Spy plane used to find borough's beds in sheds

Spy plane used to find beds in sheds in Harrow's gardens

5:28pm Monday 3rd March 2014 in News By Bruce Thain

Spy plane technology has been used to map the borough and find more than 300 suspected cases of beds in sheds.

Harrow Borough Council employed the use of the plane to detect illegal developments at the ends of gardens which are then rented out.

Before the plane went up planning officers estimated there were 75 cases of beds in sheds in Harrow.

Now there is a list of 319 potential cases after the evening flight where the plane captured shots of the borough with a thermal imaging camera.

Yellow areas of colour in the images show buildings with uninsulated roofs which could possibly be one of the illegal structures.

Leader of the council Susan Hall said: The pressures of migration in London, fuelled by recent waves of new arrivals from Eastern Europe, are creating new stresses on local authorities that we just havent had to contend with before.

What was once thought even just 18 months ago to be a problem for the centre of big cities is now rippling out to the suburbs.

The beds in sheds phenomenon means there is a hidden community springing up in the back gardens of our cities in our borough alone the thermal pictures we receive suggest there are four times as many as we first suspected.

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Spy plane used to find borough's beds in sheds