5 Live Investigates

5 Live Investigates is a BBC 5 Live investigations programme presented by Adrian Goldberg, and its method is easy to recognise. It starts with a person. A couple who spent £325,000 on a brand-new house found it still looking like a building site two years later; they moved in, then had to move out again, which Goldberg dryly calls the 'housing hokey-cokey'. Only then does the story widen, to the programme's finding that nine out of ten homeowners report faults on moving in, and to the idea of holding back part of a builder's money in a side account so repairs can be paid for quickly. One household, then a pattern, then a possible fix. The tower block episode follows the same path under heavier circumstances. Set after the Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people, it deals with safety fears over cladding and materials on apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and nursing homes. The case of an owner named Prasad, who lacks the right certificates, sits beside lenders' rejection letters and a government reply, relayed in plain terms, that mortgage decisions are commercial matters for lenders. Dr Jonathan Evans is then asked how residents who bought or rent in good faith can know what is on the outside of their building. The programme also gathers its own evidence. For 'Online Reviews for Sale', reporter Dan Box paid £1.99 for a glowing Trustpilot review of himself that he wrote word for word, and Goldberg stayed in a Blackpool hotel that reviewers call one of the worst in town, to ask whether negative posts are always fair. A listener in Edinburgh got in touch about a car hire manager who offered to waive a fee in return for a five-star Google review. The range goes well beyond consumer rights. The revenge porn episode starts from a gap: a law has existed since 2015 and reports have risen sharply, yet the number of offenders charged has gone down. In the same episode a guest explains how Facebook fingerprints reported images so they cannot be re-uploaded. The Democratic Football Lads Alliance, which calls itself anti-extremist, is heard in its own words, alongside critics who accuse it of being a front for the far right and Chris Allen of the Centre for Hate Studies at Leicester University. Another episode hears from people whose severe skin conditions damage their mental health, including Georgia Frost, who kept a diary for the programme, and asks why specialist help is so scarce. The tone is grave by default and warm toward the people involved, never breathless. Official statements are summarised plainly, and follow-up questions pin down what a failure means for the person living with it. For a first listen, 'The New House With 354 Faults' shows the case-to-pattern method most clearly, while 'Online Reviews for Sale' shows the programme testing a system for itself. A closing sign-off thanks the ordinary people who shared their stories over a run that began in 2010.