08/09/2014 Inside Out West

Tonight we are investigating why thousands of people across

the country are discovering their marriages are built on nothhng.

Meet the women who thought they were protected and

What I did have savings`wisd I have spent on this legal case.

Why is this town hoping to become one of the country's biggest

Look at it, it is a big patch of green.

I am Alastair McKee and this is Inside Out West.

It is a sad fact that more than four in ten weddings lead to divorce but

what if you discover your m`rriage was not actually legal and that you

It is a reality facing many young couples, as

Your wedding day is meant to be one of the best days of your life.

Everything from the guest lhst to the food and the entertainmdnt needs

to be carefully planned, making sure everybody has a perfect day,

but thousands of British wolen are discovering one essential ddtail has

been overlooked, meaning their managers are not legal.

I have found in my work that more than 80%

of Muslim marriages conductdd in the UK are not registered, meanhng they

So if their marriage breaks down they are left without protection.

I want to find out why this is happening.

How can British women be getting themselves into this situathon

and what can be done to combat the problem?

She went on to university and landed a highly paid job.

In her late 20s she met a man who said he wanted to settle

We have disguised her identhty, Sarah is not her real name.

When did you first realise your marriage was not legal?

Probably a couple of years into the marriage.

I was having a conversation with a friend whose brother was getting

married and they were talking about arranging their civil ceremony and

she said "you haven't had a civil ceremony" and I said "no, I haven't"

so I went home to him and s`id I don't think we're legally m`rried."

And you had no idea before that point?

Sarah's marriage, or nikah as it's called in Hslam,

I was the first person to gdt married in my family in the UK and I

Had I had known I probably would have organised a civil cerelony

In a court of law we are not married, we are seen as coh`bitees,

boyfriend and girlfriend, and because I did not reallx have

my own home I had no choice but to come back to my family and H am

I have two children so therd are three of us in one bedroom.

I can't believe somebody who was supposed to be my husband

and the person I loved has treated me like this.

Even now he could at least put the welfare of

It shows me what a greedy, deceitful man he was.

Very worried, because what I did have savhngs`wise

I have spent on this legal case and now I have nothing and hf I

don't get what I am fighting for I really have lost everything.

Sarah spent ?35,000 on legal fees alone.

She is desperately trying to make her ex pay back all the mondy she

I have heard about other cases like hers but I wonder how common

I'm on my way to London to leet a solicitor who specialises

Anna Khan is one of three specialist solicitors in the country ddaling

How big is this problem now in the Muslim community?

I would say that hundreds of thousands are suffering

from having marriages which have no legal effect under English law.

They are classed as boyfriend and girlfriend and

if they are made homeless overnight they would get no justice.

There are nearly 3 million Luslims in the UK and the majority

of them are under 30 so I think you can share my absolute

What kind of legal recourse do women have who find out thex are

First of all, if your marri`ge has no legal status, you can't

English courts can't give you any help,

they can't help you have mahntenance or a house over your head.

It would be absolutely awful, and a lot

of my clients have invested their life savings, all of their darnings,

sometimes hundreds of thous`nds of pounds, into a family business or

a home which is not in their name, and they lose that overnight.

I think the problem is directly related to the fact that 90$

of mosques are not registerdd to perform marriages and that hs a

shocking statistic, because it means you have very little chance of ever

being told by your imam that your marrhage is

in effect totally without any legal rights under English law.

In fact the latest figures show that in the whole of the South Wdst only

five out of around 100 mosqtes are registered to perform marri`ges

Weddings held at mosques like this one are purely religious

and the bride and groom are bound by no legal contract so if they

want to file for a divorce they have to turn to the Sharia Counchl.

This is a voluntary body that is allost

They provide rulings and advice in accordance with the Islamic faith.

Amra Bone is the only woman to sit on a sharia Council in the whole

So many women that come to ts do not have any access to civil cotrts at

all so if we did not deal whth them they would be left in the ltrch

As far as we are concerned Hslamic marriages are about giving women and

children protection and rights and if they don't register the larriage

they are not going to be able to get them, so we want them to register

their marriage because they will get the rhghts

Rashad Azami is well aware of the problems of unregistered marriages.

Under his direction, a mosque in Bath was the first

How many mosques like yours in Bath are actually registered

I would say if 10% are registered I would be very happy.

No, they aren't registered for the purpose of performing marri`ges

Is there resistance within losques and imams to becoming registered?

I don't think imams are reshstant in any way.

Contrary to the perception, imams in most mosques hold

They are only allowed to perform the religious duties.

It is elected bodies, our management committee, trustees.

Are they resistant, do you think, to this change,

Actually some of them are not in the least bothered about this.

He is a pioneer in his commtnity but what

Actually some of them are not in the least bothered about this.

He is a pioneer in his commtnity but what

I have come to the Husseini Foundation Mosque in Easton, one

We have found that it is re`lly easy for a mosque to get registered, all

they have to do is fill out this form and hand it to the council

It is a really short form you have to fill out, why have xou

We are engaged with the council on various issues and

if it had been brought to our attention then we more than

Now you know about this forl and how simple it is, are you going

We will look at the document and the contents and we will more than

Every bride hopes their marriage will last forever, but, for those

women who I have met, dealing with a painful divorce could have been made

much easier if the mosque h`d filled out a simple registration form.

They need to address all of the mosques in the UK,

The imams need to have that knowledge,

when we go to perform the nhkah we need to tell the bride that this

If you want to go ahead with a marriage that is up to yot but

I think Muslims are mature dnough in our community now to realise we

can't just sleepwalk into this disaster

Coming up, we are on the hunt for a rare English delicacy.

Here in Swindon there is a quiet revolution going on.

Tomorrow a government inspector will look at plans for one of thd

As I have been finding out, the people running this town hope

From the sky you can see how Swindon has grown.

In the last ten years alone almost 30,000 new people have arrived and,

So it was met with some surprise when Swindon's council leaddrs made

a bold pledge to power everx home in the town with clean energy by 2 20.

It would be the first place in the country to achieve this.

If we do 200 megawatts that is about 75,000 homes with electricity

for the year, so you are netting off in one fell

swoop all of Swindon, turning it into a 100% clean energy town.

To do it would mean building solar farms

It would be bound to attract controversy.

If this goes ahead, what hope is there for any of

I can't look my children in the face and say I let this happen.

Swindon's big plan is barelx off the ground and already ht's

The runways are pretty much derelict now and it is where Swindon Borough

Council wants to build the largest of its new solar parks,

generating enough power for 15, 00 homes, a fifth of its target.

Matt Moore manages the site for the museum.

Before we talk solar he takds me on a little tour of one

of the ten giant hangars usdd to store the museum's 30,000 objects,

I can see it is a snow cat but what is the story with this

It is a Tucker snow cat, one of three that went to

Antarctica looking at how polar ice caps have changed.

This is an airplane designed by Howard Hughes to try to get

across the Atlantic without having to refuel.

It has had quite a potted hhstory, it was a transport plane

for a while, but then it was also used by the Rolling Stones on tour.

The Rolling Stones tour plane, what a great story.

Preserving this enormous collection is an expensive business.

At the moment the museum is trying to replace 20 old hangar doors

You are actually looking for ways to make money.

Yes, it is a big site that takes a lot of maintenance.

We want to generate an incole to put back into the site.

Our grant has been reducing over the years, by 30% in 2012,

so we need to make the site better for preservation of the objdcts

That is where the solar park comes in.

Absolutely, that and other research and development

activities help to bring an income into the site that we can rdinvest.

What's being planned would be one of the biggest solar farms hn the

But Swindon's planning department likes the idea,

James Owen is looking after the council's end of the project.

We buy our energy from the big six and is not much we can do about

that. So why not call a stage further and generate electrhcity

locally, or it locally and `llow communities to invest in th`t. Sell

it locally, died locally chdaper than the big six can sell it to you.

But the plan has hit a major stumbling block.

To find out more, I've come to the hills above Wroughton Ahrfield.

Henry Oliver is the director of the North Wessex Downs Area

of Outstanding Natural Beauty and he's promised to show md

What you can see here is an irony age fort but we also have a medical

village and probably the oldest road in the world, now a national trail.

`` irony age. Look at it. It is a great p`tch of

green. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty. It has the highest

level of protection and is worth protecting. And yet what is being

proposed is a massive 150,000 panel solar panel station slap bang here

in the landscape. But this isn't a field, it hs a bit

of an I saw already. Haji splitting heirs?

I know there's an argument that in your as previously developed land.

But it is green. They will put the panels on the green bits whhch are

effectively fields and have been farmed before.

There's no getting away frol it up here you'll definitely sde

But does that really matter if it's creating all that green energy

The crucial thing is that the government has to have an inquiry

into this development because it is contrary to national policy.

National policy says this is an area of outstanding natural beauty. There

are four major development surely happen in exceptional circulstances

and so far no one has demonstrated exceptional circumstances.

After a slow start Henry's campaign has made enough noise to get

And in spring this year Eric Pickles intervened,

calling for a public enquirx, infuriating not just those hn

Swindon trying to build the project but the whole solar industrx.

The government isn't providhng a stable enough policy framdwork.

They should be backing and championing this technology

But if the reality is, when you re doing a scheme incredibly wdll,

that is very well supported by the local community, by the loc`l

and yet Eric Pickles, Westmhnster, is still calling it in and saying

I mean that just destabilisds, undermines confidence,

Government should be championing schemes

But the Department of Communities and Local Government insists it s

So where does all this leavd Swindon's green`energy plans?

To power every home would rdquire 200 megawatts of power. With just

three sites currently operational, that target looks a long wax off.

But the town has another nale more sites in various stages of

development. `` nine more shtes All of which could push sol`r output

to a far more respectable fhgure. Take Wroughton away though

and achieving the target looks I don't know many other loc`tions I

could get of that size. I can see lots of smaller projects

that could add up but I think 2 0 would be hard without rotten.

Tomorrow, a formal public planning enquiry begins on the futurd

of Wroughton, pitching green fields against green energy.

However it's resolved, the environment would appear to be

Finally, I'm going on the trail of the long lost English trtffle.

With a well`trained nose, and a little luck, I'm hoping to sniff

For centuries, truffle hunters have been on the

Traditionally, female pigs were used to smell out these nuggets of black

gold as their scent is said to be similar to that of a mature boar.

But pigs have a tendency to cause damage

as they hunt, so over the ydars dogs have become a more dependable

Truffle hunting in England for the most part died out hn the

early 20th century and with it the knowledge of where to find them

So I've come to the Wiltshire/Somerset borddr to

meet Tom Lywood who, with his Italian Lagotto truffle dogs,

is helping local farmers rediscover the areas lost truffle grovds.

You're going to find some truffles, are you?

I thought we'd start with Hdstia, just doing some training,

Hestia is six months old and still learning the ropes as a truffle dog.

For the time being, Tom is still training her separately so she can

He's hidden some truffles in the back garden for her to sniff out.

She's like a sort of very intense Hoover.

So you'll know when she finds it because she sort of sits next to it?

Well, you can see, Alastair, she's looking now,

Well, it's all about the perfume and here you go.

It's a truffle that I dug up on the Downs on Sunday.

How do you recognise that amongst everything else?

Tom isn't training his dogs to find truffles to sell,

instead he is hired by farmdrs to search for woods on their l`nd that

contain an undiscovered tre`sure trove of truffles.

In the last 15 years, the English truffle has been making

a comeback, with hunters like Tom helping to rediscover groves that

This time it's Valentino, the highly trained veteran, who s on

the hunt with us in a nearbx wood, the location of which is a closely

guarded secret due to the commercial value of the truffles it conceals.

Yes, something, I don't know what it is.

Today we are not just looking for truffles,

we are trying to find some dry ground, and then truffle as well.

But before the hunt can get underway, Tom has

We'll add something to the lixture, I will blow my horn.

It's really to get myself into the landscape.

I'm going to try a little gesture for the wood.

Well, now that we've got the forest onside,

The reason we are searching these woods is that truffles only

develop around the roots of certain trees like beech, oak and h`zel

They also require a special type of chalky soil to grow,

using a network of fine unddrground branches known as mycelium.

But even with all these conditions truffles are not guaranteed it seems

you need a team like Tom and Tino, and perhaps a touch of magic,

He keeps looking like he's picked up a scent of some sort.

Well, he'll know that there's truffle here.

I don't think he's very impressed by it because it's an old truffle.

Rather grizzled but a truffle nonetheless.

It may have been a slightly shoddy first find

but Valentino's got the scent now and we can barely keep up whth him.

Ooh, that's a bit better, look at that!

It's like a sort of nutty mushroom smell,

And I don't have long to waht, with the haul of truffles from today

and those that Tom dug up at the weekend it's time for the bht I ve

We've got the Somerset, Dorset black.

Wiltshire black truffle herd and you think this has a particular taste.

Yes it has a particular taste and I think it's uniformly good.

Truffles are a big part of Tom's world and the are certainly

That's quite a serving, about ?80 worth.

It's getting a very crowded frying pan.

We've got venison, and truffle with truffle butter

No, I haven't, but it's nice to try things out

I'm not sure if I'm more excited or scared by that unusual combhnation.

I think I'm just going to have to go for it.

It does give you that world of truffle.

We are eating a lot of truffle here, aren't we?

We are, yes, because we've dug them we've got to eat them.

Its very rare that you'll eat truffle so fresh.

Well, I like your take on eating truffles.

And what better way to finish a feast fit for a pair

of kings than with a sip of homemade truffle vodka?

I think I could get used to the life of a truffle hunter.

Well, that's just about it for this week but if you'd like to continue

the conversation on tonight's stories find us on Twitter or get

But from here in Swindon, thanks for watching and goodnight.

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