File on 4 Investigates
News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 37 minutes
- Episodes
- 468
- Years Active
- 2010 - 2025
Off Track: Network Rail
Works behind schedule; costs going up; an inquiry into poor performance announced by the industry regulator. It's a depressingly familiar story on our railways. From brand new station escalators at a…
The Aid Business
The UK's £12 billion pound foreign aid budget is one of the few areas of Government spending protected from cuts. The commitment to spend 0.7% of Britain's gross national income on aid means at least…
Ticket to Hide
Sixty thousand people have crossed the Mediterranean and made it to Europe so far this year.
Frontex, the EU border agency, warns that between 500,000 and 1 million people - Eritreans, Syrians, Afghan…
Treating Stroke: The Doctors' Dilemma
Later this month the medicines regulator, the MHRA, is due to complete its review into the clot-busting drug Alteplase, the frontline treatment used in many cases of stroke. A number of experts in th…
Housing Blight?
With the urgent need for more housing, Britain's planning laws are under pressure like never before. Greenbelt land and even sites designated as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, are being earmark…
Abandoned to their Fate
Next month the National Audit Office is due to report on the outcomes for young people leaving care. There are claims that, under financial pressure, local authorities are pushing too many teenagers …
Minding the Gap: Mental Healthcare
Mental health services are facing a period of unprecedented change. The Department of Health has committed itself to reducing the disparity between spending on physical and mental illness, and a new …
Who Killed Emma?
Emma Caldwell was a young woman from a good home who developed an addiction to heroin after the death of her sister and then descended into street prostitution. When her body was found dumped in a di…
Targeting the Vulnerable
It's taken a long time to break through the culture of denial, but child sexual exploitation cases from Rochdale to Oxford have shown that grooming of children can happen in any community.
There seems…
Gun Control: Europe's Flooded Market
With Britain on heightened alert following Islamist shootings in Paris and Copenhagen, how well prepared are we to deal with a similar attack?
Allan Urry discovers how extremists in neighbouring Europ…
Sick of School
Is the pressure on teachers reaching crisis point? Record numbers are leaving the classroom and thousands of teachers recently responded to the Government's workload survey to say they were strugglin…
A Pensions Patchwork
In Canada, everything is big - including powerful pension funds such as the Ontario Teachers fund which owns half of Birmingham airport and other large projects around the world. It's all a far cry f…
No Place of Safety
Secure children's homes look after some of the country's most vulnerable youngsters. Largely run by local authorities, they provide safe accommodation for children placed on custody grounds or for we…
Insurance and Child Abuse
With a growing number of compensation claims arising from cases of historic sexual abuse and more recent high profile cases of sexual grooming, Tim Whewell investigates the key role which insurance c…
Islamic State: Looting for Terror
Satellite images reveal the extent to which sites of important historical interest have been looted in Syria. Some of these are in areas controlled by Islamic State where looters are believed to pay …
Asylum Seekers
Around 28 thousand people are claiming asylum in the UK. They're accommodated in some of the nation's most deprived areas while their cases are considered. Now, with numbers on the rise, some communi…
Where Have All the Nurses Gone?
Where have all the nurses gone? File on 4 looks at the reasons for the nursing shortage in the NHS in England and the cost of plugging the gaps at a time of peak demand. A decision four years ago to …
Benefit Sanctions
Benefit sanctions are supposed to be part of a system helping people back to work. But critics say they penalise the vulnerable and are among the reasons for the growing use of food banks. So how fai…
Prison Violence
With serious assaults at a record high, File on 4 investigates the growing tension within Britain's prisons.
In the first of a new series, BBC Home Affairs correspondent Danny Shaw meets recently rele…
Continuing Healthcare: The Secret Fund
Is demand for long term nursing about to tip NHS finances over the edge?
Under the system of "Continuing Healthcare" people with complex medical needs can claim the costs of nursing and medical help t…