Simon Cox investigates a series of failures in a mental health trust. Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust was formed last year from two former trusts. It provides mental health and community services to patients. Some of whom say there are serious problems at the trust. Some say they don't feel safe on wards, there have been a series of suicides and now there are serious new allegations emerging. The trust says safety is its top priority and its making progress and improving. But t...
Mar 20, 2018•37 min
The collapse of the construction giant Carillion has focused attention on the contracts it had with the Government, one of which involved cleaning, landscaping and maintenance at 50 prisons in the south of England. The prison contract came into effect in 2015, but within months major problems started to emerge, as prisoners, staff and inspectors reported long delays in getting cells, windows and toilets repaired. The Ministry of Justice acknowledged that Carillion was under-performing and ordere...
Mar 13, 2018•37 min
As controversy rages around whether the Bitcoin bubble is about to burst, File on 4 investigates the mystery of the missing Bitcoin billions. In 2014 one of the world's biggest Bitcoin exchanges - Mt Gox - suddenly stopped trading and filed for bankruptcy. It then announced that thousands of Bitcoins with a value of almost half a billion pounds had gone missing, leaving customers out of pocket and wondering what had gone on. For a while that remained a mystery, but recently US investigators have...
Mar 07, 2018•37 min
The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have been accused of failing to disclose important information in several recent high profile sexual assault cases. But Allan Urry asks if the current disquiet about disclosure should also extend to the Magistrates' Courts where almost all criminal cases start off. Some defence lawyers say evidence that could be helpful to their clients' cases is being with-held and are they're concerned that justice isn't always being served. Reporter: Allan Urry Pro...
Feb 27, 2018•38 min
Can the NHS afford to run and replace its ageing hospitals? Many hospitals are crumbling and have huge backlogs of required maintenance work. It affects patients - sometimes life-saving operations are being cancelled due to lack of capacity - or practical problems such as leaks or faulty air conditioning. Money from capital budgets has been used to plug gaps in day to day spending - meaning an ever growing black hole of building work is backing up. So where to get the money? The Government is ad...
Feb 20, 2018•37 min
The homeless being denied end of life care. File on 4 hears the stories of the terminally ill left to die in hostels and on the street. An estimated 4751 people will sleep rough tonight in England. Many are seriously, even terminally ill. If you're living on the streets, who will care for you when the end comes? File on 4 hears from homeless people living with life threatening illness, who can't find a regular bed for the night, let alone a place where their medical needs can be met. A bed in a ...
Feb 13, 2018•37 min
UK companies are being used to launder dirty money as new transparency rules are flouted. One, registered in a Hertfordshire commuter town, helped the circle of Ukraine's disgraced ex-president profit from last year's Eurovision Song Contest, a File on 4 investigation has found. Billions of pounds of dirty money is alleged to have passed through opaque UK companies in recent years, over 100 of them registered at the same Potters Bar address. Tim Whewell follows the trail of one company linked to...
Feb 06, 2018•38 min
There were a record 3,744 drug related deaths in England and Wales last year. While many were linked to street drugs such as heroin, a growing number also involve prescription medicines such as benzodiazepines and Fentanyl. Fentanyl addiction has swept across North America where the drug and other synthetic opioids have been blamed for thousands of deaths. It hit the headlines here when it was linked to a spike in fatalities in certain parts of the UK after being mixed with heroin. Allan Urry tr...
Jan 30, 2018•37 min
There are more than half a million people living in sheltered housing, accommodation that offers additional support to the elderly, disabled or vulnerable. But currently, in England, these schemes aren't overseen by the independent regulator of health and social care the Care Quality Commission and councils aren't required to record cases of abuse and neglect in sheltered housing. It is leading to growing concerns that many vulnerable residents are hidden away and left to suffer without the auth...
Jan 23, 2018•37 min
File on 4 exposes a multi-million pound global trade in fake diplomas. A complex network of online universities sells degrees, doctorates and professional qualifications - for a price. Some of the buyers have gone on to trade on these credentials, including them on their CVs and gaining jobs in public life. Others, after making an initial purchase, were blackmailed by the sellers, who threatened to expose them unless they paid out huge additional sums of money. Despite criminal investigations in...
Jan 19, 2018•37 min
The head of counter terrorism Assistant Commander Mark Rowley has warned the extreme right wing pose a growing threat in the UK. He told the Home Affairs select committee last month that right wing issues had increased in the last two years which was a real concern, although Islamic extremism remained the main threat. Last month, two men alleged to be members of National Action - a banned extreme far right group - were charged in connection with an alleged plot to kill an MP. Adrian Goldberg inv...
Nov 14, 2017•37 min
What does the leak of files from offshore law firm Appleby reveal about how money is transferred out of the developing world and into the pockets of the rich? Using leaked documents obtained by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and working with the Consortium of Investigative Journalists, File on 4 delves into the records to find out how the rich use secretive tax regimes and corporate structures to divert money via the offshore jurisdiction of Mauritius. Producer: Anna Meisel Reporter: Davi...
Nov 07, 2017•38 min
There a risk we won't get new nuclear hooked up to the grid in time to back up renewable energy like wind power. There's an aim to generate 16GWe of new nuclear power by 2030. But experts doubt that's a realistic prospect, with Hinkley Point C years late, and questions over whether investors will risk capital on a proposed plant in Cumbria. And as plans for the future of nuclear power evolve, the legacy of the past also needs to be dealt with. The government's served notice on a £6billion contra...
Oct 31, 2017•37 min
Drug dealers from big cities are exploiting thousands of teenagers to traffic Class A drugs to smaller rural towns in what's known as County Lines. Children - some as young as 9 -are being used as runners to move drugs and cash from cities like London and Manchester hundreds of miles away to other areas of the UK. It's a massive problem which until recently was being ignored. File on 4 hears from some of the exploited young people who spent their teens travelling around the UK for months at a ti...
Oct 24, 2017•37 min
Fifteen years ago, promising young footballer Kevin Nunes was shot dead on a country lane in Staffordshire. Five men were convicted of his killing, and jailed for life. But just four years later, their convictions were quashed, following concerns about the way police handled a key prosecution witness. The Court of Appeal Judge said it appeared to be "a serious perversion of the course of justice," and an investigation was launched into misconduct claims against four of the UK's most senior offic...
Oct 17, 2017•37 min
How well do NHS hospitals look after their elderly patients? Allan Urry investigates concerns about a lack of basic care. Is it proving fatal for some? Why are bedsores, repeated falls, malnutrition and dehydration still featuring among the complaints of families who've lost loved ones? The programme also assesses how well the NHS responds when mistakes are made. Reporter: Allan Urry Producer: Nicola Dowling.
Oct 10, 2017•37 min
Manveen Rana uncovers hate speech, sectarianism and even support for Jihad in some of Britain's Urdu language newspapers, radio stations and TV channels. While we are often told the internet and social media have accelerated the fermentation of extremist ideas, File on 4 reveals how widely-available 'old media' is also disseminating sectarian and anti-Semitic messages, as well as support for Pakistani militant groups, through newspapers and TV channels accessible in Muslim communities across the...
Oct 03, 2017•37 min
Adoption can transform lives. Today, most children available for adoption have had a difficult start. Removed from birth parents and taken into care, many have experienced abuse and neglect which can leave them with complex mental health and/or developmental needs. Adoption can provide them with stable and loving homes. But what happens when the challenges the adoptive family faces become overwhelming? And is there enough support available to the families who give a home to some of the most vuln...
Sep 26, 2017•37 min
The ethos of the paralympic movement is fair and equal competition. At its heart is the classification system designed to ensure people of equal impairment compete against each other. The International Paralympic Committee has warned that some athletes are exaggerating their disability - known as intentional misrepresentation - in order to get into a more favourable class. It said this was in "grave danger of undermining the credibility of the sport." File on 4 has spoken to athletes, parents an...
Sep 20, 2017•37 min
Over many generations the Catholic church provided shelter and care for vulnerable children whose families had been broken by death or poverty. But many of those who grew up in these orphanages claim the care they offered amounted to years of serious beatings and emotional abuse which scarred them for life. File on 4 investigates one such former institution, Smyllum Park in Lanark, uncovering new evidence of alleged abuse and raising serious questions about child deaths at the orphanage, before ...
Sep 12, 2017•37 min
What happens when your teenage son is targeted by abusers? File on 4 tells one family's story of fighting the authorities to get support and justice after a 13 year old boy was aggressively groomed by scores of men, aged from their 20s to their 50s. It is a shocking story of opportunities missed, meaning the boy endured assaults by multiple men for years. We look at the impact of that sustained abuse on him and his parents, who were desperately trying to shield him from harm. He says he was dism...
Jul 18, 2017•37 min
Volkswagen Group faced a 15 billion fine after the US environmental protection agency found it had fitted cars with software designed to cheat official pollution tests. Their engines seemed clean in laboratory tests; on the road they emitted much higher levels of nitrogen oxide gas which can damage our health. Although 8.5 million VW engines in Europe were fitted with the same so-called 'defeat devices', no EU state has yet to take any action against the manufacturer. File on 4 tells the story o...
Jul 11, 2017•37 min
In 2015, reporter Adrian Goldberg investigated the state of England's mental health provision and measured the promise of equal treatment for psychiatric patients against the reality on the wards of psychiatric hospitals and in the community. The notion of "parity of esteem" has been enshrined in law in 2012, and has been promoted by successive Prime Ministers, but was found in many areas to be sadly lacking. So, two years on what progress has been made? And what more needs to be done to help pa...
Jul 05, 2017•37 min
Around 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis each year. The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine was introduced nearly a hundred years ago, but is only partially effective against the bacterium that causes TB. With so many infected and the BCG vaccine only 60% effective, a race is on to develop a better way of preventing TB. Hundreds of millions of public and philanthropic money has been poured into this quest. For researchers, the competition for this pot of money is fierce. A new vaccine ...
Jun 30, 2017•37 min
File on 4 investigates claims that parents whose children suffer from a crippling illness that leaves them sick and permanently exhausted have been falsely accused of child abuse. Parents of children with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) reveal how they have been investigated and referred for child protection measures on suspicion of a rare form of child abuse known as Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII). FII, also sometimes known as Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, is extremely rare and occurs whe...
Jun 27, 2017•37 min
The toxic legacy of Britain's industrial heritage lies festering beneath our feet in 20 thousand former landfill sites. But now Government has ended the system of grants to local authorities to help pay for their clean up, and developers are moving in to build housing. How safe are these places, and should people be concerned about living on top of them? Many of these sites were commissioned long before safety and environmental regulations were introduced so nobody knows what's buried undergroun...
Jun 20, 2017•37 min
File on 4 reveals the true scale of child sexual grooming and abuse online and asks whether social media companies are doing enough to prevent paedophiles from targeting children. The investigation follows the rape and murder of 15-year-old Kayleigh Haywood from Leicestershire who was groomed online before meeting her killer in person. File on 4 reveals the number of children being groomed online and who are subsequently abused is increasing. Child abuse experts say some social media platforms h...
Jun 13, 2017•37 min
Painkillers in sport: a form of legal doping or an excessive reliance on medication that puts the long-term health of athletes in jeopardy? With evidence of widespread use of over the counter anti-inflammatories to support performance or recovery at amateur level, File on 4 looks asks if there is enough regulation of painkilling drugs in sport across the ranks. About half of players competing at the past three World Cups routinely took non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, accord...
May 30, 2017•37 min
Headlines involving abuse in care homes normally centre on allegations against staff, but is aggression among residents being overlooked? With homes increasingly taking care of those with more complex needs such as dementia and other mental health disorders, are staff able to cope with some who have challenging behaviour? File on 4 has found evidence that some residents are suffering serious assaults by others living in the same home. Some have died from their injuries. Allan Urry investigates t...
May 23, 2017•37 min
From the Hillsborough Inquest to Plebgate, from the revelations about undercover officers to the shooting of Mark Duggan, the last few years have been as controversial as any in the history of British policing. The government has introduced a range of new measures to try and make the police service more accountable. These have included the strengthening of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, measures to crack down on officers retiring when under investigation, and a new openness surrou...
May 16, 2017•37 min
