23/02/2017 South Today - Oxford

Welcome to South Today. for the news where you are.

Coming up: Pausing to remember the four men who died in

Their families were in Didcot for a minute's silence,

Also: As police say they need more time to search

Christopher Halliwell's former home, the mother of one of

victims says she believes he could have killed others.

Andd the flawed automated parking system that's ended up

costing a council more than a million pounds.

It's a year today that four men died when part of Didcot Power Station

collapsed, as they were preparing it for demolition.

The families of Ken Cresswell, John Shaw, Michael Collings,

and Christopher Huxtable have been back to the town to

pay tribute to them and to attend a minute's silence.

The investigation into what caused the collapse is ongoing.

A minute's silence was held at four o'clock.

Exactly a year after a huge part of the architectural icon for which

Didcot is so famous crashed to the ground.

The tragedy claimed the lives of four men working there and

Their relatives stood side by side with

representatives of the town to remember.

Memories of the day will be hard to shake off after

a year and we are reminded of that daily by the trucks that come up

with the rubble and the steel that comes out through the gates.

We are never far away from that and I still

I think the town will remember it forever.

It is a sad thing, more than before, but a

Earlier in the afternoon, as strong winds howled

across the piles of twisted debris, the relatives had gathered together

They laid flowers by a memorial bench.

They showed tremendous dignity throughout.

It is essential that lessons are learned

from this terrible accident so no family should have to go through

While Michael Collings's body was found on the night of the collapse,

it was well over six months before the bodies of Christopher Huxtable,

Ken Cresswell and John Shaw were eventually

located and returned to

made to wait too long for information.

To have been a victim of something so horrific as that,

you have lost your husband and then to have to fight

Just last month, I had to write to try to get information about

Suddenly, all that came back with was that

In a joint statement today, the Health and Safety

Executive say they are entirely committed to uncovering why this

tragedy happened and they will seek justice for those affected, should

any wrongdoing be found to have taken place.

It is likely though that more anniversaries will pass

before the families of the men who died here

will get the answers they

Her daughter was murdered by Christopher Halliwell.

Now Sian O'Callaghan's mother says she believes there

Elaine Pickford was speaking as police announced they'll need

more time to continue their forensic search of Halliwell's

He'll spend the rest of his life in jail

The police search at the back of these Swindon houses goes on.

A former home of Christopher Halliwell, the sounds of

a mechanical digger echoing around the terraced streets.

Elaine Pickford's daughter Sian was his

The question now, are there the others lying somewhere

I personally believe that with his psychopathic nature and being a

pathological liar that he would have slipped from everyday life and then

whatever his trigger was, would be capable to go out and do

what he has done to not only Sian, but to Becky and

Swindon taxi driver Christopher Halliwell is serving a

He killed Becky Godden in 2003 and Shannon Cocking

eight years later, but her mother believes it is likely there are

He is currently serving a life sentence. The victim's mother has

studied the killer and it is likely he committed the offences.

Personally I believe once he would have got to that

level, been able to commit that sort of crime and given his nature and

history, and his unnatural urges and sexuality,

I think he wouldn't have

been able to have contain himself for those eight years.

Halliwell appeared to try to make a plea bargain during

If I confess, he said, will that stop

Police say they are digging here on intelligence they

So far they haven't said what, if anything, they found.

Storm Doris has been causing disruption,

with gusts of more than 60 miles an hour in our region.

More than 40 trees or branches have come down in Oxfordshire alone.

Fences have given way, bins have been blown

across the streets and there've been power cuts.

Meanwhile, in Oxford city centre, Park End Street was closed

while firefighters dealt with a roof that had become loose.

An inquest has heard that 10-year-old boy died after a queue

barrier fell on him at Topshop in Reading, causing him

Kaden Reddick was shopping with his mother, siblings

and grandmother at the store in the Oracle Shopping Centre

Police say it happened as his mother was paying at the till.

Topshop has removed all display stands at tills

It was designed to make parking easier for motorists and save

But instead, a camera-operated system installed in some car parks

in Buckinghamshire has ended up costing more than a million pounds.

Since Automatic Number Plate Recognition was

introduced three years ago, not a single penny in fines

What's more, town hall bosses knew the system didn't comply

At the Swan car park in Whickham, ANPR records every car registration.

Before leaving, drivers should enter their registration and pay, but

there are no barriers and some drive off without paying.

The council says it installed ANPR in 20 car parks

after it was reassured by the DVLA that it would be able to get details

But that is illegal and no fines have

The Government said it told you three years ago that she

would not be able to collect fines from the system get the data.

So why did you go ahead and bring it in?

We took external legal advice to make

sure the way we were using it was lawful,

and they were of the opinion that it was and we also had

conversations with the DVLA as to the best way to roll it out and if

we could roll it out and they said they could not see any reason why we

But the DVLA said they didn't give the council

any assurances about releasing data and added that it would have been

So far, ANPR has cost the council nearly

?700,000 to install, almost ?150,000 to upgrade

machines and signs and an

estimated ?287,000 in the unrecovered fines.

Critics say in total, more than ?1 million of taxpayer's money

Wasting over nearly one half million pounds of

the money of taxpayers is inexcusable, really.

We don't get elected just to drink cups of tea

and attend meetings, we are there for policy-making.

We're there to look after the money of the

taxpayers and see it is spent wisely.

Well, on Saturday, the council here is going

to start changing 18 of its

car parks from ANPR back to pay and display.

But it says it is going to keep these new machines in place in

case the law changes in the future and it can start using them again.

At a council meeting tonight, this councillor says

he will be accusing the

authority of gross incompetence and he will be calling for resignations.

The actor George Cole's camel coat and trilby from the ITV series

The distinctive coat and hat were regularly worn

by Cole's character Arthur Daley in the show that ran for 15 years.

We're back in BBC Breakfast tomorrow morning, but for now goodnight.

It will be chillier than previous nights tonight and there will be

scenes like this tomorrow. With clear spells there some isolated

showers here and there. The showers are few and far between and

temperatures in the countryside may fall to around one Celsius. The

breeze will gradually ease off during the night with storm Doris

moving towards the North Sea. A dryer and a bright start tomorrow.

Mainly dry with the odd isolated shower. Winds a lot lighter than

today. Cloud will fill in during the afternoon turning the sunshine hazy

and temperatures will reach 7-8 C. A pleasant day, feeling cooler. The

mild air will make a return through tomorrow night and into Saturday,

following this weather fronts. Tomorrow night, patchy rain.

Saturday should be mainly dry through daylight until this weather

front arrives on Saturday evening and into Sunday. Saturday, a breezy

day. Rain pushing in on Saturday night and clearing first in Sunday

morning. As we look ahead to the rest of the week and the weekend, a

lovely sunny day tomorrow. Cloudy in the afternoon and the winds will be

lighter. Colder than recently with a high of 7-8 C. Kathy

be much milder. I will leave you with Thomas Shelter.

Good evening. It was quite a day for some of us. We get these sort of

storms every couple of years also. Difficult to give an exact number,

but it was certainly a nasty one. It's now moving into Holland,

Germany, south of Denmark, and it continues to blow itself out. The

winds around coasts were not particularly spectacular, but the

inland winds were unusual, 62 mph in London. A trail of damage across the

UK with trees falling