Hope at last in the fight to protect FOI?

Eric Pickles – the man to defend FOI?

Yesterday, communities secretary Eric Pickles generated a fair amount of Press with his new guidelines around public access to the decision-making process at local councils.

A lot of it will be very familiar to journalists who cover councils: How council meetings work, what access you can expect and what you can request council officers to provide.

The big headline was that Mr Pickles was reminding councils that they should allow people to cover council meetings live and film them too.

Like many of Mr Pickles’ previous pushes around transparency within Town Halls – such as demanding the end of council newspapers and insisting all councils publish spending data over £500 – there doesn’t appear to be a law behind the new demands around filming, just an expectation that local politicians and  council bosses will do what the minister tells them.

As an approach to working with local government, it’s generally been effective for Mr Pickles. Only Nottingham City Council refuses to publish council spending data (as far as I can tell), arguing it costs too much money to justify – and ironically wasting a lot of time and money arguing with government about the fact too.

As for council newspapers, many have folded, or reduced in frequency. A hardcore few remain, and Mr Pickles now plans to ensure the remaining ones are closed down by backing up the publicity code of practice with legislation.

So there, hopefully, is proof that what Mr Pickles wants, Mr Pickles gets.

The FOI that kept on giving has just given again

Back when I used to do FOI Friday weekly (I do mean to get that going again), there was an FOI request which kept turning up again and again and again.

The first time I noticed this particular FOI was in June 2009 when the Bristol Evening Post revealed the OAP crimes which were committed in the Avon and Somerset area, including a suspected 99 year old burglar.

Since then, it’s yielded stories across the country, including an OAP crimewave in Brighton, two 85-year-old women arrested for assault in Birmingham, a violent 94-year-old in Manchester and a 99-year-old who was discovered ‘equipped for stealing’ in Cambridgeshire.

An FOI request to lift the lid on the things press offices try to keep quiet

Did you hear the one about the Norfolk police dog which was sent on a training course after it killed a cat while pursuing a burglar, and then killed a sheep in a field too?

Readers of the East Anglian Daily Times have, but only thanks to one of the most inspired Freedom of Information requests I’ve seen in quite a while.

Details of the cat-killing cop dog (presumably the cat wasn’t the criminal, unless it was a cat burglar) emerged after the EADT put in an FOI request to Norfolk Police asking for copies of all statements prepared by the police press office to be released on an ‘if asked’ basis.

FOI FRIDAY: Shop burglaries, looked after children a long way from home, army redundancies and homeless in B&Bs

‘Looked after’ children housed in different counties < < < Bury Free Press

More than 130 looked after children in Suffolk are being placed outside the county as the demand for placements increases.

Following a Freedom of Information request, the Bury Free Press can reveal that upto the end of February 135 out of the county’s 735 looked after children were homed outside the local authority boundary.

This compares with 155 out of 780 last year, 145 out of 785 in 2010/11 and 150 out of 775 in 2009/10. Children are currently placed in counties such as Kent, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, London, Rutland, Bath, Hampshire, Bradford Metropolitan District, Southend on Sea and West Berkshire.

Child criminals in Nottingham < < < Nottingham Evening Post

POLICE have arrested children as young as eight on suspicion of burglary and robbery.

Notts officers last year made 20 arrests of primary school-age children involving a burglary and ten children aged 11 or under were arrested for robbery.

Figures given to the Post under the Freedom of Information Act show that overall 44 children aged 11 or under were arrested in 2012 – down from 100 two years earlier.

As well as robberies and burglaries, other crimes included theft, assault and criminal damage. Some arrests were even made in connection with rapes, drug possession and having an offensive weapon.

Burglaries in shops < < < Bradford Telegraph and Argus

City centre traders have voiced frustration after figures obtained by the Telegraph & Argus revealed that only 32 people have been convicted following investigations into 684 burglaries of retail and commercial premises in the last year.

Business bosses have called for more police presence to deter burglars after seeing the outcome of a Freedom of Information request regarding non-house burglaries in the Bradford south division, which covers the city centre and suburbs, from October, 2011, to September, 2012.

Police made 89 arrests in relation to the crimes recorded during that period, and 32 people were convicted, although police pointed out that some of those criminals could have been found guilty of several of the offences.

FOI: How Peppa Pig proved the value of Freedom of Information

This is Peppa Pig. Peppa likes many things. Peppa likes jumping in muddy puddles. Peppa likes doing sport at school. Peppa also likes going shopping on a Sunday in Dartford.

And that’s probably the best place for me to stop trying to write a blog post in the style of the voiceover of Peppa, the much-loved star of children’s TV.

There is, however, a serious point to this point – and yes, it does what the headline says: Shows how Peppa Pig proved the value of FOI for transparancy.

Here’s how: Once upon a time (here we go again), if a government announcement around investment and grants didn’t involve millions of pounds, it rarely troubled the news agenda of even the smallest daily newspaper.

I remember as a reporter working in Accrington, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph newsdesk weren’t convinced a £7million regeneration grant to take deprivation was an obvious splash. At the time, big government and European grants were ten-a-penny (pardon the pun) and the story wasn’t helped by the volume of regeneration jargon speak about ‘pathways’ and ‘zonal gateways’ etc.

Fastforward 15 years and we’re in a different economic climate, and how the news agenda has changed. The Portas Pilot – named after Queen of Shops Mary Portas – totals £1.2million to help 12 struggling towns come up with plans to change their futures.

FOI Friday: Illegal immigrants, councils using dating sites, suspended staff and the long cost of PFI

How many miles of roadworks in your area? < < < In Cumbria

MOTORISTS in Cumbria face around 600 miles of roadworks every year.

Figures obtained in a Freedom of Information response showed that, at the end of January, there were 217 miles of roadworks to be completed by the end of this month.

The figures, from the county council, also revealed there were a total of 645 miles of roadworks due to be completed during 2012/13 – down on the 937 in the previous year

Stressed police on the rise < < < East Anglian Daily Times

THE number of days stressed police officers have taken off sick has doubled to more than 9,000 in the past three years, new figures have revealed.

The statistics, released by Essex Police following a Freedom of Information request, reflect the number of stress-related absences within the constabulary since 2010.

Officers took 9,139 days, including weekends and rest days, off due to stress last year – a sharp rise on the 4,594 sick days recorded in 2010.

£66,00 spent on suspended council staff < < < Harrow Times

Harrow East MP Bob Blackman says it is “utterly ridiculous” that Harrow Borough Council has spent more than £660,000 over the past two years paying suspended staff not to work.

Figures obtained in a Freedom of Information request from Mr Blackman show the council has paid 97 suspended members of staff between April 2009 and February 2012.

The Conservative MP accused the council of being “bad value for money” despite cutting services and raising council tax.

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.

FOI: Government guarantees the free in Freedom of Information

Amid the intense media coverage of the Leveson Report, it’s hardly surprising the latest twist in the Government’s review of the Freedom of Information Act has gone largely un-noticed.

Regular readers of this blog (Hi Mum!) will remember that earlier this year, Parliament’s Justice Committee was asked to look at the impact FOI had had since it came into force in 2005. There was considerable pressure from various lobbies to make it harder to ask for information.

Birmingham City Council was one of a number of local authorities to use budget cuts as an excuse to ask for permission to charge £25 per FOI request to help manage demand (understanding that 20 councillors a year have to resort to FOI to get information from Brum gives you an idea why information requests might be so high). Others suggested that certain interest groups – such as journalists – should have to pay.

And then there were ominous rumblings from Government that FOI was clogging up the Government’s arteries (I would argue the inability of the coalition partners to agree on anything is causing more problems in this regard than FOI) and the peculiar suggestion from Francis Maude that his open data policy replaces the need for FOI, while failing to mention that open data actually hands power back to the data owner, rather than the data requester.

I was one of a number of journalists given the chance to appear before the committee to put the case of journalism – and it felt that the committee listened.

The committee’s report in July dismissed the notion of charging for FOI requests. It encouraged the private sector to be covered by FOI when doing work previously considered a public sector duty and urged local authorities to improve access to information before bleating about FOI costing too much.

However, there were areas for concern – including reducing the number of hours allowed on a request to be reduced from 18 to 16. A small, but important change which could push more FOI requests into the ‘too expensive to complete, guv’ category.

Of course, the committee’s report is only of use if the Government responds well to it, which, it turns out, they have.

FOI: The councillors who appear to be have been kept in the dark

A former colleague of mine, Larry Neild, ex-city editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, once showed me an FOI he’d either received or had handed to him by someone else.

It was seven pages long and the only bit you could read was the city crest at the top. The rest had been readacted. Seven big blocks of black, printed off and dispatched as an FOI response.

This week, however, redacting was taken to a whole new level, according to a story in the Brentwood Weekly News. Two Conservative councillors concerned about a major redevelopment project submitted an FOI request asking for details about the redevelopment.

The response – sent to two elected members of the council, voted into office to ensure they represent the views of those they serve – was 425 pages long. And entirely redacted.

Revealed: The councillors left red-faced after FOI requests revealed their true thoughts about constituents

It’s no wonder politicians don’t like the Freedom Of Information Act – it often reveals things they’d rather see kept secret.

Take Northumberland County councillor David Woodard, for example. It’s a safe bet than when he told council officers that people complaining about a set of traffic lights in Morpeth needed to ‘stop complaining and get a life’ he thought those thoughts would remain within the Town Hall walls.

Sadly for him, a Freedom of Information request by anti-lights campaigner (or so the Morpeth Herald calls him) David Bawn revealed all. Mr Bawn asked the council for all correspondence relating to the lights. Most had the names of the senders and receivers blanked out, about from the one from county councillor Woodard.