CMS Content validation problem

Hi
I have built my site with content areas on the left and right hand side to carry banners from some of our affiliate partners.
I am running through W3C validation on the site at the moment, and I am experiencing some validation errors specifically relating to the ampersand '&' contained within the banner code, when checking the CMS back end, I can clearly see that the '&' is present but it is not displaying in the source code therefore it is causing the site to have multiple validation errors.
Is there a solution to this, some sort of code hack that I can implement?

Any help would be really appreciated
Thanks in advance

Note:
I am validating to HTML 5, and also would like to bring to your attention that white space is no longer valid within URI therefore things like Modular_Granit Pine cause validation issues and all white space within the links needs to be written as %20, Modular Granit Pine becomes Modular_Granit%20Pine and will then validate, just thought you may like to adjust the scripts to validate to the latest standards.