To follow
Ros Wynne-Jones
Archives: Exposing Britain entriesTTTT
Exposing Britain’s Social Evils
Harry Stopes
To follow
Zac Beattie, James Newton, Georgina Cammalleri and Rupert Houseman
Docudrama following the story of Britain’s deadliest illegal gun, charting every shooting of Gun No 6 and exposing the realities of modern gun crime.
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0btt5pf
Eve Livingston
Submitted material
“These Glasgow Women Are Fighting Back After Decades Of Discrimination”
“Thousands of low paid women are striking. Where’s the solidarity?”
“Why women in Glasgow are striking over equal pay”
Social media content: “Highlights from Glasgow Women’s Strike days 24th/25th October 2018”
Jane Bradley
Submitted material
“Exposed: Hundreds Of Homeless Slaves Recruited on British Streets”
“MPs Call For Change After BuzzFeed Reveals Hidden Homeless Slaves”
“Victims Of Trafficking Were Refused Free Legal Advice Because The Government Got The Law Wrong”
Video content: “Secret film reveals how rough sleepers are rounded up for labour exploitation on British streets”
Frances Ryan
Submitted material
” ‘I could be taken from my home’: why disabled people once again fear being ‘warehoused'”
“The disability system is blocking people like Jaki from their benefits – literally”
“A year of dispatches from the frayed edges of Britain’s safety net”
Video content: “Blocked from benefits … literally”
Richard Holmes
To follow
Max Daly
Submitted material
“What’s The Hidden Link Between Missing Children and the UK Drug Trade?”
“How Drug Dealing Gangs Are Taking Over the Countryside”
“Why London’s Teenagers Are Killing Each Other”
Max interviewed on Victoria Derbyshire about London Killings (BBC)
Daniella Scott
To follow
Andy Davies, Anja Popp & Dai Baker
Channel 4 News aimed to highlight the reality of rough sleeping, by telling the story of one person who died on the streets of the UK. Andy Davies and his producer and cameraman pieced together the story of Lindy Pring, after seeing a brief mention in a student online newspaper of a woman’s death in a park in Cardiff. They found out her name, tracked down her partner who was living in a tent with her, and eventually persuaded her sister to describe Lindy’s path to homelessness. Through Lindy’s story, the TV and online work both personalises rough sleeping and sheds a light on the reality of life – and death – on the streets of a British city.
Social media content
John Harris
Until recently, Housing Associations were seen as uniformly philanthropic, morally-driven organisations. This run of work told a different story: about big London HAs, their increasing tilt towards hurried property development, and what that meant for their residents.
It began with an in-depth piece about the Orchard Village Estate in East London and the impossible living conditions people there experienced – which led to the resignation of the chairman of the UK’s largest Housing Association. That story sparked a deluge of emails and tweets which resulted in more coverage of badly-built London housing developments, the experiences of the people who live in them, and what their stories said about what many Housing Associations are turning into. In June last year, the Grenfell Tower disaster provided decisive proof of what these stories had highlighted: a culture of neglect and buck-passing, and its awful human consequences.
- Leaking sewage and rotten floorboards: life on a ‘flagship’ housing estate
- What’s the point of building a million new homes if they’re not fit to live in?
- ‘No one calls the housing association repairs line. There’s no point’
Social media content
- The BBC takes up the story
- Other reports start to come in – the tweet that led me to One Housing Group
- Politicians call for legal change
Jennifer Williams
I aimed to expose how dangerous and widespread Spice use had become in Manchester in order to jolt authorities into action. Its use among society’s most vulnerable and hidden people – care leavers, prisoners the homeless – meant public policy had been allowed to lag way behind, to catastrophic effect. Agencies were still not recording how many incidents featured Spice, despite it having long been documented – including by me, through FOI, in 2015. So I spent 6 months researching the Feb 2017 investigation. When use exploded onto the streets last Spring, reportage then seemed the most powerful response. It succeeded in its goal, to an extent. The public nationally now knows about this drug – and so do politicians, some of whom had apparently been oblivious. One survey placed Spice as the top priority among mayoral election voters in May.
- The terrifying truth about the Spice epidemic (Manchester Evening News)
- News strain of Spice turns homeless into walking dead (Manchester Evening News)
- The pale, wasted figures caught in a Spice nightmare (Manchester Evening News)
Social media & audience response
Patrick Strudwick
Since the EU referendum, a stream of news reports revealed a spike in hate crimes, but what they did not describe was the far-reaching effects on the individual, nor the response from agencies. What I did, therefore, was tell the inside story of a hate crime over six months: one gay man, one incident. By exploring with him the psychological, physical, legal and financial aftermath, I was able to convey the meaning of hate crimes and the inadequate provision for victims. Although in this instance one policy worked – a harsher sentence because it was a hate crime – by detailing how the victim’s life crumbled leaving him homeless and penniless, the complex picture of what is lacking in policies and provisions, came into view. Half a million people either read the piece or watched the video. Many emailed saying only now do they fully understood what a hate crime really is.
David Cohen
There are 670,000 children in England living in families regarded as high risk whose privations are mostly invisible to the authorities. My special investigation – The Lost Childhoods – surfaces this otherwise unseen report by the Children’s Commissioner and depicts the tough lives of some of these forgotten children, such as child carers and children living in secret domestic abuse safe houses. My series generated a special debate in the House of Lords as well as a vociferous response from readers who also set up crowdfunding pages for several of the children featured.
- I know how to handle mummy collapsing but it still keeps me awake (Evening Standard)
- I’ve lost my friends. They can’t play here – we have to keep our safe house secret (Evening Standard)
- I was dumped by mum. Left alone by dad… now I finally have a future (Evening Standard)
Social media & audience response
Anna Minton
The material submitted consists of work investigating the causes and impact of the housing crisis, which followed my work on Big Capital: Who is London for?, my book on the housing crisis. The journalistic submissions include a ‘Long Read’ extract from Big Capital in the Guardian and two pieces for the Guardian on the causes and wider implications of the Grenfell fire. Also included is a podcast from an event at the London Review Bookshop and a video of a public debate on the housing crisis at the London School of Economics.
- The Great London Property Squeeze (The Guardian)
- High-rise blocks like Grenfell Tower can be safe. The key issue is management (The Guardian)
- The Grenfell inquiry must look at the developers carving up our cities (The Guardian)
Video content
What is housing for? LSE public lecture
Audio content
Anna Minton in conversation with Oliver Wainwright, London Review Bookshop
Kate Lyons
The New Arrivals project sought to understand the lives of the large numbers of refugees and migrants trying to build new lives in the UK. The project investigated the string of injustices facing newcomers to Britain, from the kafkaesque asylum process, the boredom and stress of limbo, the nature of life on £37 a week, and the inevitable connections between refugees and homelessness.
It has already unearthed several scoops: the scandal of clustering asylum seekers in poor towns, the travesty of the Home Office interview process, the failure to prepare properly for Syrian children arriving, and – the saddest revelation of all: children forced into homelessness by bureaucracy.
- Most refugees sent to poorest parts of Britain (The Guardian)
- They left Afghanistan a family of nine. They arrived in Britain a family of 2 (The Guardian)
- How do you live on £37 a week? (The Guardian)
Video content
- We slept on the buses – Britain’s homeless children
- Then the shooting started: the Afghan family rejected by Britain
Social media content
- Mobin’s story
- Wanted: Syrian family for Welsh village
Joe Plomin
Producer Director Joe Plomin’s films reveal the mistreatment of the most vulnerable people in society. His careful use of secret filming repeatedly delivers indisputable evidence of real, current ‘evils’. Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets exposed abuse and even assaults at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre, widespread self-harm and people detained for months or even years as they await deportation. One boy was forced to test a batch of drugs by his cell mate. Since broadcast select committee hearings have begun in Parliament, the Home Office is investigating the company running the centre and its director has resigned. A criminal investigation is under way. Behind Bars, Prison Undercover helped reveal the truth about the crisis in Britain’s prisons, which prompted the Government to invest more.
Online content
Mark Townsend
The Macpherson report 19 years ago and its assessment of “institutional racism” within policing is regarded as a defining moment in British race relations. The consensus now is that things have much improved; that fatal violence towards the black community is a US not UK issue. Over the summer, a cluster of young black men died following police contact. The official accounts were vague, but oddly similar. By painstakingly tracking down witnesses – many of whom were not interviewed by the watchdog – these official versions were contradicted and exposed. Together, they suggested a cover up. Lawyers warned us not to run the findings or footage because they might prejudice official inquiries. They were ignored in the public interest. Days after publication the IPCC recommended suspending officers; one force internally admitted failings. A month later, as a direct result of the article, another five Met officers were placed under investigation. Within three months the IPCC was shut down.
Video content