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You and Yours: Future of the High Street and Accrington Stanley

Future of the High Street and Accrington Stanley

26/03/2015

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Future of the High Street and Accrington Stanley

The future of the high street, A1 National Van Hire and recycling in prison.

The Future High Street Summit, Norman Lamb on mental health care, recycling in Forest Bank Prison, A1 Van Hire, customer service online and Accrington Stanley and the Red Knights.

Next week the NHS will begin to implement the first standardised waiting times for mental health care. The government believes this is the best way to achieve what's called "parity of esteem" - giving mental health patients the same set waiting times as patients with physical illness. One target is this: that by April 2016, 75% of people referred for a talking therapy will begin treatment within 6 weeks. We spoke to Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat Minister for Care - and pointed out that they're nearly there with that target already. 

We report at lot on this programme about the decline of the high street. It suffered during the recession and lots of shops have continued to close because we're all buying stuff online. One way of improving a town centre is to get businesses to say what they want in their high street and get them to pay for it. Samantha Fenwick reports from the Future High Street Summit in Nottingham. 

A businessman agreed to have nothing to do with any sort of vehicle rental business for the next three years. Hammond Kumar made the promise to a court. It effectively means he's banned from working in the van hire trade until 2018. Mr Kumar's companies featured on You & Yours in 2010, 2012 & 2013. Each time the story was the same. His businesses were holding on to money they had no right to keep. Mark Worrall from Birmingham describes what happened to him. He'd gone to Mr Kumar's company - A1 National Van Hire.

We're generating a lot of computer waste these days. The vast majority of companies and households use them now - desktop PCs, tablets and mobile phones. Some computer recycling is done here in the UK and in other parts of Europe. But some ends up in poorer countries where labour is cheap. We've reported from China where people burn old circuit boards by the roadside, making a lot of poisonous fumes. Part of the problem is that doing it properly costs a lot of money. But a partnership between a prison, a charity and an IT disposal company, Tier 1 has found an ethical, and profitable way to recycle computers. The workshops at Forest Bank Prison in Greater Manchester have just won a national award. They let Winifred Robinson in to have a look around.

BT has just announced that it will return to the UK's consumer mobile phone market with a range of 4G subscriptions. Its cheapest offer is priced at a discounted rate of £5 a month for existing BT broadband customers. And O2, Britain's second-largest mobile operator, has been sold to the owner of rival operator Three, for £10.25bn, giving them 40pc share of the market. But how good is this for the consumer?

With designer furniture at bargain prices, it's no surprise that members-only online store Achica is very popular. But not all customers are getting what they bargained for. Kylie Blackham from Cheshire is one unhappy customer.

And why do Accrington Stanley Football Club need 250 Red Knights?

Producer: Maire Devine
Editor: Chas Watkin.

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