06/01/2017 London News

Millions of commuters face major travel disruption after talks

to avert a 24-hour Tube strike collapsed this afternoon.

Industrial action is due to start on Sunday and will pretty much

shut down all Zone One stations on Monday.

Here's our transport correspondent, Tom Edwards.

Arriving for talks, there was some optimism this long-running

acrimonious dispute could be resolved, but not much.

Is this about the unions showing the mayor who's boss?

Absolutely not, it's about having a safe London Underground

for the 4 million people that use it nearly everyday.

This dispute goes back to the closure of the Tube ticket

offices under the previous mayor, Boris Johnson, in 2015.

The unions always hated the policy, saying it was unsafe,

But the closures happened, and around 840 jobs went.

London Underground says it saves ?50 million annually.

Now under a new mayor, both sides agree more staff

But the sticking point is how many, and whether LU can afford them.

And by 3pm, talks had collapsed, with no agreement on extra

We're very disappointed to find London Underground were unable today

to put one additional job on the table that they

A miserable response from them to a crisis

We're now in a total crisis situation, so there needs to be

something fairly drastic immediately, as well as

a longer-term solution to staffing on the Tube.

Tonight, commuters were disappointed.

From last strikes there were hours of delays.

It took like four hours, which normally takes half an hour.

It stinks, it's not good, especially what's going on with Southern.

The bad news for commuters is there's going to be considerable

disruption from Sunday at 6pm, and all day Monday.

On Monday, all Tube stations in Zone One will be shut.

The Victoria and the Waterloo City lines won't run.

There will be a severely reduced service on all the lines,

What we'll be doing is adding 150 additional buses around

We'll be putting our travel ambassadors out

into the stations as well, to help to give people advice.

Our key advice to people would be to make sure that they check before

Tonight, one union says it will be attending more talks tomorrow.

A strike would be a blow to the mayor, who wanted better

It's also a blow to commuters, who at the moment face

A whistle-blower has claimed that people lost their lives as a result

of a computer failure at the London Ambulance Service.

BBC News can reveal that at least one 999 patient died

during the technical failure in the early hours

The service say staff were trained effectively in using a manual

back-up system and continued to prioritise patients

A warning - Jon Ironmonger's report contains flashing images.

Shortly after midnight, when the streets of London

were packed with people, the multi-million pound computer

system which logs emergencies and assigns ambulances collapsed.

For five hours control staff were forced to process hundreds

The service say they'd been given effective training.

With an investigation under way into the technical meltdown

at the London Ambulance Service, one death is now being looked

at to see if the computer problems were a contributing factor.

The BBC has heard damning claims from a whistle-blower that the real

The people of London were failed on New Year's Eve.

They were watching their loved ones and their friends suffering,

waiting, not knowing if or when help was going to arrive.

Do you think there's a chance that people might have died as a result

If you'd had a cardiac arrest we aim to get you within eight minutes.

The BBC have seen leaked photographs of the internal staff Facebook page,

which suggests that some employees felt under extreme pressure

One member questions why so many patients had to suffer,

while workers are described as being in tears, shell-shocked,

Staff are trained to cope in the event of technical

difficulties and it's not the first time that the computer

But never before, we understand, for such a long period

We're very sorry to anyone who experienced delays during those

We are obviously taking that matter very seriously and to that end

we've launched a full and comprehensive

In 2015, the London Ambulance Service was placed

Since then it's taken steps to improve.

The Care Quality Commission said it would follow up concerns

about control room problems during a planned

Let's find out what the weather's up to with Darren Bett.

The weather is fairly bland this weekend. Today, after a bright and

cold start we had always cloud coming our way. It's brought some

rain and drizzle. Not wet so much as damp, over the next few hours. When

I drove in it was an intermittent wiper. The rain and drizzle will

tend to push away southwards, leaving behind low cloud. You don't

need to worry about frost tonight for once. It will be a mild start,

but not that mild, as we head into the weekend. There will be a lot of

cloud in the morning and probably into the afternoon as well. You can

see a glimpse of sunshine, that will be about it, I would have thought.

Probably dry. Not much went to shake things up but temperatures may get

into double figures. -- not much wind to shake things up. On Sunday,

similar. A peep of sunshine if you are lucky. The wind is gentle from

the north-west. Temperatures pretty good for the time of year. We

entered the monotony next week with more unsettled weather over the next

few days. Good evening. The weather has been

turning milder and also cloudier through the course of the day. We

did see some clear spells moving in from the North will stop this was

the sunset, captured in Dundee. Some clear spells as we headed through

the course of the afternoon into the evening. Really, through the

weekend, wiki with a similar theme. Much milder than it has been. A lot

of cloud around in general, but for most of us think. Dry. Not dry

everywhere at the moment, particularly across central and

southern parts of England and Wales. We have a lot of