Tagged: Sunday Mercury
FOI Friday: Dirty hospitals, re-employed redundant council workers, lost dogs and drug warrants
A fortnightly round-up of FOI-based stories which could be followed up anywhere…
The secret past of would-be teachers < < < Sunday Sun
POSSESSING explosives, being drunk while in charge of a child, death by reckless driving and indecent assault on a girl . . these are just some of the serious criminal convictions would-be teachers in the North have under their belt.
Hundreds of potential teachers have been applying for classroom positions across the region despite holding a range of serious criminal convictions, the Sunday Sun can reveal.
Information released by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), after the Sunday Sun made a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed the scale of convictions clocked up by teachers applying for positions in the North.
Childhood drugs overdoses < < < Sunderland Echo
A SIX-YEAR-OLD was rushed to Sunderland Royal Hospital after overdosing on antidepressants.
The shocking revelation comes as new figures show three people a day are admitted to the city’s hospital after taking a drug overdose.
A total of 2,999 people were taken to A&E after overdosing on prescribed or non-prescribed medicine and drugs from December 2008 to December 2011.
The youngest was a six-year-old. A further five 12-year-olds were admitted after overdosing on painkillers, penicillin and anti-inflammatory drugs.
More council compensation claims < < < Sunday Mercury
A COUNCIL grave digger has been awarded £65,000 compensation – after he fell into a burial plot he was preparing.
The cemetery worker received the payout from Birmingham City Council (BCC) after he hurt his right knee in the incident.
He is one of several local authority employees who have claimed compensation after being injured at work.
In another case a school worker was handed £100,000 after slipping on food in a dinner hall.FOI Friday: Problem families, housing benefit cheats, kids in cells and unsolved crimes
1. How many ‘problem families’ have moved into your area?
It’s not often it’s worth flagging up an FOI request before a result has come back, but this is a little different. The Ledbury Reporter newspaper reports on how Ledbury Town Council is trying to find out how many ‘problem families’ have been allocated housing in the town from outside the area. According to the council, such allocations take place under an arrangement called the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements.
2. Youth clubs which close too early
A little different, but fascinating all the same. Are councils doing enough to keep young people out of trouble in the evening? I suppose it depends on your view as to whether it is a council’s job to keep young people out of trouble. The Evening Standard clearly thought so, asking all councils for the opening and closing times of youth clubs. Most close before 7pm – just before the time of day when young people are, according to the paper, most likely to commit crime.
Ok, so we’ve seen this FOI before, but if ever there was proof that just because it’s been done somewhere else shouldn’t mean you don’t do it as well, it’s this. The Birmingham Mail asked the question of the number of weapons seized at courts. The answer was 40,000. Really.
FOI Friday: Strange weapons, cost of a big fire, prison menus and revisiting attacks at hospitals
Newcastle Evening Chronicle: Reports compiled about big fire show concerns over safety equipment
EFFORTS to fight a giant blaze were hit by concerns over safety equipment.
Internal fire service documents seen by the Chronicle reveal the fire caused damage to the neck straps on firefighters’ breathing masks that did not meet required standards.
The fault was raised in a report compiled by chiefs and an investigation was recommended.
The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, also reveal how the cost of the operation exceeded £50,000.
Details released under the Freedom of Information Act show police have confiscated hundreds of unusual items which have been used in attacks or deemed offensive weapons.
The haul also includes a pizza shovel, a quill pen and a pool ball in a sock.
Newcastle Journal: £4million seized back from criminals in North East
MORE than £4m was seized from North East criminals in just two years as police used court powers to strip them of their ill-gotten gains.
Criminals on Tyneside and in Northumberland paid back nearly £700,000 in cash while, following examinations by forensic accountants, fraudsters have also had to pay nearly £2.5m to cover the cost of their assets.
Financial investigators calculated the true value of their benefits to determine exactly what they owed from their businesses.
FOI Friday: Tonsils, waiting in ambulances, thefts from courts and some interesting emails
Courts were told to push for tougher sentences
When doing FOI Friday, I try and pick FOI stories which can be replicated elsewhere. Based on that criteria, including this story from The Guardian seems a bit odd. Basically, the Guardian got hold of court emails which encouraged magistrates to direct riot-related offences to crown court for sentence. The reason I’ve included it is because it demonstrates just how powerful FOI can be if you go beyond numbers and ask for documents. Emails can be a rich source of stories – from memos directing traffic wardens where to target for parking through to stuff like this.
There’s something particularly good about this use of FOI. Yes, it’s about hospital admissions relating to drink, but it’s just so thorough. The Sunday Sun reveals how the number of admissions to hospital for alcohol-related matters have rocketed in five years. But they also asked for age-group breakdown – those in their 40s and 50s are the biggest group – the youngest admissions, and a breakout for cases treated in A&E alone. Good stuff.
Life after the News of the World: Front pages from the regional Sunday newspapers
During today, I’ve seen a number of tweets from reporters and news editors heading into the office remarking how strange it is not to have the News of the World to go through when they get there.
Doing the Sunday newspapers is a thankless task. You spend a good couple of hours and it can yield nothing. And when there is a local story in the nationals, they tend to be terribly hard to stand up on a Sunday. And then if you are found to have missed a story….
But given the amount of interest in the how the national newspapers were responding to the first Sunday without the NOTW dominating the news stands, I thought it might be worth rounding up the front pages of the regional Sunday newspapers.
There’s no commentary to go with them, I just thought it might be interesting to share the ones I could get hold of on what is the start of a new era for Sunday titles. I’ll add more as I get them:
Sunday Sun - North East
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Wales on Sunday - Wales
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Sunday Mercury - Midlands
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Scotland on Sunday
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Sunday Mail, Scotland (Ok, I know it's a national but I thought I'd include it as it isn't done in London)
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Derry Journal
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Sunday Life
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: Guns on the street, refunds for poor teaching, crimes in the town hall … and the hairbrush seized by cops
Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Sunday Mercury in Birmingham reported on the number of guns which police had taken off the streets in the past three years – some 9,000.
2. Drugs cases involving youngsters in hospitals
Sticking with the Sunday Mercury, it reported this week on a child under one who was admitted to hospital in Birmingham suffering from an overdose of a Class A drug. Four children, in total, have been admitted to hospital for ‘drug abuse’ medical problems.
Here’s one that could run and run, from an FOI-able body most people won’t have heard of. The Mail on Sunday used FOI to find out how many students had demanded refunds because they felt the uni teaching they received wasn’t up to scratch. The body which decides these cases is the Office of the independent Adjudicator, which saw the number of claims rise when tuition fees went up. Finding out how many complaints against each university would be the next logical step.
FOI Friday: Legal aid for a murderer, teachers unchecked, wheelie bins and … top pothole streets
Legal aid for a man convicted of murder
The Belfast Newsletter reports on the outrage caused by revelations that £800,000 was spent on legal aid for a man convicted of murder – a figure which is expected to rise now the man concerned is expected to appeal.
In the classroom without a CRB check
The East Anglian Daily Times used FOI to ask Suffolk County Council how many teachers began teaching without having had the full criminal record checks. 61 teachers this term in 47 schools were involved, a decline on 211 last year.
Streets with the worst pothole problems
The Shields Gazette used FOI to find out how much the local council had spent fixing potholes, but also asked for the streets with the worst pothole problems, presumably determined by number of potholes which needed to be filled in.
Councils in many areas insist on residents have wheelie bins, but appear to have a lucrative sideline in selling the bins when new people move in or when the bins are lost/stolen (‘fire in wheelie bin’ was a daily nib on several newspapers I’ve worked on). The Inverness Courier found that its local council had charged £160k from selling bins in recent years.
FOI FRIDAY: Underage booze, cops buying lip balm, quango spending and some interesting hospitality
1. Venues caught selling booze to under-aged teens
Proof of the value of local knowledge when it comes to an FOI came from the South Wales Echo this week. Ed Walker initially had his request for the names of all venues caught selling booze to youngsters refused by the authorities – so he appealed it, citing public interest because under-aged drinking was a big issue at community police meetings. The police relented and the offending venues were named and shamed this week.
2. Promotional spending by the police
The Northampton Chronicle revealed that the local police had spent more than £36,000 on promotional items in the last two years, including cash for promotional lip balm. This Is Cornwall has a similar story, detailing how money was spent on crime-fighting tools such as branded pencils
3. Spending at development agencies
It was a bit of a battle to get regional development agencies covered by the FOI Act in the first place and now the government plans to scrap them because the organisations are now considered poor value for money. That makes them ripe for FOI requests, and the Manchester Evening News was able to report on the £20k spent on corporate entertainment and car hire for its chief executive.
4. When external PR costs as much as 12 heart bypass operations
The Birmingham Mail decided to look into the amount spent on promoting the city’s new hospital which opened over the summer. The hospital trust does have its own press and PR team – it is, after all, a big hospital serving a big area. But it turns out the hospital spent an extra £64k on bringing in externals PRs to promote the new hospital. Value for money?
FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt this week thanks to the Freedom of Information Act
Car accidents involving the police
In the Midlands, according to the Sunday Mercury, police cars were involved in more than 6,000 accidents in two years. Police took responsibility for a third of them – and the amount paid out in compensation was £1million. A simple FOI but very effective.
Councils often use these sorts of FOIs to demonstrate how journalists abuse FOI, but at a time when councils are making cuts to services, should they really be spending £1,000 a year on bottled water for officers and councillors at meetings? Thanks to the Uxbridge Gazette, that’s something the voters can now make their minds up about.
Injuries inflicted upon police officers
The Edinburgh Evening News revealed this week that two dozen police officers in the city had received bite injuries – half from humans – after asking for the injuries sustained by officers on duty:
The bite attacks were revealed as part of a list released under freedom of information laws of 644 injuries suffered by officers and special constables.
Another 103 employees from the force’s 1,400-strong civilian staff were also injured since the start of last year while at work.
One force employee even suffered an electric shock last October in a police office.
A total of 17 fractures and eight dislocations were recorded, and one officer was injured on duty by a needle. Police officers are able to make a civil claim for compensation against anyone who is responsible for them being injured while on duty.
