FOI Friday: Cannabis, university spending, race crimes at the football and asbestos in council buildings

Unpaid court fines tops £4million – Bedfordshire On Sunday

MORE than £4 million in court fines is owed to courts in Bedfordshire, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

The figures, released by Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), show that last September the amount of fines owed to the county’s courts stood at £4,286,800.

The criminal with 145 crimes to his names – Newcastle Journal

A ONE-MAN crime wave racked up 145 offences in two years, re-offending figures have revealed.

The string of crimes makes the 20-year-old male from Durham the region’s most prolific offender.

He was closely followed by a 38-year-old female and a 45-year-old male who committed 130 crimes each between January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2012, say Durham Constabulary.

In total, the top nine offenders together were responsible for 702 crimes across the force area.

Freedom of Information requests to North East police forces revealed just 19 criminals were behind more than a thousand crimes in the region over the last two years.

1000 council buildings containing Asbestos – North Wales Daily Post

SCHOOLS, leisure centres and public toilets are among more than 1,000 council-owned buildings in North Wales which contain asbestos.

A Freedom of Information request by the Daily Post has revealed that all types of the dangerous substance which is now illegal to use – are found in buildings across the region including the most hazardous material, crocidolite.

The figures showed Gwynedd to have the highest number of buildings containing asbestos with 409 in total, which included Arfon Leisure Centre in Caernarfon, Bangor Swimming Pool and Hafod Y Gest care home in Porthmadog.

Pauper funeral rise in Plymouth – Plymouth  Herald

ALMOST 100 people in Plymouth have been buried in so-called ‘paupers’ graves’.

The depressing statistic paints a harrowing picture of people in the community dying penniless and in isolation.

The figures on state-funded funerals were released to The Herald through the Freedom of Information Act.

But the reality could be much worse, since people who die in hospital are the responsibility of Plymouth Hospitals Trust.

A great back page (and the front page wasn’t bad either)

Midweek football matches can be a nightmare for daily newspapers. Even with deadlines pushed back to ensure the match report gets in, it can be a down-to-the-wire battle to get everything in before the presses roll.

So with that in mind, I loved this back page from the Daily Post in North Wales today. It’s one thing to get the content in, another to make it look as though they’ve had ages to craft a brilliantly punny headline too – especially when events happened so close to the full time whistle:

Leighton Baines backpage

And while I’m at it, the front page headline was a bit of a showstopper in Chester Service Station today too:

 

Daily Post front page

Why small news should be big news for local newspapers – mock it at your peril

Do you remember the story of the burnt office chair which appeared in the Westmorland Gazette? Back in 2007, the posting of what was essentially a nib on the Gazette’s website led to widespread sniggering behind hands about how a local newspaper could cover the torching of a swivel seat in a local park.

Five years on, and the story still sporadically attracts attention in the comments section. Such gentle (and in some cases, not so gentle) mocking of local news goes with the territory for reporters up and down the country – but should we be joining in?

In recent weeks, Hold The Front Page mocking this nib in the Lake District Herald  about the owner of a property being called by police to lock a door, and widespread mirth on Twitter about a Sale and Altrincham Messenger story about a pan fire in which the contents of the pan were destroyed by fire.

At the same time, respected journalist Peter Sands also appears to be leading an assault against what he describes as ‘non news’. In his latest example, he cites a Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News (disclaimer, I work for Trinity Mirror, which publishes the News) story which reports that no Jimmy Savile victims from Runcorn (assuming there are any) have made themselves known to Cheshire Police. Other examples highlighted on Sands’ blog include a dog which suffered an injured nose, a mattress that fell off the back of a lorry forcing a car to stop, a pasty three days past its sell-by date being sold to a young mum and a Christmas tree being blown over in the wind.

FOI FRIDAY: Hidden cuts, health and safety, crimes at the cop shop and the cost of obesity

The Tyne and Wear Metro really does creak

1. Here come the cuts

You’d think getting the nod for cash from the current government was enough to guarantee it would happen. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, William Green of The Journal in Newcastle has been able to prove that’s not the case. He managed to get hold of documents relating to a £350million upgrade to Tyne and Wear’s creaking Metro system. The Government had said ok to the money, but letters between transport secretary Phillip Hammond and Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander show that they plan to ‘look further’ at the cost of the planned upgrade, suggesting it’s far from guaranteed. This story, I think, proves there is a mountain of information inside government just waiting to be released about projects which could be hit by spending cuts.

2. Health and safety

I don’t normally include stories which have come to national prominence already but this week’s story about how health and safety documents raised questions over BP’s operations in the North Sea is worth a special mention. While BP still insists it is safer than most in the North Sea,  the story does approve the value of health and safety reports to journalists. Worth looking at big companies near you?

3. A fine mess

The Bristol Evening Post took a different take on the popular parking tickets FOI requests and asked how many tickets went unpaid in Bristol. That’s £900,000 a year which goes uncollected – with 13,346 people managing to dodge the fines for various reasons.

FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt thanks to Freedom of Information this week

I said last week I’d blog in a different post about good FOI stories which emerged as Christmas specials in newspapers over Christmas – I meant to do it this week but didn’t get chance.

So, for now, here are 10 stories generated via FOI which have appeared in the regional media over the past seven days:

1. Criminal record cabbies

The BBC’s Inside Out programme in the West Midlands found a very interesting story when it sent over 70 FOIs to councils and police forces to discover how many cab and taxi drivers had been given licences despite having criminal convictions.  Despite offences including drugs and indecent assault, some 209 drivers were given licences, the BBC found.  Interesingly, these decision tend to have to be made at supposedly public licensing committee meetings, but this sort of information is normally dealt with in private session so as not to reveal personal details about an applicant, so FOI really is the only way to find this information out.

2. Compensation claims from the MoD

The Sun used FOI to find out what the Ministry of Defence had compsensated people for, other than injuries suffered in combat. Among the results was this gem:

A farmer has been paid £42,000 by the Ministry of Defence after he claimed his chickens laid fewer eggs because they were frightened by the noise from jets including the Red Arrows.

A compare and contrast with the amount paid to injured soldiers made this story what it really is. It’s also an FOI which could be replicated across all walks of government, local and national.

3. Checking out how effective new legislation is

The Stage magazine reports that FOI has revealed how effective new legislation design to protect would-be performers from dodgy agents has been. Basically, it banned the practice of up-front fees. Admittedly, the fact 60 such agents have had action taken against them, with362 complaints made, is quite a niche story – but the principle of using FOI to check out how well a headline-grabbing piece of legislation has actually been has paid off once again.

FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt thanks to the Freedom of Information Act this week

Getting hold of emails which contradict public statements, police forces trying to defend not investigating crimes and the university which bowed to the public interest test. It might nearly be Christmas but the regional media has turned up some great FOI stories this week. Here are 10 from a Google News search:

1. The emails which tell a different story

There’s been a bit of a barney going on in Preston recently over the decision to move the Football Museum from Deepdale, home of Preston North End, to the arty Urbis in Manchester, a venue which has little connection to football. This week, the Lancashire Evening Post successfully used FOI to get hold of documents and emails which showed that the Football Museum bosses, who had made many big promises about staying in Preston, had been holding discussions about moving for a very long time. This story will certainly add to the bitter taste felt in Preston about the decision to move, and the fact discussions were going for such a long time does place a questionmark over commitments made to Preston. The point here being: Always ask for the emails.

2. Middle class crime on the rise

An interesting take on a set of crime figures released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Beccles and Bungay Journal. It sought details on shoplifting figures and was told there had been a 400 case increase in the last year. That provided the basis of a story which sought expert opinion on the type of shoplifting, and which concluded that the recession was forcing desperate middle class types to commit shoplifting.

3. Paying a region’s top civil servant to commute to work

The Western Morning News turned to FOI to try and establish if the Government’s top representative in the South West was having his commuting costs covered by the taxpayer, given that he doesn’t live in the region. Turns out he is, some £8,000 in so-called “excess fares” which are paid to civil servants whose place of work changes. Worth bearing in mind if similar cases loom elsewhere.

FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt this week thanks to the Freedom of Infomation Act

Another interesting week on the FOI front. While the climate change row continues – triggered by an FOI investigation – continues to dominate the national headlines, locally there have been some fascinating stories. They include the length of times bodies have remained unclaimed in hospital mortuaries, dirty scalpels in hospitals, public bodies paying to go to the party conferences, the demise of UFO investigations and porn found on school computers…