In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, the daytime series The Housing Enforcers (BBC1), presented by Matt Allwright, was bumped up to an evening slot last night for a fire-safety special. The programme focused on people working in local housing authorities and environmental health departments who try to ensure such tragedies remain rare, and ran the gamut of potential causes. “Most council tenants keep everything in good order,” said housing officer Ian Watson. “Others … have different lifestyles, shall we say?” One of these was 87-year-old Ally, who though (periodically) charming, lives in the kind of squalor that presents a fire risk to himself and everyone else in his block. Ian arranges another massive clean-up of Ally’s flat, but soon after there is, indeed, a fire. Ally is found on the floor, cuddling his dog, but survives. And denies any of it happened. His granddaughter promises additional support and he avoids eviction.
We see fire safety officers in other areas talk to more receptive owners and tenants about what they can do to make their flats safer, and we see housing inspectors gaze in disbelief at various electrical setups in overcrowded homes owned by landlords happy to trade the risk of death for marginally greater profits. In St Helen’s, Merseyside, we enter one of the 33% of private rental homes that fail the misleadingly genteelly named “decency standards”. There are inaudible fire alarms, no working smoke detectors, and an unchecked gas cooker stands between the tenant and his only exit.
In Sandwell in the West Midlands, housing official Ray Nichols enters a home designed for one family in which four are packed. It is full of portable heaters, loose sockets, exposed wiring and children. “The alternative is homelessness,” says Allwright who, within the limits of the format, is always keen to point out the failures in the wider system that make all this possible. “That’s why they’re accepting it … it’s a home. To kids that don’t know any different.” Similarly, Watson wonders out loud where he is going to find help for Ally, and as Allwright and another inspector wander in disbelief around a rotting estate, the presenter speaks – unexpectedly lyrically – for viewers when he exclaims about the landlord’s lack of responsibility “for all these souls”.
The penultimate episode of the fly-on-the-wall documentary Ambulance (BBC1) continued to follow another of the services battling against almighty odds to keep us safe. Paramedics Sham and Nina climbed in through the window of the home of a 97-year-old man who had fallen and whose 94-year-old wife couldn’t reach the door’s top bolts to let them in. Later, Nina holds the hand of a man too ill with prostate cancer and dementia to speak while she and Sham assess him for sepsis. “Squeeze my hand if you feel fed up … That was a big squeeze.” Another crew, Mike and Dave, patch up a photographer who has split his head open on a railway track (“Sorry for all the palaver”) and then are called to a young man who has been sectioned for threatening to kill himself and whose aggression barely covers his fear and desperation. “I can never sleep!” he says. “What I need is impossible … I want my dad. Why isn’t he here?” It is clear he literally does not know what to do with himself. They suspect he has overdosed on some tablets, so they take him to A&E. Whether the doctors will know what to do with him thereafter is a question left unanswered.
Elsewhere, Daniel almost breaks your heart. Nina has been to this chronic alcoholic’s house before. This time he has also taken paracetamol (“To give me peace of mind”) and refuses to go to hospital. “It’s a horrible death, Daniel,” says Nina.
“I don’t mind,” he says. Only when Daniel’s brother Simon turns up does he become distressed. “I respect him,” he cries softly. “I don’t want him to see me how I am … to see I’m hurt. And I am hurt.” Both brothers started drinking in their teens, in response to life with a father who “would beat you for anything”. Simon is 57 and has been sober for five years. Nina sits with Daniel in the ambulance and sighs. “I wish I could wave a magic wand.” “You can’t, sweetheart,” says Daniel. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really am.” In between, they wait for beds to come free and search for a patch of the threadbare web of alternative services that will bear the weight of a patient’s non-medical problems. Who will take responsibility for all these souls?
