you are watching bbc news. the headlines this hour: the government has cancelled a controversial agreement to provide extra ferries in case of a no—deal brexit. new allegations of sexual and racial harassment by former employees of the retail tycoon sir philip green are published in the telegraph. he denies any crime or misconduct. the number of young victims of knife crime admitted to hospitals in england has risen by more than 50% in the past five years. us officials say they've held three days of productive talks in north korea, to prepare for the second meeting between president trump and kimjong—un. thank you for your company. now on bbc news, its time for inside out and this week we re in the west midlands, reporting on birmingham's red light district 7 and whether it's time for a regulated zone where prostitution could be better controlled. tonight... for these residents, prostitution is becoming a real problem. this is not a red light area,

this is my home, it's not going to happen. you know, curb crawlers, if you do come to handsworth, we will deal with you. why tony's hoping he'll beat the downturn on the high street. i thought, there is no deli in wolverhampton, so therefore it stands a very good chance of being accepted quickly, and i was wrong. and have you ever tried raw milk? personally, i haven't, but apparently sales are on the up. a lot, lot creamier, and it is a nice treat for my husband, who was brought up on it. it's fresh, it's natural, and it's direct from source, isn't it, really? i'm ayo akinwolere and this is inside out west midlands. hello from wolverhampton. first tonight, most big cities have a red light zone. and in birmingham, families are demanding action to stop sex being sold on the streets. but will a police crackdown just move the problem on or is there a better way? trish adudu's been trying to find out. during the day, handsworth

in birmingham is a buzzing multi—cultural place. it's brimming with life and local businesses thrive. but at night, soho road has a slightly intimidating vibe and now sex workers have started appearing on the streets. prostitution has been something the police have been trying to deal with for decades and the law on prostitution is very complicated. prostitution isn't actually illegal if you work indoors and alone. but two women, that's a brothel. and if you work the streets, well, you're breaking the law and likely upsetting the locals too. i've got kids. i don't want my kids to be growing up in this kind of environment and this neighbourhood. so the police crack down, the women and their clients move on but always to somewhere else in the city. historically certainly areas such as balsall heath, the edgbaston areas of birmingham

and we're now seeing other emerging areas such as handsworth and the area around the soho road. in handsworth, they're targeting curb crawlers, not the women. the women are often victims themselves of crime or intimidation. but does it have to be like this? another city has a very different approach. we aren't talking about morality here, we're talking about real people's lives, we're talking about a pragmatic, practical and compassionate response to street sex work. different approaches, but one things certain — the buying and selling of sex is here to stay. it's not going to go out of fashion, everyone's going to want it. you're not going to stop it. it's a cold sunday night back in birmingham. the shops are open, the streets are busy and sex workers are already starting their shift. it doesn't surprise me because we've had reports probably seven months ago that it was happening during the day, so we put some additional policing in and that daylight activity has stopped.

when i say stopped, it's probably been displaced to probably later on in the evening. but the uniformed officers aren't alone. the local volunteer group, street watch, come out to help. they're local people who patrol the streets of the neighbourhood they know so well. it's overwhelming when you actually do come out and see what's happening. this is not a red light area, this is my home, it's not going to happen. curb crawlers, if you do come to handsworth, we will deal with you. like most big cities, birmingham has had problems with the sex trade for decades. during the 1990s, vice had a grip on balsall heath. it was like a no go zone, even the police would not come here. i remember once on this cornerjust here, a pregnant girl being beaten because she hadn't made enough money and, ashamedly, we all did turn a blind eye. until we decided enough is enough. and enough was enough, the community campaign forced the sex workers out.

that only shifted the problem though as other parts of the city, and now handsworth, have found out. the women themselves say that protests like in balsall heath and the volunteers patrolling tonight are intimidating. so, west midlands police have drafted in specially trained female officers to build a bond with the sex workers. she owes rent to her landlady so she was trying to pay the arrears. that sex worker today owes rent and that's why she's out? yeah, that's why she's out. she's also a class a user, but she was very honest with me so there's no need to lie. debt, addiction and poverty. that's what most women here say is the reason they're selling sex for as little as £5 on a freezing night. but for their punters, instead of a court appearance, they're being sent on a course

that'll cost them £300. one man on his way to a course that will hopefully rehabilitate him, and a sex worker trying to pay off her rent, selling her body for £5. but whether it's for £5 or £500, selling sex on the street is dangerous. serious assaults and robberies are common. the complicated law mean the women often don't report offences in case they're arrested. west midlands police would like to change all that. i think we know statistically that somewhere in the region of 80% of sex workers will experience a crime of some sort, whether that be sexual violence, violence, stalking or harassment, over a five—year period. and we know that only 20% of those people are likely to report to the police. now that's an issue for us and something we need to address. but is there a way to make the streets safer? i'm on my way up north where a different approach seems

to be achieving the unthinkable — a safer working environment for the sex workers and keeping the locals on side. in holbeck in leeds, the local council has tried something pretty revolutionary to try to protect the sex workers without upsetting local residents. this is one of two streets where the police are effectively turning a blind eye to sex workers and their clients during certain hours of the night. it's called the "managed approach" and between the hours of 8pm and 6am, sex workers and curb crawlers don't get arrested. does it really work though? here's katie, which is not her real name. it works because the police look out for us and help us, obviously, and it gives us somewhere stable to be able to go without worrying about getting arrested or anything like that. almost three quarters of women here say they feel safer and are more likely to report crimes

against them to the police. most play by the rules. but like anything in life, there's a few that don't and that's what worries the locals. although there are some complaints from local people — who didn't want to speak to us when we were filming — others take a different view. the girls want to work, so it's keeping them safe and that's the important thing. if they are going to do it — control it, and keep it safe. we've been here 12 year now and we've never seen any trouble from the girls. for basis, the charity that helped set up this managed area, the focus is on caring for the sex workers — seeing them as people. they park a van here to provide reassurance and practical help. 50 now we see women in oui’ van where we can spend dedicated time with them, where they can be a bit warmer, where we can spend time talking to them about some of their issues, and ensuring they've got access

into services as well, as meeting their most immediate needs which isjust being warm, being safe, having a drink, a hot drink. rain, hail orshine, katie still goes to work and for her, it's a matter of survival. so how long have you been doing this? on and off for about 15 years. it's not going to go out of fashion. everyone‘s going to want it, you're not going to stop it. i don't stay out all night. i make what i need to make to survive and then i go home. what do you need to make to survive? about 20, 30 quid. do you think you'll ever give up this trade? yeah, when i get too old for it. back in birmingham, police have changed their thinking about prostitution. they're now open to a different approach. what we are keen to do is to see a real evaluation of what's taking place in leeds to then see if it's something we'd like to consider within the west midlands area. and, surprisingly, there's support for a controlled prostitution zone

from abdullah who worked to drive the sex trade out of balsall heath 25 years ago. i think it could be another option. ultimately for me, it's about the safeguarding of these women and they're not abused. so perhaps one day that leeds experiment could be seen on the streets of birmingham. next, wolverhampton, like so many places, is suffering from retail recession. it is thought around 200,000 people will lose theirjobs here in the uk. so ben godfrey has come here to take the temperature here and look at potential solutions. wolverhampton is home to a quarter of a million people. it boasts a football club thriving in the premier league. beside a high street facing retail relegation. it lacks a bit of a grand vision. the shutters are down, and shoppers need a lift. what do you make of wolverhampton at the moment as a place to come and shop?

crap. we will meet traders taking huge risks to survive. i normally hide out of the way if a new customer comes in so they can have a look around before i leap on them. and an online business bagging big sales. being on ebay, the platform is setup with customers just funnelled through. we all know the high street‘s suffering. but has anyone got a solution? i've been trying to find out. i was iwasa i was a child of the 80s. i remember wolverhampton, shopping on dudley street in the city centre was something really special. mum and dad used to bring me and my brothers up to town, as we called it, and you'd walk down the street, the smell of hot dogs and doughnuts, everyone would be armed with all their bags, and this really saddens me. one in five shops in the city centre are boarded up at the moment pretty much. i'm not alone in wondering what's happened to my home city. this is a city and ijust feel it

hasn't really moved on. back in the ‘90s, steve smith took a decade to find an empty shop in wolverhampton — it was that busy. he started out in bilston market and co—founded poundland, selling his stake for over £50 million but he feels the pain of traders today. every time the rent used to go up, the rates used to go up. what has happened it has hit a saturation point where people in this town have to put the prices up. people have got alternatives, they have gone to other towns where it is cheaper. we'll hear steve's solution for the high street later but what about a businessjust starting up? tony wortley has entered the wolves den. it has been a huge learning curve, i've had to learn how to make coffee the proper way. tony's 55 and left a job in it to open a french—style deli in queen square. it's november. he's been open two months and customers are thin on the ground.

i had dreams of it flying from the very word go because there's no deli in wolverhampton so therefore it stands a very good chance of being accepted quickly. i was wrong. while there is no clamour for cheese and chutney, tony won't give up. we will catch up with him later. so, solutions. top of the shopping list — cut parking charges. car park, i don't like them. they're too pricey. i've had to pay £3 to stop two hours. i've got a car but i wouldn't come in my car. i've discovered that the city of wolverhampton council pulled in almost £9 million in parking charges since 2013, including £2 million last year. oh, and there was another half a million in parking penalties on top. let's see what they've got to say about it. why aren't you investing that money or reinvesting it directly back into the high street when it's suffering so much?

the £2 million is reinvested back into our car parking provision and back into things like the traffic wardens we've got. traders are telling us that the charges are crippling them. wolverhampton city council only control a quarter of car parking spaces. for the last seven or eight years, the parking charges have been static. it's a couple of weeks before christmas — and there's a chill wind passing tony's deli. i thought city centre footfall would be fantastic, therefore people would automatically walk into the shop. it's nothing of the kind. you have to be established, people have to see you there. nobody walks into an empty shop unless they know it. to win more christmas custom, tony's selling his hampers online. that's been going very well, i've had 200 of those boxes and i think i've done about 50 of them already so i'm anticipating selling out of those over the next few days. our next solution then

is to embrace online. this year, brits will spend around £25 billion ordering stuff on our mobiles. the internet is creating greater demand for people to buy and shop online and that is causing shops that are physically located to close down. this is wolverhampton, busy, sharing in the prosperity of the midlands, this old market town... six decades on, there is a revolution. led by the likes of paul jones, he is taking me to an abandoned nail factory. i get all the bestjobs! i don't know where he is, somewhere... how did you find this place? i found it online. goodsta rt jones has had an incredible start here. their bags are handmade

by artists paul, paris and hanson. they source local fabrics and graft away on second—hand sewing machines and they are making £3000 a week. being online, it's like an equaliser. we're kind of level pegging with the big retailers. bricks and mortar stores because they, too, have a website and now we have a website. so what have we got up here, paul? this is our... it's a bit tight. it's our store room. paul is being supported by ebay. dozens more small independent companies in the city are hoping to cash in with a showcase online. we sell to china, we send to singapore, the majority of our bags sell overseas. i miss the hustle and bustle around dudley street and, yeah, the ‘80s and ‘90s were tough for traders but there's been nothing like this. the likes of bhs, maplin, patisserie valerie — all gone.

in 2017, there was some delight when a new debenhams opened. look at all these people with me. but today, smiles are in short supply. debenhams is planning store closures nationally and, you know, retail is fickle. even the flagship mander centre didn't want us filming inside and i sensed tension everywhere. beatties is a classic example. it's been in the city for over 100 years — people love the place, they love the nostalgia. nearly closed last year. why? people really weren't spending their cash there. back to our high street solutions then and as we say here — out of darkness cometh light. nightlife is returning to the city, and with it a big push to get people living over the shop, like they used to in the good old days. this high rise is the former home of failed construction firm carillion — nightclub promoter marc parsons has moved into new apartments aimed at young professionals. granted, this is a smaller, younger,

almost like a third world country city compared to some of the other ones. but without people being able to move out at their comfort zone and into a new area, they will not be able to generate any more for the economy as well. wolverhampton is getting a face lift though, including a new railway station, and a cafe—lined promenade. i think thhe council has got its act together and so has wolverhampton. i think the city is on the up. it's great on paper but in wolverhampton, things take time. a new restaurant and cinema complex has hit delays, and there's the brexit effect too. i think wolverhampton has got to be customer—focused. what's good for the customer and if they work on that, the town will improve. and what about tony? i daren't be too optimistic, but the figures indicate that the lunchtime trade is getting stronger and stronger. there's likely to more

pain on the high street, but at least there is ambition here. for me, win or lose, it's all about falling back in love with local. finally tonight, there are some people in our region who believe drinking raw milk is the only way to go. but because it isn't treated in any way, milk straight from the cow can carry risks. mike dilger‘s been investigating. uk dairy farmers produce around 1a billion litres of milk a year. and most of it is heat—treated or pasteurised before it gets to the consumer. raw milk is different as it goes straight from the udder to the bottle — and sales of it are on the up. fans claim it's full of probiotics and beneficial bacteria. but with recent food poisoning outbreaks linked to this new trend — is it a super food or just super risky? the science of pasteurisation has been around since the late 1800s where you heat and then rapidly cool the milk to make it last longer

and eliminate risks like harmful pathogenic bacteria. raw milk relies on the skill of the farmer and the cleanliness of the diary to avoid contamination. and while sales are banned in scotland, here in england, it's sold by registered producers, just like this one. and it's proving... well, pretty popular. so what is the difference in taste then? a lot, lot creamier, and it is a nice treat for my husband who was brought up on it. it's fresh, it's natural, and it's direct from source, so it's fantastic. it separates like old—fashioned milk used to do, it is a lovely tasting milk. with plenty of happy customers, all seems well on this farm. but rewind to december 2017, and things weren't so rosy. the food standards agency has now officially suspended all sales. there have been six confirmed cases of food poisoning and another 50 are being investigated. contaminated raw milk was the issue,

and it was a real worry for richard parks, the farmer. 18 months ago, there was a problem, wasn't there? there was. we hadn't been open that long, about six months, and we had a problem. that was unpleasant for the customer, and it was really quite stressful for us, because we put a lot of work into producing the milk. and we spent quite a lot of time, we stopped selling it and spent a number of months investigating the reasons behind. richard is convinced the problem was hygiene and the washing down of the equipment in the dairy had to be improved. this wouldn't have been an issue if the milk had been pasteurised, but there has to be higher standards when you're selling raw milk direct to the public. other than the milk being chilled, there is no other process involved, that is the reason that the milk tastes so good and, in my mind,

is betterfor you, but also there is that additional risk there that if there is a problem, then you don't have pasteurisation to eliminate it. richard's farm has since been given the all clear by the food standards agency and they've resumed sales. while the food standards have always stressed the potential hazards of drinking raw milk they haven't banned it in england unlike other parts of the uk — so why not? my understanding is that raw milk is banned in scotland, so why the lighter touch here in england? the situation in scotland in the early 80s was quite significantly different than the rest of the uk. there were quite a number of deaths in scotland and they took the decision at that time to ban the raw milk. but is the raw milk itself hazardous? well, the milk from the... if a cow is healthy, then the raw milk itself will be fairly sterile,

and the danger comes from the cross contamination from faecal contamination from the cow, so you end up with faecal pathogens like salmonella or e.coli or 157 or others. that is the risks. it is a risky food. 0ne staffordshire dairy farmer who isn't prepared to take that risk is andrew gilman. besides the potential risk to customers, he's also concerned about the impact on his business if things go wrong. as a dairy farmer, you produce, i understand, 6000 litres of milk a day. but you have gone the pasteurised route? why not raw milk? we have looked into producing raw milk, it is something we really contemplated when a couple of years ago when the milk price was really low. but to buy into the raw milk brand takes a lot of investment. if there is a health scare elsewhere in the country, scotland, devon, for example, no relation to the milk i'm producing at all, but that will impact upon me, upon the raw milk that i produce.

but we just feel that the risks involved are not worth it. with raw milk now available across the east midlands, inside out took five random samples to the national milk laboratories in wolverhampton, where they check the levels of bacteria. the outcome was encouraging — four farms showed good results — but one having a fairly high bacteria count. scientists told us it could due to the age of the milk or possibly hygiene standards on the farm. however, they were all classed as acceptable and safe to drink. it's encouraging news for people who buy the stuff, like pav singh and his family from leicester. it's been part of their daily diet for last few years. as a family, how many litres do you go through a week? we normally get it delivered in litres, so we go through about 15—20 litres a week. obviously, we don't drink the 15 or 20 litres, we make other stuff out of it as well.

so there is a lot we do with it. shall we have a taste? definitely. cheers. it's certainly creamier than i'm used to, i think i drink semi—skimmed milk. and it is beautiful cold, delicious. now there's no arguing with that taste test. but do the claims it's better for you stack up? some argue the pasteurisation process strips out some much of milk‘s natural nutrients — is this true? i want to get the opinion of the british dietetic association. it doesn't change the nutritional quality of milk. it makes it safer. as i say, if people say they prefer it because it tastes better, then that is their choice. there's little doubt dairy farmers have faced tough times over recent years, and the raw milk revolution, as it's been called, is a way to supplement their income and it's proving popular. but the crucial difference between the bottles you buy in the supermarket and the raw stuff is down to the pasteurisation process.

so is the risk, however small, worth the reward? well, the decision is up to you. that is your lot. we are on the iplayer if you missed anything and we are also on twitter. goodbye. hello, widespread gales were brought to the uk yesterday and the pressure

responsible has sent it over the northern isles. we have gusts of a0 to 50 mph in places, also a few showers, particularly for western areas. and much feel for some, temperatures up to 11, maybe 12 celsius. this evening, the cloud will gather, it will bring some persistent rain for a time. more persistent rain for a time. more persistent rain for a time. more persistent rain across 0rkney. perhaps wintry showers over scotland. the clearer skies over eastern scotland and north—east england. we are likely to see a touch of frost, as captured creep to zero. some outbreaks of rain on sunday, may linger across east anglia for a time. a few showers behind but some persistent rain for a time across northern ireland and south—west scotland. some went two down the irish sea coast. the north, north—westerly wind, a colderfeel. temperatures up to seven or eight celsius. this is bbc news.

i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at 2pm. no ships and now — n0 contract — the government cancels a controversial agreement for extra ferries in case of a no—deal brexit. new allegations of sexual and racial harassment by former employees of the retail tycoon, sir philip green — are published. he denies any crime or misconduct. counting the cost of knife crime — the number of young victims admitted to hospitals in england — has risen by more than 50% in 5 years. the rapper, blaine cameronjohnson — who was known as cadet — has died in a car crash on the way to a gig in staffordshire. also coming up — the signs causing confusion in essex. we'll talk to the psychologist who took on the council and won — over the amount of signs at a chelmsford bus gate.