Tagged: Coventry Telegraph
FOI Friday: Bad living conditions, school repair backlogs, teen drug dealers and the return of schoolyard compo
Revealing the findings of ‘neighbourhood renewal assessments’ – Stoke Sentinel
Here’s one which could run and run across the country. The Stoke Sentinel reports on the findings of a council ‘neighbourhood renewal assessment’ – the likes of which are carried out by councils all over the place.
A NEW report has painted a sobering picture of just how bad living conditions have become in the Portland Street area.
The report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, shows how much conditions have deteriorated at some of the houses.
It is based on surveys carried out at 274 properties, a mixture of private rented and owner-occupied homes, as part of the council’s Neighbourhood Renewal Assessment.
Repairs backlogs at schools – Coventry Telegraph
WARWICKSHIRE schools have a staggering £83 million backlog of repairs.
Warwickshire County Council bosses estimated the cost of getting all the county’s schools up to a reasonable standard of repair.
The figures were uncovered by the Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act.
The cost of clearing up after police warrants – South Wales Evening Post
I think there’s a better story in here other than the one the South Wales Evening Post has gone with. It reports on the £5k in compensation the police has paid out for repairs to properties which were damaged during ‘negative warrants’ – ie warrants which were executed but didn’t lead to an arrest or seizure of goods. That’s a good story – but looking at the breakdown of negative v positive warrants, almost half were negative. A better story?
120 ‘foreign objects’ removed from patients in Lincolnshire – Boston Standard
Here’s a curious story. FOI led to the Boston Standard to find out that 120 people had ‘foreign bodies’ removed from them in hospital, yet the hospital couldn’t say what those objects were. The Standard used information from elsewhere in the country to talk about the sorts of objects which could be involved.
Teenage drug dealers – Teesside Evening Gazette
SUSPECTED child drug dealers as young as 15 were among those arrested on Teesside, new figures have revealed.
Officers from Cleveland Police arrested 17 suspected child drug dealers last year.
Five were girls held over claims they were dealing cannabis, and six of the boys, including two 15-year-olds, were risking lengthy prison sentences after allegedly dealing in Class A drugs.
The findings were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Escapes from mental health units – Wigan Evening Post
10% of people admitted to mental health units in Wigan escape, according to the Wigan Evening Post.
Cost of overseas patients not paying up – Scarborough Evening News
This story stands out more because of the level of detail released than anything else:
SCARBOROUGH’S NHS Trust is owed more than £30,000 in hospital bills, racked up by overseas patients not entitled to free treatment.
The figures, obtained via a Freedom of Information request to Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust, show that since February 2009, £33,229.41 has either been written off or is currently being chased by the Trust.
The numbers include £10,297 that the trust is still chasing from a Syrian patient who underwent treatment in May 2010.
The highest amount written off was for £5,701, owed to them from a Thai patient who underwent treatment in August and September of 2009.
The books and CDs you aren’t borrowing from the library – Sunday Sun
Tomes such as Old Scottish Clockmakers 1453-1850 and Agrarian History of England and Wales Volume 5 have lined library shelves untouched for decades.
But surprisingly some popular names were also on our list, compiled from Freedom of Information requests by the Sunday Sun.
When it comes to music, in Northumberland, four copies of Coldplay’s album X&Y were only borrowed once last year, the same number as The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.
The return of an old favourite: Schoolyard payouts – Leicester Mercury
A schoolgirl who was burnt when baked beans were spilled on her could be in line for a council pay-out of up to £12,000.
The hot food was spilled on the youngster’s neck at a county council-run school. The authority has now set aside thousands of pounds to cover potential compensation and legal costs.
The incident is one of 63 compensation claims made for injuries sustained at county schools during the past four years, according to new figures. But, of the 29 cases dealt with to date, just five have resulted in a compensation pay-out.
The cost of council sick pay – Birmingham Post
Birmingham City Council spent £35 million on sick pay for staff last year.
And new figures have revealed employees in some departments are taking more than double the national average of days off ill.
The authority spent £34,856,713 on sick pay between January and December last year, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The council did not reveal the bill for paying agency staff to cover absences, meaning the total cost will be even higher.
FOI Friday: Private detectives, bus lanes, stray dogs and mental health abscondees
Spending on private detectives
A different take on how councils snoop on people – how much one council spent on hiring private detectives. Answer: £100,000 at Carmarthenshire Council, reports the Swansea Evening Post.
Fed up of FOI requests about speeding tickets or parking fines? How about asking how many bus lane infringements have occurred, as reported by the Bucks Free Press.
Rather sad figures from the Coventry Telegraph – they revealed, using FOI, that 10% of all stray dogs rounded up in the city get put down.
Patients walking out of mental health units
An FOI story here which is the result of an FOI by a local MP – correctly credited by the Leicester Mercury. Loughborough MP Nicky Morgan says her FOI research shows 40,000 mental health patients just walked out of units, with over 3,000 of those in Leicestershire.
FOI Friday: Brothel raids, B&B costs, farm thefts and cautions for violent crimes
1.Houses of multiple occupancy
Kicking off with a story which may not have been sourced under FOI, but which could be: The Liverpool ECHO reports on the number of properties which have been licensed for use as ‘houses of multiple occupancy’, of which just 25% had planning permission? Why is this an issue? Well, if it’s on your street, you’d want to be able protest about it, wouldn’t you?
2. What police seized in brothel raids
Staying with the Liverpool ECHO, this story combines FOI and the sex trade: Asking the police how many brothels they have raided and, tellingly, what they seized when they raided the places too.
3. The cost of housing homeless people in bed and breakfasts
Some interesting numbers from the Wigan Evening Post, which reports, thanks to FOI, that over the past four years, Wigan Council has spent £200,000 on B&B accommodation for homeless people. A problem that’s getting worse in recession times? Apparently not – but what’s the picture elsewhere?
FOI Friday: Custard spills, charity finances, twocking – and an important breakthrough
Regional Development Agency assets
An important precedent has hopefully been set this week by the Birmingham Post when it comes to FOI. Regional Development Agencies were a relatively late addition to FOI coverage, and since their demise was announced, some have been reluctant to reveal how much they are selling their assets for.
The Birmingham Post this week revealed that Birmingham’s Stock Exchange, set up by Advantage West Midlands in 2007, has been sold for £1. In three years, it has swallowed £3million of public cash.
AWM at first refused to say how much it had been sold for, arguing it was commercially sensitive. The Post has managed to argue otherwie, and AWM changed its mind.
The front page of the Birmingham Post
According to the Warrington Guardian, a third of charities in the town are in the red after grants have been cut and recession hit donations. Reporter Hannah Bargery used FOI to ask the Charities Commission for details about charities in the Warrington borough. The figures she got back revealed that of the 389 registered charities in Warrington, 123 spent more than they received last year.
You may well have seen this story in the nationals this week but it began life as Monday’s splash in the Liverpool ECHO. FOI was used to ask councils for details of cases where pupils had brought compensation claims against schools. One pupil received £750 for being splashed with custard (presumably at lunchtime) while another got £6k for falling off a chair.
Continue reading
FOI Friday: Uni expenses, shoplifting, driving tests and a speed camera success story
1. The expenses of university top bods
With £9,000 a year tuition fees very likely for many students starting university, there’s probably never been a better time to stick the finances of universities under the FOI microscope. The Sunday Sun has done just that, asking for the expenses of senior officials at universities in its areas:
UNIVERSITY bosses notched up more than £130,000 on credit cards and expenses in two years….on five-star hotels, posh restaurants and supermarket shopping.
A former Teesside University Deputy Vice Chancellor put £116 on the plastic during a trip to a Singapore boozer.
And Northumbria pro-vice chancellor, Professor Paul Croney, claimed for a £652 bill at a Hong Kong bar and restaurant.
The Sunday Sun asked five of the North’s universities – Northumbria, Newcastle, Durham, Teesside and Sunderland – to show us bills submitted by their Pro-Vice Chancellors and Deputy Vice Chancellors over the last two years, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.
The figure – £132,494 spent by the 25 executives whose UK average salary tops £60,000 – has emerged in the week that Newcastle University announced they are planning to join Durham University by charging £9,000 tuition fees.
Can such expenses be tolerated when they are effectively been funded by higher tuition fees? Some of the best information lies in the smallest details:
More than half of that total [at Durham] covered a £44,225 ‘Travel Card’ bill for Professor Seth Kunin in the Arts and Humanities department.
And in Teesside – which seems to tell its top staff to buy food for events from supermarkets and claim it back – there was this gem:
Professor Cliff Allan – who has since left for another university – spent £12,509 in the two-years, staying at several five-star hotels in India and China, including The Imperial in New Delhi. He also spent £60.56 on his Barclaycard in Housams 1985 Ltd, a Middlesbrough DIY store – which the university said relates to three “minor items of office equipment”.
During a visit to Singapore in November 2009 he also spent £116.33 in the Cocoon Bar & Supperclub.
There’s a growing rumbling in university circles that universities should be exempt from FOI because they won’t be relying on the public purse directly in years to come. I think we all know that’s more than a little misleading.
To Crawley [and the Observer] we go for an old favourite – the speed camera FOI. I mention it here because Sussex Police has bucked a trend among police forces and revealed the location of the busiest speed camera – ie the one issuing the most tickets – and the number of tickets issued. Other police forces have said no in the past for various reasons, my favourite being the fear that such information could lead to vandalism. For anyone asking this question again, referring to Sussex in the FOI request might be a good idea.
The attacks against council big wigs go on – and the Chorley Guardian spotted one FOI-based national story which showed that four of their council’s officials, between them, earned £500,000. I mention this story here because it’s a good example of taking someone else’s FOI story further, and getting more out of it. In this case, the Guardian got the chief executive, Donna Hall, to open up her pay package to the paper which provided much more context.
Good stuff from the Coventry Telegraph which used FOI to find out various statistics from the Driving Standards Agency about driving tests in the Coventry area – including someone who had 25 attempts before passing!
FOI Friday: Investigating business grants, frisky Welsh folk and the 104-year-old criminal
1. Spending money to talk about cuts
The Waltham Forest Guardian reports on an interesting spending choice at the local council – an £18,000 advertising campaign to tell people the council would protect local services which people care about. The campaign follows on from another £27,000 campaign to find out which services people wanted protecting.
2. Complaints against social workers
An interesting story from the Coventry Telegraph, which quotes a report obtained using FOI to reveal who makes complaints against social workers in the area. The most interesting fact is that 10% of complaints are made by young people about their care.
3. Partying on the university budget
I’m never sure whether the active use of FOI by politicians in Wales is a good thing or not – largely because I believe politicians only turn to FOI when they are being denied access to information through other channels which they perhaps have a right to request information through. Either way, an Assembly member in Wales used FOI to find out how much universities were spending on hospitality – four in South Wales clocked up £6.4million over three years. One to chew over?
FOI Friday: Boozy toddlers, rats on the run, football debt & councillors dodging tax
The Sunday Mercury used FOI to ask local hospitals the ages of those aged 12 or under who were treated for booze addiction, and the total number. One child was aged just three, and a total of 107 under 12s in the region were treated.
Don’t all shout ‘We’ve done this one before’ just yet. The Lynn News in Norfolk reports this week on the number of parking fines dished out by the local hospital to people who hadn’t purchased the correct parking ticket – paying for parking at hospitals is a contentious issue in itself. Around 3,000 fines were issued – of which just half were paid. A wasted paper exercise?
Blog Preston came up with different way of serving up details of rat populations in the city. Whereas many reporters have got year-on-year figures through FOI to report on the growth in rat call outs by local councils, Blog Preston sought the data for each ward – painting a much sharper picture of the problem at a local level.
FOI Friday: CCTV in high schools, parking charges, bad tickets and swine flu
1. CCTV cameras in secondary schools
Submitting FOI requests to schools can be endurance test compared to approaching a local education authority for summary information they hold – but it can be worth it, as this story from the Coventry Telegraph proves. It used FOI to ask secondary schools how many CCTV cameras they had and where they were placed. One school revealed it had 112 cameras, roughly one for every 10 pupils. (Source: Coventry Telegraph)
2. Luxury cars at a time of cuts
Durham Police says it needs to save £6million and has just made 86 people redundant as part of government cuts. It also plans to have 110 fewer police officers. But the Northern Echo has reported on an FOI which revealed that £100k was spent on four luxury cars for senior officers. (Source: Northern Echo)
3. Paying extra parking charges
PARKING ticket machines kept almost £100,000 for Mole Valley Council last year by not giving change, the Advertiser newspaper reported. It used FOI to ask the council to reveal the total value of parking charges in council car parks, and how much was actually paid. There was a £100k difference, attributed by shopkeepers to the fact a lot of parking costs £1.80 for two hours, rather than £2 – and the machines don’t give change. (Source: Thisissurreytoday).
FOI Friday (On a Tuesday again): Jet-setting council bosses, over 50s redundancies and racist schoolkids
1. ‘Culling staff aged over 50′ claim
A fascinating FOI from an organisation called Wise Owls, which campaigns for older workers, made an impact in the Carlisle News and Star. It revealed, using FOI, that of 24 people made redundant this year, 14 had been over 50. An FOI which could run and run this year? (Source: News and Star)
Fascinating figures from the Manifesto Club, the civl liberties group, which used FOI to find out how many reports of children being racist and homophobic were being logged by councils. The numbers are somewhat mindboggling – and proof of the stories you can get if you know the data councils store. (Source: Daily Telegraph)
3. Fat kids fail to lose weight
A good example of returning to a public project to see whether it has worked out, demonstrated by the Aberdeen Press and Journal. It asked NHS Grampian to reveal how many children had lost weight through a Healthy Weight Intervention Programme. Of 150, the answer was: 6. (Source: Press and Journal)
FOI FRIDAY: Maternity problems, schools failing fire checks, polluted rivers and cats stuck up trees
The dash to hospital - but will it be open?
1. Closed maternity units
It must be every new parent’s worst nightmare. Route to hospital carefully planned when contractions start, overnight bag packed, journey completed – only to be told the maternity unit is full. More worrying still is how common this scenario is, something the Western Mail revealed when it asked hospitals for the number of times it had had to announce maternity units were full. (Source: Western Mail)
Stories about schoolchildren misbehaving on the school bus are quite common, but how big is the problem overall? The Carlisle News and Star used Cumbria County Council to get statistics through FOI which show 14 children have been banned from buses for bad behaviour. (Source: Carlisle News and Star)
When the fire service carries out inspections of public buildings and workplaces, it can issue enforcement notices to get improvements done. The Lancashire Telegraph asked how many schools had been issued with enforcement notices and for what reasons. Answer: 7. Quite worrying if your school is involved. (Source: Lancashire Telegraph)
