Stolen Business; Pub Noise; Travel Agents

Available for over a year

We investigate how small businesses are being cloned by scammers who use adverts on Facebook to reach users around the world and rip them off. We hear from Robin Wright, the owner of a company that makes wire sculptures of fairies and posts photographs of them online. His photos have been stolen and used in fake adverts, supposedly selling the sculptures as garden decorations. Campaigners say more people will fall victim to similar scams unless something is done about it. With lockdown easing, complaints about noise are rising again as normal life starts to resume. According to the latest figures from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, there were nearly 132,000 noise complaints between 2019 and 2020. Those figures represent just 36 percent of councils in England who responded to a data request, so the real picture is likely to be much worse. We hear from a listener in Lambeth in London who says he's been badly affected by noise coming from a pub beer garden next to his garden. We also hear what options are available when informal efforts to find a resolution fail. We examine new figures on the number of travel agents on the brink of collapse because of the pandemic. Our reporter Samantha Fenwick is live in St Helens in Merseyside and has the very latest. Presenter: Winifred Robinson Producer: Tara Holmes