File on 4

By BBC Radio 4

Society & Culture

What's File on 4 about?

Award-winning current affairs documentary series investigating major issues at home and abroad

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File on 4 episodes:

05.22.2024
Detained and Restrained: Britain's Vulnerable Kids
The most senior family court judge in England has described the growing use of Deprivation of Liberty orders for vulnerable children as a 'crisis.' File on 4 hears from young people who were held under the order supposedly for...
05.21.2024
Long Covid: Mind Over Matter?
There are some two million people with long Covid in the UK - and most of them - around one and a half million - have symptoms that interfere with day to day activities. Fatigue, breathlessness, heart palpitations and severe...
05.14.2024
Teams and Regimes: Sportswashing in Football
Manchester City are dominating English football, with a trophy cabinet full of silverware. The club’s success has been bankrolled by money from Abu Dhabi. Now Newcastle United have followed in their wake, with backing from a Saudi consortium transforming a...
04.30.2024
Caught on Camera: The special school staff who abused kids
Three years ago, dozens of memory sticks were discovered in a sealed box at a school for children with special educational needs. There was 500 hours of footage which showed children being held in so-called 'calming rooms.' The videos showed...
04.16.2024
Lasting Legacy: What went wrong at a Hull funeral home?
The discovery of 35 bodies and an unknown quantity of unidentified human ashes at a Hull funeral home has become one of the most harrowing investigations in the history of Humberside Police. Linsey Smith investigates what went wrong and hears...
04.09.2024
Slimming Groups and Eating Disorders
Slimming World is the leading diet organisation in the UK. It has 700,000 members and, at a time when obesity is spiralling in the UK, it has helped millions lose weight. It has contracts with the NHS and local government....
04.02.2024
Degraded by Deepfakes
Jodie had everything - a good job, great friends and a busy social life. But her world was turned upside down when she was targeted by an online abuser who posted pornographic deepfakes of her online. Initially turned away by...
03.19.2024
No Place to Call Home
As the cost of living crisis continues to increase the strain on families, a record 142,000 children in England are homeless and living in what should be short term temporary accommodation. Children are being consigned to B&Bs; and hotels, former office...
03.12.2024
Investigating Employee Assistance Programmes
‘Employee Assistance Programmes’ - almost 25 million workers in the UK have access to one through their employer. They’re designed to help people deal with personal problems that might affect their performance at work by offering advice, support or counselling...
03.05.2024
The Trouble with Parenting
"Maria" ended up in A and E after being assaulted by her 11-year-old child. There’s nothing unusual about children being rude or sometimes abusive to their parents, particularly when they’re adolescents. But some parents are attacked and abused by their...
02.27.2024
A Coal Town Mystery
It’s a scandal that went uncovered for 30 years. Body parts and organs from former workers in the nuclear industry were systematically removed for research. But the families of those former workers were never told. The truth only came to...
02.20.2024
When Abortion is a Crime
The case of Carla Foster made headlines last year after the mother-of-three was initially sentenced to two years in prison for taking abortion pills after the legal cut-off. Since then, several other women have appeared in English courts accused of...
02.02.2024
A Plan to Kill - The Murder of Brianna Ghey
File on 4 tells the story behind the brutal killing of schoolgirl Brianna Ghey. She was attacked in a park near Warrington in Cheshire on a Saturday afternoon in February 2023. Two teenagers - Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe -...
01.30.2024
Ireland's Far Right Riot
When three young children and their carer were stabbed outside a school in Dublin, protests against immigration began, fuelled by rumours on social media. A night of rioting then followed, with shops looted, vehicles set alight, and police attacked. The...
01.22.2024
Bailiffs Behaving Badly
Councils in England and Wales are owed half a billion pounds - mainly in uncollected taxes and fines; money that's needed for essential services. Now, more and more, many are turning to bailiffs to recover the money. File on 4...
01.15.2024
Lethal Weapons: The Blank-Firing Guns Converted to Kill
Handguns which fire blanks are being converted into deadly weapons by criminals. File on 4 has discovered they're now being used more often than real handguns. Adrian Goldberg meets victims of gun crime and explores the UK's trade in...
01.11.2024
Escaping Anna
A group of women turned to a private specialist eating disorder clinic in Bath hoping they would receive life-changing treatment. They say their mental and physical health deteriorated while the psychologist in charge subjected them to psychological abuse. The...
01.09.2024
Second Class Citizens: The Post Office IT Scandal
The story of the Post Office IT scandal has gained new momentum in the wake of an ITV dramatisation about how dozens of subpostmasters were falsely accused of theft and fraud and hauled through the courts. After 20 years, campaigners...
01.03.2024
Doctor of Deception
For more than twenty years, Zholia Alemi worked as a psychiatrist for the NHS. She practiced the length and breadth of the country, treating vulnerable patients with dementia, learning disabilities and mental illness. And then she was caught in a...
12.20.2023
The Murder of Brianna Ghey - A File On 4 special
File on 4 tells the story behind the brutal killing of 16-year-old transgender schoolgirl Brianna Ghey. She was attacked in a park near Warrington in Cheshire on a Saturday afternoon in February 2023. Two teenagers, who were obsessed with murder...
12.19.2023
Uninsurable Planet
Felicity Hannah explores how climate change is leaving communities 'uninsurable' because of the rising risk of them being hit by extreme weather events. She speaks to one businessman living in 'Hurricane Alley' in Louisiana, who has seen his premiums rise...
12.12.2023
Shoplifting and organised crime
File on 4 reveals how hundreds of vulnerable women and children are being trafficked to the UK by organised crime gangs to work as shoplifters. The victims are forced to live in squalor in overcrowded houses in England, Scotland and...
12.05.2023
Whistling in the Wind: The NHS doctors sacked after raising concerns
Lucy Letby was allowed to continue working with new-born babies despite her colleagues raising concerns about her for months. Her conviction highlighted how NHS executives put the reputation of the Countess of Chester NHS Trust ahead of patient safety. But...
11.28.2023
Artificial Intelligence: The Criminal Threat
Artificial intelligence, or AI, makes it possible for machines to learn - and in the future it will perform many tasks now done by humans. But are criminals and bad actors ahead of the curve? AI is already being used...
11.21.2023
Lost in Translation
When people who don't speak English, including refugees arriving in the UK after fleeing war, they are entitled to receive the support of interpreters when dealing with public sector organisations. The service provides a lifeline for some of society's most...
11.07.2023
Disability and the Adult Industry
As a young person, Ellen Macleod wasn’t sure whether her disabilities would mean she could never have sex so she turned to the internet. There she found porn featuring disabled adults, but those films threw up dark questions around consent,...
10.24.2023
The Anatomy of a Fraud
File on 4 highlights one fraud phone call, in order to shine a light on how scammers work. A man rings a company pretending to be from the bank. How does he persuade a victim he is legitimate?...
10.17.2023
Wilko Town
The collapse of retail giant Wilko in September left 12,500 people out of work across the UK. No area has been harder hit by the redundancies than the Nottinghamshire town of Worksop, where Wilko employed 1,200 people at its...
10.10.2023
Bankrupt Birmingham
A perfect storm of equal pay claims and a huge overspend on an IT project has brought Europe’s largest local authority to its knees. But how did Birmingham go from the triumph of hosting the Commonwealth Games to financial ruin...
10.02.2023
Security Threat: Sham training courses risk public safety
The Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017 left 22 people dead and more than a thousand injured. The subsequent inquiry found security arrangements were lacking with some security staff admitting they were untrained in vital procedures. File on 4 goes...
09.11.2023
The Dark Side of Ballet
Hayley Hassall investigates accusations of bullying and body-shaming at some of the UK’s elite ballet schools. File on 4 and Panorama have spoken to more than 50 ex-students of the Royal Ballet School and Elmhurst Ballet School who attended between...
09.08.2023
The Crooked House
The Crooked House: One summer’s night the Crooked House, known as Britain’s wonkiest pub, caught fire. Less than 48 hours later the ruins were knocked to the ground, completely destroying an iconic symbol of the Black Country. The pub gained...
08.29.2023
A Different Class: Excluded kids lured into crime
After an inevitable decline during the pandemic, school exclusions are again on the increase. There are concerns that behaviour is worse because, post pandemic, children can’t regulate their behaviour in the classroom. So what happens to those who are kicked...
08.22.2023
Jon Holmes, Generation Shame
Last year a Parliamentary Report concluded that between 1949 and 1976, around 185,000 babies of unmarried mothers were put up for adoption in England and Wales, many of these by force. For File on Four, The Skewer’s Jon...
07.25.2023
Modern Slavery in the Care Sector
With the number of potential modern slavery cases in England and Wales at a record level, File on 4 investigates how vulnerable people are being targeted and exploited by organised crime groups for cheap labour. Police estimate that there are...
07.18.2023
The Epilepsy Drug Scandal
It’s been called a bigger scandal than Thalidomide. The drug sodium valproate is estimated to have harmed 20,000 children in the UK. It’s mainly used to treat epilepsy and other conditions such as bipolar disorder. But taking the drug...
07.11.2023
The GP Crisis
The morning rush in a doctor’s surgery usually begins around 8am, before the doors even open, as patients ring up to try and get a precious appointment. But why is it so hard to get to see a GP, and...
06.26.2023
The Organ Harvesters
File on 4 tells the story of a young street trader from Lagos who revealed a conspiracy that took down one of Nigeria’s most powerful politicians. The young man was tested, trafficked and tricked into a plot to take his...
06.13.2023
Scout's Honour?
Nearly half a million young people in the UK are members of the Scout Association. The organisation employs 143,000 adult volunteers and leads the way in nurturing a love of the outdoors and providing practical skills which will allow members...
06.06.2023
Living with Antisocial Behaviour
Earlier this year, the government announced their new plan to stamp out antisocial behaviour across England and Wales. Hot spot policing and what they call ‘immediate justice’ will be trialled in towns and cities in an attempt to curb...
05.23.2023
Sex Attacks in Hospitals
When you go to hospital you expect to be safe. But File on 4 has discovered that many patients and staff who are victims of sex attacks say not enough is done to deal with the perpetrators - and hospital...
05.16.2023
Affirmative Action on Trial
For 40 years, affirmative action policies were created in the United States to address a lack of women and people of colour in the workplace and at university. They have been questioned before, and are now under scrutiny once again...
05.09.2023
Sex education: Too much too young?
File on 4 investigates claims that children are being taught graphic and age-inappropriate material as part of their Relationship and Sex Education. The government has brought forward a review into how sex education is taught in schools in England following...
05.02.2023
Oiling Putin’s War?
File on 4 investigates the secretive world of oil shipping, dark fleets and camouflaged cargos. Sanctions were supposed to hit President Putin in the pocket, weakening his military capabilities. But have they simply created new markets and new...
04.11.2023
Police Complaints: A Crisis of Confidence
Britain’s biggest police force says there are hundreds of rogue officers amongst its ranks. It’s now The Met’s job to root them out, with dozens of staff diverted away from organised crime and counter-terrorism units to work in its professional...
04.04.2023
Probation in peril
The Probation Service is meant to protect the public by monitoring released prisoners and offenders on community sentences - helping them to stay out of trouble and rebuild their lives. But a series of catastrophic failures have led to...
03.21.2023
Rental Health: The Social Housing Perfect Storm?
Social housing providers say they are under more financial pressure than ever before. The sector has warned long-term Government funding cuts and the cost of improving homes to meet new fire safety laws, have now been compounded by high inflation,...
03.15.2023
Punished for being mentally ill
Suicide or attempted suicide is not a criminal offence. But, as Adrian Goldberg discovers, mentally ill people are still being punished for attempts to take their own lives. They can be charged with 'intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance,'...
03.07.2023
Missing Migrant Children
200 children have gone missing from hotels used by the Home Office to temporarily house lone asylum seekers. File on 4 investigates what’s being done to find them and why so many have disappeared. Reporter: Livvy Haydock Producer: Kate West Researcher: Nathan...
02.28.2023
Looking for Levi
Levi Davis - a 24-year-old rugby player and X-Factor star went missing in Barcelona at the end of October last year. He’s not been seen or heard from since. Four months on, File on 4 pieces together his last known...

What's File on 4 about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

File on 4 episodes:

Detained and Restrained: Britain's Vulnerable Kids

Long Covid: Mind Over Matter?

Teams and Regimes: Sportswashing in Football

Caught on Camera: The special school staff who abused kids

Lasting Legacy: What went wrong at a Hull funeral home?

Slimming Groups and Eating Disorders

Degraded by Deepfakes

No Place to Call Home

Investigating Employee Assistance Programmes

The Trouble with Parenting

A Coal Town Mystery

When Abortion is a Crime

A Plan to Kill - The Murder of Brianna Ghey

Ireland's Far Right Riot

Bailiffs Behaving Badly

Lethal Weapons: The Blank-Firing Guns Converted to Kill

Escaping Anna

Second Class Citizens: The Post Office IT Scandal

Doctor of Deception

The Murder of Brianna Ghey - A File On 4 special

Uninsurable Planet

Shoplifting and organised crime

Whistling in the Wind: The NHS doctors sacked after raising concerns

Artificial Intelligence: The Criminal Threat

Lost in Translation

Disability and the Adult Industry

The Anatomy of a Fraud

Wilko Town

Bankrupt Birmingham

Security Threat: Sham training courses risk public safety

The Dark Side of Ballet

The Crooked House

A Different Class: Excluded kids lured into crime

Jon Holmes, Generation Shame

Modern Slavery in the Care Sector

The Epilepsy Drug Scandal

The GP Crisis

The Organ Harvesters

Scout's Honour?

Living with Antisocial Behaviour

Sex Attacks in Hospitals

Affirmative Action on Trial

Sex education: Too much too young?

Oiling Putin’s War?

Police Complaints: A Crisis of Confidence

Probation in peril

Rental Health: The Social Housing Perfect Storm?

Punished for being mentally ill

Missing Migrant Children

Looking for Levi

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