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One producer, one randomly generated postcode, and the search for an unheard story.

One producer, one randomly generated postcode, and an unheard story unfolding in a corner of Britain we wouldn't otherwise know about.

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The Patch: City of London, St Paul's

City of London, St Paul's

BBC Radio 4 - The Patch, City of London, St Paul's

Lockdown with the homeless community in one of the wealthiest postcodes in Britain.

The random postcode generator takes Producer Polly Weston to meet the homeless community in one of the wealthiest postcodes in Britain, during lockdown.

The random generator throws up EC4V 5, a postcode like no other – the City of London. The patch covers a few streets in a corner of the square mile – in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Most people know the City as the financial capital of the world, but few understand how it works. It has its own government which predates parliament and is thought to be the oldest democracy in the world – the City of London Corporation. It has its own police force and it has more money than most local authorities can dream of – billions in three separate pots. While  400,000 people commute to the square mile for work, there are very few residents – and the Corporation doesn't have much social housing in the City. But it also has a sizable homeless population.

Online, the first thing Polly spots is a beautiful old building covered in Latin. Formerly a choir school for the Cathedral, it has been a youth hostel for the past fifty years. When coronavirus struck, the City of London Corporation realised they owned the building. They offered rooms here to 19 of the hardest to reach individuals on the City’s streets and brought in a team to run it.

There are people staying in the hostel who have refused help for more than fifteen or twenty years. Some have seen it as a battle – they felt the Corporation just wanted them out, and what’s worse, they didn’t trust the outreach workers commissioned by the City to help. The hostel seems to have changed things – no one has gone back on the streets, many are taking up support from outreach workers, and some are on lists for permanent accommodation for the first time ever.

So why does this seem to have worked? What has been going wrong for all these years? And what happens next?

Produced/Presented by Polly Weston

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