03/01/2018 London News

Good evening, I'm Asad Ahmad.

So we've been hearing how thousands

of appointments and operations have

been cancelled all over England.

But in London,

it's not just hospitals

which are under strain.

GP surgeries and the

Ambulance Service

are feeling the pressure too,

with a doctor warning that

the system is at tipping point.

Our health correspondent Karl Mercer

looks at the knock-on effect

on the NHS in London.

So if it's OK, I'm just going to

check your blood pressure.

January in the NHS.

How long has this

been happening for?

In the ambulance control room.

It was quite a challenging

day across the region yesterday.

And in the winter war room

for London health bosses.

While much of the focus

is on hospitals,

it's in GP surgeries where

90% of patients are seen.

This surgery in Hammersmith

is typical of those

across the capital.

Seeing plenty of patients

with chest infections.

It's still tiresome,

and I cannot walk

because I get so out of breath

I have to stop.

Unfortunately, if you read

the papers and watch the news,

you don't get a true picture

of what is going on.

I think we are at

a tipping point

and the NHS is at a crossroads.

There's a real potential for

a lot of the services we provide

to collapse or disappear for good.

Towards the end of the week

we will be reviewing the staffing

which is our real concern

across the region...

For London NHS bosses,

this is where they

try to tackle winter problems.

This team call around the capital's

hospitals checking how they are

coping and if there's enough staff,

if there are problems

in emergency departments.

Many in the capital are urging

patients to stay away

unless it's a real emergency.

Some planned operations

will be cancelled.

If you have an emergency

I can reassure the public

that the NHS in London is coping

well and you will be seen promptly.

If you're a member of the public

and you've got an elective

operation planned or an outpatient

operation planned and we have to

cancel, I'd like to thank them

for their patience and reassure them

they will get their procedure done

as soon as we are able.

The other area I wanted to cover

was ambulance handover times.

For the first time,

a senior ambulance officer

is in the room with the team.

It means the team back

at ambulance control

should have more ambulances

available to them,

not stuck at hospitals waiting

to drop patients off.

We ask crews to go to an emergency

department that is less busy

which gives a better

experience for patients

in terms of waiting

and also more importantly

it allows us to free up

our ambulances

so we can respond

to emergency calls.

The NHS does prepare hard for winter

to manage its limited resources.

But these are the busiest and most

challenging weeks of the year.

Karl Mercer, BBC London News.

For the second time,

free metal detectors

are being offered to schools

which alert them when knives

are being carried.

The first time

it was made available,

most didn't take up the offer,

even though Mayor of London

Sadiq Khan says he's keen

for all state secondaries

to have them.

Marc Ashdown has the details.

This is all part of the Mayor's

major crackdown on knife crime,

which he launched back in June.

As part of that, all secondaries

were invited to apply

for one of these knife wands.

Now, this is what they look like,

similar to when you go

through airport security.

They can detect

if someone is carrying

a metal object such as a knife.

They give headteachers a bit more

leeway than knife arches to use them

when they actually suspect a pupil

of carrying a knife,

rather than just scanning all pupils

as they go into school.

The Mayor's office hopes it

will help convince young people

they are in far more danger

carrying a knife than not.

The headteachers I've spoken to

are very keen

to ensure their schools

are safe places.

If schools are safe places,

that's where children

and young people can learn,

and they can achieve

their aspirations and really

fulfil their talents and dreams.

I do understand that some

schools may feel it might create

a bit of a stigma,

but what I would say as a parent,

and I'm a mother of four children,

I want to know that the schools

my children go to are safe.

We've learned today that so

far 70 schools

in the capital have signed

up for these knife wands.

There are about 500 secondaries

in Greater London,

so only about 15% of schools

so far will be using them.

For heads,

it's all about perception.

They don't want to be seen to be

too over-the-top, too heavy-handed,

and scare parents.

But there's a growing

collective feeling

that some kind of action is needed.

I think it's definitely

not sending out the message

that schools are dangerous,

I think it's doing

quite the reverse, actually.

It's reassuring parents that

when they send their child off

to school, they are safe places,

but there's also additional security

which reflects the modern times,

and that's at the discretion

of the school or college leader

as to how that is deployed.

I think parents are likely to think

this is a really good step forward.

Sadly, four young men

were killed in London

during the New Year's Eve

celebrations this week.

It means 80 people in total

were stabbed to death

in the capital in 2017.

The Mayor's crackdown

isn't without its critics,

who say gangs hide weapons

outside school grounds and

argue more should be done to tackle

the root causes of knife crime.

But Sadiq Khan again described it

as "a scourge" this week,

and vowed to bring the full force

of the law down

on anyone caught using one

for a crime.

A champion boxer from

north London who had hopes

of fighting for Team GB faces

deportation back to Nigeria,

the country he left as a child.

Bilal Fawaz has been allowed

to fight for England,

but in deciding what to do,

the Home Office points

to his criminal record.

It says an immigration

judge will hear the case.

But Fawaz feels he definitely

deserves to stay.

It makes me feel hurt, you know,

representing a country,

and then when you need their help,

they turn your back on you.

It hurts.

I came as a minor, unaccompanied

minor, and I was taken to a place,

so I never knew anything about

the legalities and the procedures

about anything like that.

A minor is not judged

about what he has done in the past

but is judged by what he is trying

to do to rectify what he has done

in the past, and that is what

I'm trying to do,

all I want is a second chance.

Homeless families in London

claim they are being pressured

to accept offers of housing

outside of the capital.

BBC London visited a family

who had to spend Christmas

and New Year in a hotel,

because they refused to accept

an offer to move to Essex.

The family spoke to Chris Rogers

in their cramped room.

Since September, this tiny hotel

room has been home to Naomi,

her mother, two sisters

and her baby boy.

The family have been living in

hotel rooms like for three years.

The cameraman is on one bed,

I am on the second,

you are on the third.

I mean, there is

hardly any...room to move.

I don't know how you live like this.

We literally live

on top of each other.

The total family income

just about covers

the £400 a week charge

for this room.

Despite eviction

and job losses in the family,

their local council only agreed

to save them from homelessness

when baby Taylor was born.

You know what people are going

to say, they're going to say

when you're in this situation,

why expand the family?

They said that, well, the only way

we'd become a priority

is if one of us got pregnant,

if we were disabled,

or if we've just come out of prison.

So I can understand that but I mean,

at the same time,

I'm of the mindset that

being in the situation,

I've still got to live my life.

This East End born and bred

family were offered

social housing in Southend,

42 miles away from their

part-time jobs and community.

If we have the financial backing

behind it, and the job,

the two main things,

then no problem,

we could go and move to Southend.

There would be no problem.

Naomi has launched a legal challenge

against Barking and Dagenham Council

to rehouse them in east London.

The council told us...

The consequence of the family

refusing to move to Southend

means their duty to help ends.

London councils have long been

accused of social cleansing,

forcing the homeless,

the poor and those on low incomes

out of London, allowing

the wealthier, middle

and upper-class families

to move into areas

that have long been impoverished

and run down.

Up to 2000 families in temporary

accommodation are uprooted

from their communities every year,

some hundreds of miles away.

London Councils, which represents

all our local authorities,

blame a lack of affordable housing,

and told us a majority

of the placements are

on the capital's borders.

But local authorities

are legally obliged

to rehouse homeless families

in or close to their borough.

I think that dramatic steps

have to be taken

to create a stock of affordable

social housing.

There is the argument, and some

people argue this very passionately,

that if you are reliant

on the state,

you live where you're told to live.

Well, that's good enough in part,

but there's plenty of cases

of households who are working

in London, who are going out,

paying taxes, working as care

assistants, teaching assistants.

The glue that pulls

our society together.

The reality for more than 50,000

homeless families in London

is live like this

or face moving out of the capital.

Chris Rogers, BBC London News.

The weather now with Stav Danaos.

If we look at the last 24 hours,

some strong gust of wind in London.

Yes, all because of Storm Eleanor,

now slowly dying a death across the

Baltic Sea, but we look west to the

next area of low pressure arriving

overnight, bringing more strong

winds in towards Thursday afternoon.

Overnight, a dry start, then rain

comes piling in, heavy at times and

quite persistent, no lower than 5

degrees, winds fairly light. We

start with that rain, and then into

the afternoon very windy, mild with

sunshine and showers. A brightening

update. Rain and grey skies through

the morning, brightening up,

sunshine and showers, strong gusts

of wind, touching 60 mph later in

the day. On Friday, more rain,

fairly strong winds, and then

conditions turn much colder from the

north, and that is how it is looking

into the weekend, bitterly cold