24/11/2017 London News

That's all from the BBC News at One

so it's goodbye from me

Good afternoon and welcome to BBC

London News, I'm Sonja Jessup.

There's a warning the capital

could face a crime wave

if the police don't take motor

crime more seriously.

That's the stark view of the AA,

after BBC London has learned how few

reported crimes of theft from motor

vehicles result in prosecutions.

Alex Bushilll joins me.

What do the figures tell us?

Let's

be clear, this is not figures of

theft of motor vehicles but theft

from vehicles, said things like

airbags all laptops, things from the

passenger seat getting stolen. These

figures showed the level of

prosecutions is pretty low. They

confirm last year 53,000 reported

offences were lodged, but of those

only 796 cases resulted in persons

being proceeded against. As a

percentage, that means only 1.5% of

the total resulted in effectively

charges being brought. This plays

into the current debate where the

Met are being very upfront about how

they are not going to police,

investigate low-level crimes, citing

motor crime as one of the examples.

I have spoken to a builder in

Croydon who, like so many others,

have experienced this crime

first-hand, thousands of pounds

worth of tools taken from his van

outside of his house which

interestingly had CCTV of the

suspect stealing from him, and he

said the police did not do anything,

no investigation whatsoever. We have

spoken to the mat, as for a comment,

we are waiting to hear from them,

but this was the builder's response.

It is a free for all, the thieves

know at the moment they will not be

prosecuted, it is advertised on the

radio, TV that the police will not

prosecute these thieves, so it is a

free for all, they know they can go

out, even if evidence is provided to

the fact that you can see that these

are the people that are the

assailants, the police absolutely

will do nothing about it.

What is

the Met's response more generally

about policing motor crime?

They

said they will do something about it

but only where there is the DDB or

evidence they can pursue. In a

statement they said there can be

limited opportunities to identify

the perpetrators of theft, so it is

not worth their time, basically, to

investigate every report of crime,

so they go on to say that the

introduction of CCTV can help them

to identify offenders. That is very

little reassurance to motoring

groups I have been speaking to, like

the AA. The president of the AA told

me today it is not good enough and

more needs to be done.

They are not

investigating enough crimes, so

there could be a spate of crimes,

catalytic converters being stolen

from one area, and we have knowledge

that it is maybe just one gang doing

it. If you took that gang off the

street, you would clean up crime in

one large area.

The Mets say they

are doing everything they can to

keep our streets safe but these

figures tie into the wider debate

about what we could expect the

police to police.

Alex, thank you.

As I'm sure you are away, it is

Black Friday, the West End expected

to be keeping with shoppers spending

record amounts.

But has it taken off,

or are Londoners more interested

in searching online for a good deal

rather than hitting the high street?

Frankie McCamley is

on Oxford Street for us.

How busy is it?

Things have picked

up compared to what we saw this

morning. We were on Oxford Street at

7am, two hours early, when one of

the stores opened its doors, and, as

you can see, it wasn't a very big

rush, there were not the big queue

is expected from years gone by. One

man was queueing to come in and

collect a pre-ordered laptop but

things are picking up. I am joined

by Carl Monk from the new West End

Company. Has it been a flop? No,

this morning was quiet but we still

expect 156 million to be spent over

Black Friday this weekend, up 8%, as

domestic shoppers come to make the

most of their pounds ahead of the

Christmas shopping period will stop

how important is it for London to

get the shoppers out on the street?

Incredibly important, it is our core

market in the West End and we do

everything we can to work with

retailers to drive Londoners to shop

and spend here.

Thank you. We have

had some figures in that say that

most deals in London grabbed a this

morning but research says this might

not be the best day to pick up those

deals so the advice is to stick to

your shopping list and do research.

The rise in online shopping

is being blamed as one

of the reasons traffic jams

in the capital are getting worse.

Figures from the Department

for Transport suggest the average

speed of traffic in the City

of London fell below 7mph last year.

Ford has applied to Transport

for London to run six

commuter bus routes.

The US carmaker already runs

a service in four American cities,

where passengers can book a place

on its 15-seater minibuses

via a smartphone app.

We all know there are beautiful

walks to take in and around

the capital by day.

But one Londoner has written a book

that argues we can best

understand our city,

and ourselves, if we walk

in the middle of the night.

Wendy Hurrell has more.

# London by night is a wonderful

site...

When the sun goes down over our

city, another world wakes up. One of

night buses, night workers, and like

walkers.

I started walking at night

because I did not like taking taxis

and wasn't keen on night buses so I

would walk through the city and

began to realise it was a completely

different environment, there was a

different ecology to the city, and I

became more and more fascinated by

the people who walk about in the

night. You do see figures whose

presence is very furtive and the

night, the darkness, the shadows do

bestir one people, even if they are

up to something quite innocent, a

certain kind of a new and Mrs Tariq

and suspiciousness. The greatest

night walk of all was Charles

Dickens, a truly Olympian night

walk. Wonderful glimpses of London

at night in much of his fiction. It

certainly looked pretty different,

the presence of all the car traffic

and buses makes a huge difference,

but there is this wonderful light,

albeit not Gaslight, coming from the

lamps along the river, this

beautiful yellow light shimmering on

the surface of the Thames, so in

some ways I think that some of the

magic of the 19th-century city and

night down on the river is still

here.

# Lovers love London by night.

It does look lovely but you may need

to wrap up warm if you are going for

a night-time walk.

Let's get the weather now -

here's Lucy Martin.

Feeling cooler than yesterday but it

will feel colder still as we move

into the weekend. Plenty of dry,

bright weather and some sunshine on

the way as we move through the next

few days, despite the cold

temperatures. Through this

afternoon, largely dry and bright,

there will be sunny spells

developing with light winds,

temperatures reaching a maximum of

around 10 Celsius. As we go through

tonight it will stay largely dry,

clear skies as we move through the

night, just the chance of one or two

isolated showers, particularly for

south-west London, but most people

staying dry and with temperatures

falling away we are looking at a

fairly widespread frost. Rarely the

temperatures will be colder than

this. A cold and frosty start

tomorrow, plenty of sunshine, patchy

cloud bubbling up at times, and

again mostly dry but north-west

London could see the odd isolated

shower. Highs of around seven

Celsius per day brisk north-westerly

wind means it won't feel

particularly warm. A chilly start of

the day on Sunday, touch of frost

bursting, good spells of sunshine

and a brisk north-westerly breeze,

temperatures in the single figures.

A spell of rain as we move into

Monday allows temperatures to

briefly increase but will turn

cooler again as we move into

Tuesday. Have a good day.

So that's it for now, but I hope

you can join Asad Ahmad later -

he'll be here with our

6.30pm evening programme.

Enjoy your afternoon.

Bye-bye.