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NHS delays, Adaptive fashion, Communal heating

Cancelled hospital appointments, creating fashionable clothes for disabled people, plus hundreds of thousands of people in blocks of flats get hit by crippling energy costs.

New figures out today demonstrate the pressures facing the NHS and the effect it's having on patients. Two in three people with hospital appointments are having them delayed or cancelled. Nearly half of all NHS patients say their health and care needs have not been met. The figures covering the last six months come from The Patients Association, a charity campaigning for improvements in health and social care. It surveyed one thousand people and nearly half said they were struggling to get hospital, GP and dental appointments.

We hear from two women trying to create beautiful, fashionable clothes for disabled people. Faduma Farrah found she was cut off from her love of fashion when she became a wheelchair user. Not many clothes would fit, she couldn't get them on without help and they weren't comfortable. She decided to put her own money into a design competition and chose a winner, Harriet Eccleston. Both women did a show together at the London Fashion Week, and now they're going out to brands and manufacturers to create a range.

We report on how hundreds of thousands of people living in blocks of flats are already being hit by crippling energy costs. Their apartments are supplied by heat networks which use a central boiler to bring heat and hot water to their homes. Around 500,000 people in the UK have them and because they're classed as commercial rather than domestic customers, they're not protected by the energy price cap. Heat networks are a key part of the Government's strategy to provide homes with low cost, low carbon energy to reach net zero carbon emissions. We speak to Lisa Gregory from Ginger Energy and Stephen Knight from The Heat Trust.

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Tara Holmes

Available now

39 minutes

Broadcast

  • Wed 26 Jan 2022 12:18

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