14/02/2018 London News

Here on BBC One it's time

for the news where you are.

Good evening.

I'm Riz Lateef.

Some of the most

vulnerable Londoners

are being trapped in a "cycle

of homelessness",

due to a change in the law -

according to the charity Crisis.

It says new, tougher criteria

are being used to remove people

from social housing waiting lists.

BBC London has learnt

that across the capital,

the number has been cut by a third.

Raising questions as to who has

been removed and why.

Our political correspondent

Karl Mercer has been investigating.

Clavia used to be on the

housing waiting list.

Since August she hasn't been.

She couldn't pay her rent

and fell into arrears.

She's now homeless and unable to get

back on the waiting list for a home

for herself and her two children.

You're just stuck in a place

where you have no control.

That's the worst, I think one of the

worst feelings.

You have a problem that is your

problem but you can't solve it.

Nothing you can do about it.

For six months this has

been their home, living with friends

of her daughter.

But they are about to

be on the move again.

Since August, they've been

permanently just in bags and boxes.

This is how I've lived.

If I'm here today, I might be

there tomorrow, I might go

to my mum's for a couple

of nights, just to...

Clavia's not alone.

Across London thousands of people

have been taken off the list

for council homes,

since the introduction

of something called

the Localism Act six years ago.

It gave local councils more power

to decide who should

and shouldn't be on the list.

If they can't register for social

housing then their options are very

limited. People can end up in some

kind of spiral of homelessness and

poverty, where, if the reason they

could not register previously was

they had went arrears, then they are

forced into more expensive solution,

then things are going to get worse

them.

There is a mixed picture across

London and illustrated pretty

clearly where I'm standing

here in north London.

On my right is the London

Borough of Camden.

Here, waiting lists have gone down

by 16,000 since 2012 and a drop

of something like 85%.

But if we switch across

the road just a few feet away,

this is the London Borough of

Islington, where the waiting lists

have actually gone up by more than

4300, a rise of 36%.

Some councils have excluded people

like Clavia in rent arrears. Others

have introduced rules saying only

people who've

lived locally can get on the list.

But the rules across London are

We have urged the mayor to do

something to bring Burris

We have urged the mayor to do

something to bring boroughs

together to make things more

consistent, particularly the local

connections problem.

It needs sorting out at a London

level, because if you've lived in a

borough for a few years, and a

different Borough for a few years,

you might not qualify for housing

anywhere in London, but living in

London ought to be a qualification

for being eligible for housing

in London.

Any change like that would come too

late for Clavia.

A British Airways engineer has died

after a crash between two

vehicles on the tarmac at Heathrow

early this morning.

Another man was injured.

Hundreds of passengers had to be

evacuated from a plane

and flights were delayed.

Chris Rogers has more.

It's just after 6am.

The tragic pictures of the aftermath

of the runway crash emerge.

An airport worker is killed

as he does his rounds.

The other driver suffers

a broken shoulder.

Police are investigating why

the white BA van and yellow

pick-up truck collided.

Often used by Heathrow's

staff to direct aircraft

and inspect the runways.

Hundreds of horrified passengers,

their planes delayed

for around two hours,

can only look on.

25 flights were cancelled.

Hundreds of passengers were

stranded. They were told to leave

their planes and head back to the

terminal building.

London Ambulance later tweeted,

confirming one of the drivers

suffered a cardiac arrest.

"Despite our extensive efforts

to resuscitate him at the scene,

and on the way to hospital,

he was later pronounced dead".

Heathrow Airport and British

Airways are cooperating

fully with the investigation and

expressed deepest sympathies for the

family of the engineer

who died here today.

Chris Rogers reporting there.

It's a first for a FTSE 100 company.

Lloyds Banking Group has set

an ethnic diversity target for staff

among its senior management

- by 2020.

It says it wants to better reflect

the customer base it serves.

Alice Hutton has the story.

Bankers in bowler

hats and sharp suits.

The City of London in the 1970s

was a very different place to today.

Or is it?

In the corridors of power in 2018,

black, Asian and minority ethnic

faces are conspicuous

by their absence.

Lloyds Banking Group

are hoping to change that.

So at senior management

our figure is 6%.

And, actually, that reflects

the external labour market at senior

management positions

across the FTSE 100.

But I think our view

is that we need to do more

and we need to go further.

That's the other reason

for introducing the goal,

to accelerate the pace of change

and to make sure that our most

senior levels in the organisation

are more representative

of the external labour market.

Lloyds say they are confident

they can meet their diversity

targets within the tight

two-year time frame.

But in a place like the City,

how realistic is it?

And is it ambitious enough?

I think it's a good idea.

I think it's a good initiative.

Whether it's going to be successful

or whether it's going to have

any kind of traction,

you know, remains to be seen.

I suppose there's a perception

of an old boys network,

maybe, in the City.

Maybe that's because traditionally,

you've had a lot of middle-class

white males who've been running

operations.

You look at it historically,

there are more whites

here than there are blacks,

but it's not a true

representation of the ratios.

So if you look in society,

there are more ethnic minorities

than there are represented

here in the City.

Lloyds might be the first FTSE 100

company to set these public targets,

but they aren't the only

organisation working to improve

diversity at senior levels.

Joanna is the managing

director of a consultancy,

which helps businesses recruit

ethnic minority talent.

There are issues around

development and opportunity,

so if you do not have a visible role

model in a position

in which you aspire to get into,

it can be quite discouraging.

And it can make you believe that

that's not something

that is actually achievable

within that organisation.

Which is why what Lloyds

is doing is so good.

It will actually encourage people

within their organisation to believe

that the company are taking

it very seriously.

In one of the largest financial

centres in the world, Lloyds' move

won't have go unnoticed.

This might be a welcome step

towards greater transparency.

Next: 30 tonnes of wet wipes a day.

That's what Thames Water says

it's having to clear

from London's sewers,

and it's costing millions.

It was only last year a giant

fatberg - longer than Tower Bridge

caused problems in East London.

Brace yourself for some of

the pictures in Tom Edwards' report.

Welcome to Europe's largest sewerage

plant in Beckton, East London,

serving four million Londoners.

It deals with 17,000

litres of sewage a second.

Here though, they have a growing

problem of nonperishable

items, mainly wet wipes.

It is a massive problem,

not just for us, but for London.

We remove 30 tonnes

of what we call rag, a day.

That is a combination of wet wipes,

sanitary products etc.

This causes a lot of damage

to the infrastructure, to the

environment, in terms of pollution

because of blockages, and also to

people's homes when there

is a blockage and there is flooding.

Wet wipes help fat

and grease congeal in

sewers, to form huge fatbergs

like this one in Whitechapel.

It is costing Thames Water

£1 million a month

to unblock the sewers.

This demonstration

shows what happens to

tissue paper in water

compared to wet wipes.

Paper disintegrates quickly.

But the plastic in the wet wipes

means it is not affected.

I'd like Londoners to bin it,

not block it, which is the

message from Thames Water.

Stick it in your dustbin, don't

throw it down the toilet.

I'd also like the manufacturers

to stop marking things

as flushable when they clearly

are not flushable items.

That is what we need to be doing.

This would save an awful lot of

money that Thames Water could then

be spending on other things.

Other things like Thames Water's

poor record at fixing leaks.

So the message for Londoners -

sewers can only deal with waste

from people and paper.

Tom Edwards, BBC

London News, Becton.

The World War Two bomb

which forced the closure

of City Airport earlier this week -

has been detonated in the sea

off the Essex coast.

The Royal Navy diffused

the half tonne device

in a controlled explosion.

It was found in the Thames

during building work

in the Docklands area.

Bad weather prevented the operation

taking place yesterday.

I'll say goodnight now,

and it's over to Phil Avery

for a check on the weather.

Hello. Thank you. Yes, the weather

did getting the way of the

particular operation yesterday. But

that was not the this morning.

Our Weather Watchers were not

cowering behind the glass because it

was a glorious start but then the

cloud filling in from the west. The

afternoon really did look as grim as

that. Some of the cloud lingering

into the first part of Thursday,

helping to keep temperatures up. You

may not be scraping the cars first

thing. It does not look as if there

is a lot of weather but there is a

breeze to be considered. There are

islands of cloud coming through.

Some of them may give one or two

showers in one or two spots but many

of you will get away with a dry day.

If you can tuck yourself out of the

breeze I suspect it will feel

springlike. The