Tagged: Lancashire Evening Post
Newspapers: Marketing with bottle
This is a little random, but it worked for me.
On Boxing Day, at my parents, I saw this advert on the side of a milk bottle.
And here’s the thing – it reminded me to buy the newspaper.
Like this:
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: Council employee compo, eating disorders, gypsy education and spying
1. Employer liability claims against councils
Lancahsire County Council paid out £1,250 to a member of staff who got a bad back from carrying a heavy refreshments tray while on duty. That was one of 179 claims made against LCC, reported by the Lancashire Evening Post, over the past four years – payouts have totalled more than £2million. Perhaps the most surprising one was this one:
£5,500 to a worker who fell out of bed responding to a phone call
A handy reminder of the value of returning to FOIs which may have been done elsewhere in the past. The Sunday Sun asked councils to reveal details of when they had used Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) powers to investigate members of the public.
The act means authorities can follow residents suspected of crime, trawl their internet browsing history and recruit informants and private investigators to monitor their movements. Some councils in the North even use it to snoop on their own staff.
3. Children with eating disorders
Bedfordshire on Sunday carried a worrying report on how eating disorders among young children was on the rise. It obtained the information by asking the South Essex Partnership Trust – the mental health trust for the area – for details of the numbers of cases, the sex of each case, and the age. The youngest were six and seven.
Cage-fighting kids: A handy reminder of the value of YouTube for journalists
The Lancashire Evening Post
The video of two children fighting inside a cage while 250 cheering adults watched on had been sat on Youtube for several days before the Lancashire Evening Post was tipped off to it.
The LEP splashed on the story last Wednesday and by Thursday, it was the talk of the media town, at times the only story the pending economic crisis was put on hold for.
LEP editor Simon Reynolds told Hold the Front Page the video had been found after a tip-off from a contact who had been in the audience. Good old-fashioned journalism, Reynolds called it – and he’s right.
But the story also reminds us of the value of YouTube, and many other sources of stories which come along, everyone gets exicted about, and then forgets about.
FOI Friday: Speaking clocks, hospital parking fines, gagging orders and snooping on council staff
1. Court cases dropped for ‘not being in the public interest’
Some fascinating numbers reported in the London Evening Standard as a result of an FOI request to the Crown Prosecution Service, which was asked to reveal how many prosecutions in London were dropped ‘because they were no longer in the public interest’ – often on cost grounds. More than 20,000 cases were dropped in London, a rise on previous years, with critics saying costs are increasingly a factor. One which could run and run elsewhere?
2. Another case of the cost of the obese
FOI requests asking hospitals about what they’ve spent on equipment to deal with obese people are nothing new – but asking the ambulance service could bring in some interesting results, as this story on the Daily Post in North Wales proves.
Here’s a new take on the parking tickets FOI. We’ve all done FOIs about the how much hospitals make from parking charges, but how many parking tickets do they issue? In Aberdeen, it’s around 2000 fines a year. A nice sideline if ever there was one?
FOI Friday: Dog poop, online browsing, police response times and racism in schools
1. What public sector workers look at online
I think it’s safe to say this one could run, and run, and run. A freedom of information request to the Department for Transport revealed the top 1,000 most visited websites from Department for Transport computers. Some amusing surprises in there.
2. Alternative therapies in schools
According to a freedom of information request reported in the Birmingham Mail, schools in the city have spent £1.5million on alternative therapies for staff and pupils, including massages. The firms paid the cash was called Herriots and Millward.
3. Data Protection Act breaches in police forces
The Manchester Evening News this week revealed that a memory stick containing details of drugs informants had been stolen in a burglarly from a police officer’s house. Greater Manchester Police was so keen for the public’s help in cracking this case that it didn’t even mention it for over a week. Coincidentally, an FOI request from the Cambridge News demonstrates the value of using FOI to ask police forces for the number of Data Protection Act breaches. 12 staff were caught breaking DPA rules, including one person putting information on Facebook. If ever you’ve done the ‘lost and stolen data’ FOI, it might be worth broadening it out in future to include any DPA breaches.
FOI Friday: Crumbling hospitals, pension funds, foreign patients and stolen monkeys
Crumbling hospitals (Press and Journal)
The Press and Journal in Aberdeen reports on how it has forced the local NHS authority to reveal the maintainance backlog at hospitals and health centres in its area. The backlog was first reported last month, but NHS Grampian refused to release the exact details. So the P&J turned to FOI to get it.
How council pension schemes invest their funds (The Observer)
The Guardian reports on a row brewing over the fact that public sector pension funds are investing millions of pounds in tobacco firms by buying shares in them. Doctors in the south west say the funds are effectively profiting from death. A little full on maybe, but the information emerged through FOI, and it may be worth asking other councils for details of the companies their pension schemes invest in.
Confidential council files lost on laptop (Huddersfield Daily Examiner)
The FOI about the number of data protection breaches at hospital trusts and police forces is well documented, but applying it to councils can generate some strong leads too. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reports on how confidential files containing details of 25 people – including names, addresses and health needs – were on a stolen laptop. In another case, a person’s name, address, date of birth and phone number were faxed to the wrong number.
FOI FRIDAY: Bail hearing notes, mystery foreign trips, smoking bans and relocation costs
Oooh.. a secret
1. Using FOI to get transcripts of bail hearings (Lancashire Telegraph)
Here’s a case for all reporters to keep in mind when dealing with stories which involve a question mark over whether the right decision was made at a bail hearing.
The murder of Lancashire nurse Jane Clough by her ex-boyfriend Jonathan Vass has been widely reported. He was on bail at the time for other offences, despite advice from the CPS and police to a judge not to allow such a situation.
The case has gone to Parliament this week with an MP calling for prosecutors to be given the right to appeal a bail hearing decision. The Lancashire Telegraph has covered the story carefully, and crime reporter Sam Chadderton used FOI to get hold of the transcripts of the bail hearings which led to Vass being released on bail:
Now, for the first time, the Lancashire Telegraph has gained access to a full written account of the two bail hearings, under the Freedom of Information Act.
Despite a formal application to the courts service being refused, the judge personally agreed to release the transcripts.
2. Police breaking data protection rules (Liverpool ECHO)
The Liverpool ECHO used FOI to find out how many times police officers at Merseyside Police had been caught breaking data protection laws. The answer: 208 times in three years:
Breaches include officers accessing police computer systems to access classified data about family and friends, spying on ongoing cases and researching for “non-policing” purposes.
Merseyside Police blamed a year-on-year rise down to the fact 130 officers looked at the file involving an allegation against Steven Gerrard.
2. Complaints about the smoking ban (Reading Post)
In the week MPs began looking at revoking part of the smoking ban, the Reading Post revealed the findings of its FOI probe into how well used anti-smoking legislation was in Reading. The answer: Not very. Reading Council has never tried to enforce the ban, with just 60 complaints made about alleged breaches. So what was all the fuss about?
3. The five-year-old accused of criminal damage (Bradford Telegraph and Argus)
Ok, so the FOI about the number of under tens who have been accused of committing offences has been done many times before – so why mention it now? Simple – the response from West Yorkshire Police was very detailed, and gave the age of the youngest person accused by a crime, thus making it possible for the T&A to report on the five year old accused of criminal damage.
4. Relocation costs (Stoke Sentinel)
A whole bunch of councils have merged in the last few years – but at what cost? The Stoke Sentinel pushed for answers on this when it submitted FOI requests to the new Cheshire East Council to find out how much had been paid in relocation cost to staff when it had been formed. The answer: £850,000 for people who had to move offices.
5. Suspended police officers (Sunday Sun)
The number of police officers suspended from police forces in the north doubled last year, according to the Sunday Sun – with some spending more than a year on gardening leave.
6. Redundancy costs for health chiefs (Teesside Gazette)
The costs of making staff redundant from authorities has been in the headlines for a while and in Teesside, the Evening Gazette has been steadily revealing the costs at various bodies in its areas. Primary Care Trusts are among those making big redundancies ahead of being scrapped, and the Gazette has made a point of asking for details of the biggest single payout – including 3223k at one health trust.
7. A numbers game (Brighton Argus)
Covering benefits stories can be tricky as it normally involves being accused of picking on the vulnerable. But this story from the Brighton Argus is worth digging into. It reports on figures, obtained under FOI, which show that an average of 10% of people trying to claim for Employment Support Allowance get it – but in Sussex 15% of all applicants are approved for it. In other words, you’re 50% more likely to get it in Sussex than anywhere else.
8. Council tax reminders for councillors (Maidenhead Advertiser)
The Maidenhead Advertiser is the latest newspaper to do the FOI about the councillors who have been sent reminders for not paying their council tax. Maidenhead Council refused to name the councillors, as have others, but did say five councillors were sent reminders. I quite like the defence of one councillor who said they were so busy it could easily slip a councillor’s mind!
9. An unusual take on foreign trips by a council (Lancashire Evening Post)
I thought I’d include this story not because it’s an FOI we’ve not heard of before – but because it’s proof that FOI is only ever part of a story. The Lancashire Evening Post reported on the number of foreign trips made by councillors at the expense of taxpayers. What made the story was the response from the council about one trip to Bologna: The council couldn’t remember why councillors went or what was achieved.
10. Second home council tax (Ivybridge and South Brent Gazette)
And finally one which could run and run, especially in these cash-tight times. The Gazette used FOI to ask how many houses were subject to second-home council tax relief – therefore reducing council tax by 10 per cent. For South Hams, around £700,000 is lost in this relief, and the figures were broken down by area.
Note to new parents: Choose the name before doing the birth announcement
Each week, the Lancashire Evening Post turns over a page on a Saturday to pictures of babies born in the previous week. It’s a bit like Christmas Day babies, only every week.
It appears to be quite popular – so popular that some parents appear to be so keen to meet the deadline that they’ll send in a pic before actually deciding on the name….
Lancashire Evening Post new babies page
FOI Friday: 999 attacks, bin fines, obese babies and plastic surgery
Area-by-area crime rates – and how many are solved (Oxford Mail)
There’s been a lot of debate about how valuable, or otherwise, the police crime maps are. They tell you about crime a month later, aren’t that accurate when it comes to naming the location and won’t tell you if the crime has been solves.
The Oxford Mail has perhaps produced something of at least equal value with an FOI to Thames Valley Police asking for an area by area breakdown of crimes committed, and the percentage solved. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there’s quite a postcode lottery at play. I would imagine the key to getting a success with this FOI is to ask for the figures broken down by area the police recognise – eg a police beat or area.
Fines for leaving the bins out (South Wales Echo)
In a week when the weekly bin collection was dropped as a policy by the government in England, a timely story about fines for leaving your bins out if you live in Cardiff:
Hundreds of households have been fined by a council for leaving their wheelie bins and rubbish bags out on the wrong day, we can reveal.
Cardiff council issued £100 fines to 416 homes in the year between April 2010 and March 2011, a Freedom of Information request to the authority showed.
Noisy animals (Manchester Evening News)
According to the Manchester Evening News, town halls in Greater Manchester have received 2,000 complaints about noisy animals in the last year – including 100 about chickens.
Among the more offbeat noisy complaints was one about a vocal parrot in Bury.
