FOI Friday: The cost of unions, the cost of dying, the cost of parking … and escaping prisoners

The cost of dying goes up

The Scotsman used FOI to find out how much cremation and burial charges had risen as a result of recent spending cuts – in some places it has doubled, while overall the amount raised from such services has gone from £8million to £16million.

The cost of residents permits goes up

Spotting a theme here yet? Maybe. The BBC’s Inside Out programme – ie the programme the BBC bigwigs want to slash the budget of, despite being the only regional current affairs progeamme the BBC currently produces which breaks stories – used FOI to ask councils how much they’d made from residents parking permits in recent years. No surprise, the figure has rised rapidly.

PCTs blocking drugs to save cash

An investigation by GP magazine has revealed that dozens of primary care trusts are blocking access to drugs which have been approved by NICE, the government’s drug approval/rationing (depending on your point of view) agency. The NHS constitution says that any drug approved by NICE should be made available, so this could be an FOI for local newsapers to follow up.

FOI Friday: Dodging magistrates, the race for Oxbridge, big cats and clearing up after gypsies

Oxford University - unfamiliar territory for Welsh students?

How many going to university?

Some interesting data from the Western Mail, which used FOI to ask how many students from each of the towns in Wales had been enrolled at Oxford and Cambridge in recent years. In some parts of Wales, not a single student has attended Oxbridge for seven years.

No shows at magistrates courts

One of the more controversial cuts decisions made by the government has been the planned closure of courts. The Southport Visiter used FOI to ask how many no shows there had been at its courts, which are due to close. The answer was that 1,778 warrants had been issued for no shows since 2008. The next question is whether that figure will rise when Sefton Magistrates closes and cases are transferred further away

Gypsy clean up

Covering stories about gypsies can be difficult for regional journalists because it often leads to accusations of promoting Nimbyism. However, the Sunderland Echo added an extra dimension to its coverage of a temporary gypsy camp by asking the council how much it cost to clean up the camp. The answer was £1,700.

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.

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

Recession impact on charities

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.

Students suing schools

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.

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

Lying Parents

School place appeals stories are always popular and controversial, and in recent years many councils have vowed to get tough on those who lie to get their children into good schools. But how many parents have been found to be lying? The Gloucestershire Echo used FOI to find out.

Forced adoptions

A good example of knowing the phrases councils use from the Leicester Mercury, which reports on the 200 ‘forced adoptions’ carried out by the council, taking children from natural parents to new parents elsewhere.

The £7.83 compensation payout

The Southport Visiter reports this week on the sorts of things Sefton Council pays out for – and how much. Perhaps it’s the smaller payouts which are the most surprising, such as the £7.83 given to someone who claimed a council employee had damaged their car.

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

1. Anti-social behaviour in the library

There was a time when it was the contents of some books which caused most offence in libraries. Apparently that’s not the case now in Lincolnshire, when indecent exposure, public urination

2. Dog attacks

The Southport Visiter reports on the number of dog attacks in Southport – based on figures it got from the local hospital for the last three years. 1000 dog-related injuries in three years seems a worrying trend for an area like Southport.

3. Botched operations

Did you know FOI could be used to find out some details about botched operations? It seems it can – and this story from the Ipswich Star appears to be proof of that. It oroved a story about a testicle operation resulting in a man becoming infertile using FOI. An open door to finding out how many operations go wrong?

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

1. Snakes in a school

I mentioned on here before Christmas about an FOI request made by the Dundee Courier for pest control reports involving local hospitals. A different take on that FOI comes from a local Labour councillor who, the BBC reports, asked for the pest control reports involving local schools. The council replied with details of call outs to deal with bats, pigeons – and snakes.

2. How many new potholes?

Potholes became big news last month when the bad weather hit the area, but how bad was the problem? The Lincolnshire Echo asked the county council for the number of new pothole reports it had received last month – and the answer was 715. That compares to 1,300 for the whole of last winter.

3. The impact of the Baby P case

A interesting use of FOI to marry up a national story with a local issue. The Southport Visiter reports on a 60% increase in the number of children Sefton Council has taken into care following the national storm triggered by the death of Baby P.

4. Learning from the letters page

Who says you can’t learn stuff on the letters page? In the Times, Dr Rod Storring and Dr David Dighton added their take to the Mid Staffordshire Hospital crisis, by referring to their own analysis of the Care Quality Commission’s annual staff satisfaction survey. One of the questions is: “Am I able to deliver the patient care I aspire to”. Response levels were poor in Mid Staffordshire – is it one which could be revealing across the country too? Proof of positive success with FOI if you have a good working knowledge of what information hidden government bodies hold.

5. Spin, or good health?

The Express and Star had another angle in the Staffordshire Hospital row – finding out how much the hospital had spent on ‘spin’ during the three years in which people weren’t receiving the care they should have done.

The NHS Trust running Stafford Hospital spent £628,000 on boosting its image in a three-year-period when it was embroiled in a scandal over dismal standards of care.

Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs Cannock Hospital, spent the cash on public relations and marketing over the last three financial years.

Over the same time period that Stafford Hospital is accused of causing between 400 and 1,200 avoidable deaths – partly due to poor staffing levels – its parent trust spent tens of thousands of pounds on a PR agency in addition to spending more than £30,000 a year on its own internal press office.

Spending on PR agencies ballooned from £51,000 in 2006/07 to £107,000 in 2008/09. Thousands more was spent on advertisements and “marketing management costs”.

The total PR spend is equal to the cost of around ten full-time nurses every year.

6. Allotments crisis

One of those regular stories from the recession has been the growing number of people turning to ‘The Good Life’ to make ends meet. But it’s not that simple in Camden, where the waiting list for an allotment stands at 983, an FOI request reported in the Willesden and Brent Times reports.  That equate to a wait of roughly 50 years.

7. Law-breaking coppers

The Sunday Sun in Newcastle reveals the crimes coppers have been committing in the region thanks to FOI. Drug dealing, drink driving, sexual assault and even death by dangerous driving are among the offences they committed – with 23 officers resigning on the spot.

8. Accidents at a city council

Birmingham City Council has big money problems at the moment, with thousands of jobs at risk. The Sunday Mercury added a new dimension to the debate by finding out how much had been spent on compensation claims for staff resulting from workplace injuries.

It has forked out £2.6 million in the last five years on accident at work claims, including £300,000 to an employee who suffered post traumatic stress following an undisclosed incident.

Two others collectively billed the council for almost £300,000 after exposure to asbestos led to them contracting mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer.

9. Empowered Council workers

Using an FOI request submitted by Big Brother Watch, the Glamorgan Gazette reports that more than 100 council officers have the right to enter homes without a warrant or police escort, a figure which is much higher than in nearby larger authorities.

10. And a returning favourite: Parking hotspots

The Flintshire Chronicle makes good use of one of the most well-known FOIs -  getting the top 20 parking tickets  hotspots in the Flintshire area. It’s one worth turning to time and time again, as it provides instant useful information for readers.