22/11/2017 London News

That's it.

Good evening -

I'm Claudia-Liza Armah.

Less than 24 hours after we revealed

the huge bill facing London councils

to improve fire safety for tenants -

today the Chancellor announced

£28 million for the authority hit

by the Grenfell tragedy.

He also promised money

for others to carry out

essential safety work.

But some Councils have told us

tonight - they don't believe

the Government as they've been

turned down for help before.

Our political correspondent

Karl Mercer reports.

They're fitting sprinklers

in all their flats in Croydon.

That's 534.

And they're starting to put

new fire doors in some

of the estates in Tower Hamlets.

Since the Grenfell Fire,

London's councils have started

spending more on safety

in their tower blocks,

hoping the Government

would fund some of the work.

Today, the council most

affected by the Fire,

was told it would get more money.

Today I can announce we will provide

Kensington and Chelsea

council with a further £28 million

for mental health counselling

services, regeneration support

for the surrounding areas

and to provide a new community space

for local residents.

I spent weeks speaking

to ministers and I'm absolutely

delighted that they've agreed

to give us £28 million today.

Yeah, it will help people

to come up together

and, you know, to meet each other

and deal with the problem

that is around, and stay together.

28 million they should have spent,

what they should have

done, not 28 million,

they should have spent money for the

sprinklers.

Today, the Chancellor did promise

help for councils if they couldn't

afford essential fire safety work.

If any local authority cannot

access funding to pay for

essential fire safety work

they should contact us immediately.

The London Fire Brigade

says it thinks things

like sprinklers are essential.

I support retrofitting, clearly.

You know, for me,

where you can save one

life then it's worth doing.

This can't be optional.

But as BBC London revealed

yesterday, 15 councils

in the capital have asked for money

to the tune of nearly £400 million.

None have so far received any.

So what do those in Croydon

and Tower Hamlets make

of the Chancellor's words today?

Well, unfortunately,

Philip Hammond's not saying anything

new today than what his government's

previously said and we've already

approached the government on a

number of occasions, asked for the

money that we desperately need

here in Croydon to fit sprinklers

and been turned down.

It's promises of jam tomorrow.

We have over 130 blocks

over seven floors high.

If we wanted to put

sprinklers in them,

for example, we would need many

millions of pounds from the

Government and there's no

sign whatsoever of that.

The Government says it will not

allow what it called financial

constraints to get in the way of any

essential fire safety works.

Karl Mercer, BBC London News.

Let's get more from our political

editor Tim Donovan.

You have been speaking to ministers,

what has been the government's

reaction to this?

If any councils

got the impression that the

Chancellor was indicating there was

going to be more money available to

refurbish, help retrofit tower

blocks, that is not the case. The

Government's position has clearly

not changed, look very carefully,

the expectation is councils will

have to look to their own budgets to

put in this remedial safety work and

it will only be in the most

exceptional circumstances the

government will step in.

Where any council has approached us,

including London councils, and said

they can't afford it

themselves, we've said,

well, talk to us about

what

flexibilities you need,

the kind of support that we can

provide to make sure

the funding is there.

And that's vital,

because we will make sure

there won't be a single local

authority in the country that is

unable to do its work

because we will support it in making

sure that those fire safety measures

are all met in full.

There were quite a few key

announcements today's budget. In

your opinion Howard did they fare on

that?

There wasn't much more money

available today for affordable

housing in week knew already, £2

billion announced at Tory party

conference, London will get a

significant share of that. Councils

Scott Moore borrowing powers, they

will be able to build more

affordable homes, they say not

enough. There was no mention of

policing, so nothing for the mayor,

who says he will not be able to keep

police numbers at 32,000, and he

wanted to see a scheme in terms of

air quality to compensate drivers,

persuade them to get rid of their

diesel vehicles. The Chancellor

didn't come up with that but he came

up with a national fund, £220

million, London will have to bid for

that money. The mayor wasn't that

impressed.

I think this is probably the most

anti-London budget in a generation.

Housing opportunity missed.

Police not even mentioned

by the government.

Air quality getting worse

across the country, getting

worse in London without

the government's help.

Infrastructure, we're doing

what we can in London

but we need the government's

help as well.

Infrastructure, not really much of a

mention, no green light for

Crossrail command listen to the

Chancellor, his talk of

infrastructure today was about

putting stuff into the West Midlands

and Tyne & Wear, this new generation

of Metro mayors, the talk of

infrastructure today wasn't London

with its

Labour mayor.

Thank you, Tim.

The police watchdog is investigating

after a 15-year-old boy was injured

while being stopped by Met officers.

Scotland Yard say they spotted

the boy after a woman said

she'd been robbed nearby.

But the teenager's mother has told

BBC London her son was not involved

in any theft and claims

he was the victim of both mistaken

identity and excessive force.

Well our Home Affairs correspondent

Nick Beake is here now -

What can you tell us about the

circumstances around this

15-year-old being stopped?

It

happened around 9pm last night in

Bermondsey and the Met police

confirmed they had stopped the

teenager cycling after a woman said

she had been stopped, robbed of her

phone by a boy on the bike. The

police watchdog the IPCC said a

15-year-old boy came off his bike,

to use their phrase, and suffered

facial injuries and was taken to

hospital. Today the mother of the

boy posted a photograph online, and

she says it shows he's got a broken

tooth and needed stitches after his

lip was split open. She told us to

not he wasn't involved in any

robbery, he was merely cycling home

to involve them avoid a curfew she

had set for him. This is what she

told us.

As he's pedalling fast,

obviously maybe to the police it

looks like he's running

away from something.

I don't know.

You know, he's told me the police

have basically come out of

nowhere, a police car

behind him and a police

car in front of him,

and as

he's got to basically,

I think it's Morley's chicken shop,

the police guy has jumped out

of the car,

shoved him into the shop shutters,

and basically the rest is history.

His face was just

completely smashed up.

We put the allegations to Scotland

Yard tonight. They say they are

unable to comment because the IPCC

is now investigating. Clearly the

police watchdog want to look into

this as soon as possible. One thing

that might help them is the fact

that across London more than 20,000

front line police officers now where

body warned video cameras and

clearly any footage in a contentious

incident like this would be

extremely helpful in an

investigation.

We will await details

on that but for now, thank you.

Transport for London is trying

to find out if drivers and customers

here have been impacted by a huge

data breach on Uber -

affecting millions.

The minicab-hailing firm

is currently appealing

a decision to suspend

its licence in the capital.

Our Technology Correspondent Rory

Cellan-Jones reports.

For any company, a data breach

exposing the personal information

57 million users and drivers

would be bad enough.

It was what Uber did

next that really shocked

regulators and customers -

paying off the hackers and keeping

it all quiet for more than a year.

It happened when Uber was run

by its founder, Travis Kalanick,

who stepped down earlier this year

amid other controversies

about the company's behaviour.

The new boss Dara Khosrowshahi

apologised in a blog post, saying:

Customers are clearly

very concerned that their data

is not being protected sufficiently.

But there's only so much

you can do as a consumer.

We need to hold the

companies accountable.

We know that this very serious

security failure affected

people around the world.

What we don't know is how many

British Uber users saw their data

put at risk by this breach.

Already, our data protection

regulator, the Information

Commissioner, has issued an angry

statement warning that

concealing a data breach can

lead to bigger fines.

Now this troubled company has

to try to regain the trust

of regulators and customers.

You start with a mea culpa -

OK, our culture doesn't work -

and a genuine and sincere

effort to reset.

Can they do it?

Highly unlikely,

actually, if I'm honest.

But it is possible.

In London, as in many cities,

Uber has always been controversial

and is currently fighting a ban.

This new evidence of behaviour

its own boss admits was inexcusable

won't make that battle any easier.

That's it for now from me, but let's

find out what the weather's up

to with Susan Powell.

to with Susan Powell.

Good evening. It's going to be

turning much colder in the next few

days and most of tomorrow when it

should be relatively mild, they will

be lots of sunshine. Another windy

day, perhaps not as warm as today.

Outside at the moment some rain is

moving in from the west, nothing too

much at the moment but give it a

couple of hours or so and we will

see heavier downpours and into the

small hours of Thursday we could

hear the odd rumble of thunder. But

it looks like the rain will whisk

eastwards quickly leaving us with

relatively dry start to Thursday and

mild in towns and cities,

temperatures in double figures. A

few more showers chasing across

during the rush hour but lots of

sunshine through much of the day, a

few showers late in the afternoon,

but overall a lot of better weather

to come and stilts and decent

temperatures, highs of 13 or 14

degrees. -- stilts and decent

temperatures. Now over to Darren

Bett for the outlook over the coming

days.