larger

families.

So building these new bungalows

actually made economic sense.

This actual site, one of eight now,

we have managed to get 76

of these type properties which has

freed up 66 homes for families.

And that is really important.

So actually they all

interlink when it

comes to what we're trying

to do as a community.

Why build bungalows?

The reason we are building bungalows

is because people need bungalows.

People want bungalows.

Remember, we are asking

people to give up three

or four, five bedroom houses that

have been their life.

They will still have

family heirlooms that

they want to keep and they want

a space that is still their own.

And that is what this allows.

It is a very small,

compact, but very agile

way of allowing people to carry

on what they see as their life path.

There is a waiting list.

And we have people of

a older nature or a more

vulnerable nature saying we can't

manage the bigger home, can we have

one of these?

And that is why we

are still building.

So we will have over 100 units

by the end of the summer,

which is fantastic.

And we want to continue

that to happen.

So one council is seeing how popular

bungalows still are with the

elderly.

All over the capital

and the suburbs, though, and lack of

All over the capital

and the suburbs, though, a lack of

empty land to build on is surely

the biggest problem

that those wanting bungalows

in the future face.

It is definitely

a concern in London, the

amount of space.

However, a Government

policy was office to

residential, so you could easily

convert, without a long planning

process, an office block

into residential homes.

Now, since that policy

was introduced, it has really

taken off.

That is because there

is a policy in place and local

authorities then have to deliver it.

There are very many small sites

and we are sitting on a fantastic

development here which really shows

off what you can do with a good

piece of land.

And we can have a mix of bungalows,

you can have a mix of

housing, maybe you need a mix

of them all, and maybe when we talk

about affordable housing is

what we really need to start talking

about is what the area needs.

And perhaps we don't need

30 affordable houses -

maybe we need 25 bungalows.

And perhaps the local

authority can work

with the developer to deliver that

sort of flexibility.

Bungalows have faced economic

cutbacks and lack of

space, but they are still places

that many elderly see as a dream

home.

So with support from the Commons,

bungalows could be a thing

of the future as well as the past.

Most of those who worked on the home

front to help Britain win the Second

World War have been given a medal

or an official badge.

That includes miners

and farm workers who helped

keep the country going.

But one group of women

who did some of the

most dangerous work have

always been overlooked.

Former BBC correspondent Kate Adie

asks if it is now time the

Canary Girls were given their due.

We shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing

grounds...

It was Britain's darkest hour.

Its cities pounded by German

bombers, the threat of invasion

real.

Churchill, though, was defiant.

We shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender.

The country needed

bombs and bullets on

an industrial scale,

but there weren't enough civilian

men to go into the factories.

So Britain turned to its women.

Over the next four years,

almost 1 million women

were called up to make munitions.

But unlike the veterans of the Land

Army, the Timber Corps and the Bevin

Boys, who worked down the mines,

munitions workers have never

received individual honours.

The Royal Ordinance factory

near Hereford was one of Britain's

largest munitions plants.

Is employed around 2000 workers,

most of them women.

Today the site is overgrown

and neglected but local

historian Bill believes

what happened here should

not be forgotten.

You couldn't have had the army,

the air force and navy

working without the bombs that

were being made here.

Without the munitions that

were produced across

the country, the war

could not have been won.

The National Munitions Association

estimates there are

around 300 surviving veterans.

I have arranged to have tea

with a few who worked here.

Hello!

How nice to see you.

The women had to register for work

when they turned 18.

Fresh out of school,

Elizabeth Cross was made an

inspector, overseeing the assembly

of artillery shells.

Had you had any experience?

I had no idea.

I don't think we had any experience.

I think we were just showed what do.

And that was that.

Nancy worked on the 25-pounders

which were fired by

the army's main field gun.

When you were working

with shells, did you

ponder what they were going to do?

Yes, we did really.

Conscious of it.

But we knew that

...it had to be done.

The women may have been working

on the home front, but the

work was at times dangerous.

For one, they were

handling huge amounts

of explosives.

Maureen from Orpington

in Kent was sent to work

at a munitions factory near Stoke.

But during her training

she was involved

in an accident when her

instructor made a mistake.

She said, you take this

bottle and you put

this in...

Telling me all about it, you see.

And then the next thing I knew

I was lying on the ground

outside having been blown out

through the door, I suppose!

Maureen's hearing was permanently

damaged and her face is required

plastic surgery.

Her instructor, who was just 18,

was exposed to the full

force of the blast.

She must have been

blown up in the place.

And she died.

But working with explosives

posed other risks too.

With just basic protective

equipment, some

workers fell ill

from poisonous fumes.

Nancy Evans handled chemicals

including cordite, arsenic and TNT,

which can cause toxic jaundice

and turn the skin yellow.

It is why some munitions

workers became known as

Canary Girls.

Your hair would turn blonde,

your hands were all yellow.

Your face was yellow.

Nancy soon developed severe

stomach problems.

They took me to the hospital,

and they operated that

night, and it took me five

days before I came to,

because of the TNT poisoning.

Pregnant workers were

particularly at risk.

Lillian Summers remembers

when a friend lost her baby.

It was born with yellow skin.

I can remember.

It was six days old.

And she lost it.

The tiny, pale, little yellow baby.

Because she worked

in the fill, you see?

We called it the fill.

Filling the shells?

Yes, the fill.

Air raid shelters like

this were built in the

grounds of the factories

because not only were

explosives and chemical

is

a danger, the workers

were a target of the Luftwaffe.

At 6am on the 27th of July 1942,

a German bomber was

spotted over Hereford.

The siren went.

We saw the plane up there.

Thinking, oh, we are all right,

it is one of ours, we are OK.

And then there was a big whoosh...

And we realised it wasn't.

A man ran through when he said get

out, it's for real. My friend called

me and we raced down the corridors.

In a plane came down and it came

down so low you could see the

swastika on it. There were two bombs

dropped and then you can just

imagine what it was like.

I was

helping the people to get in the

ambulances. And then was going

around picking the dead ones up. It

was terrible. I never saw anything

like it.

At least 24 people were killed in

the bombing. And every year

99-year-old Nancy Evans joins

Hereford's old soldiers to remember

the friends she lost that day.

I

thought how nice it would have been

if they were here, the ones that got

killed. I lost many of them. I sent

my prayers out to them.

So having

done important and dangerous work,

why haven't these women received

official recognition? In the

Commons, Theresa May cited what she

called practical reasons.

I'm sure

everyone in the house would want to

join me in plain tribute to the

thousands who worked in munitions

factories. For practical reasons it

isn't possible to pursue individual

awards.

Missing records could make

it difficult to verify whether

veterans are genuine but still some

have documents proving they were

canary girls. And even those who

don't should be recognised,

according to the former MP who

successfully fought the recognition

of the Bevin Boys.

Records

successfully fought the recognition

of the Bevin Boys.

Records

successfully fought the recognition

of the Bevin Boys.

Records will be

difficult, often statements can be

collaborated by people and that

should be

collaborated by people and that

should be strong enough. If it is

good enough

should be strong enough. If it is

good enough for the Bevin Boys and

Gordon Brown and did something for

the land girls, there is no reason

at all whether the treatment of the

day shouldn't quickly recognise the

role that the armaments factory were

workers played in our victory in

1945.

Following a campaign backed by

BBC radio Hereford and Worcester

radio, to May invited a group of

musicians workers to number ten, but

official recognition was not

discussed.

It was an interesting

time the ladies, they met Theresa

May and how gravity and piece of

cake. But that is not formal

recognition. I think they deserve

some sort of medal or a formally

recognised badge they can wear with

pride and that their family members

can cling on to as well. They were

quite happy to honour the man who

fired the bullets and drop the bombs

but here we are with these women who

made them and without whom we could

not have won the wars.

In a

statement, the Government or this

programme...

Do you think you should be in some

way officially recognise?

Yes,

please. Eddie. I would very much.

I

think it is important because I

think we should be treated the same

as everybody else.

I would like

that. I think all these ladies would

like it.

It is a difficult fact that

each year fewer and fewer of these

remarkable women survived to tell

their stories. So if the Government

is to act it must do so quickly.

Kate Adie reporting. I really hope

the canary girls get the proper Rick

recognition they deserve. That is it

for the current series of inside

out. Tonight's programme will be

available on the eye

out. Tonight's programme will be

available on the eye player. Head to

our website, and click on London. We

will be back again in the autumn.

See you later.