FOI Friday: Bouncing babies, sex offence tickings off and pensioners on drugs

Some very bouncing babies < Huddersfield Examiner Hundreds of Huddersfield’s bouncing babies are tipping the scales more than 2lbs above the national average. Figures reveal about 100 babies per year are born at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust weighing in excess of 9lb 9oz. The national averages are 7lb 8oz for a boy and

FOI Friday: Thefts from churches, Christmas cuts, Coventry’s oldest driver and hospital drug thieves

Tax relief for independent schools < Croydon Advertiser CROYDON’S independent schools received £6.8 million in business rates relief over the last six years. Figures obtained by the Advertiser through a Freedom of Information request to Croydon Council show the extent to which the town’s private schools receive financial support. What gets stolen from churches? <

The best advert placement you’ll ever see … or the most unfortunate?

I was going to write a post about the art of the social headline as opposed to the SEO headline, but I think I’ll leave that to another day. It was going to be based on the story below, from Bedfordshire on Sunday: You’d read that if you saw it on Twitter, right? Course you

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

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

FOI Friday: Posh cars, charity cuts, ambulance waits and smoking fines

1. The cuts, they hurt  Good stuff from the Lancashire Telegraph as it set out to find where the cuts are falling at local councils, and who is suffering. For this FOI, it zoomed in on the amount being given out in grants to community groups and charities. No surprise, they’ve been cut. But the level

FOI Friday: 10 things we discovered thanks to Freedom of Information this week

Compensation to prisoners, use of tasers in Cambridgeshire, probation breaches in Bedfordshire and the criminal record of a football legend. FOI Friday has a distinct criminal theme this week… Compensation paid to prisoners The Lincolnshire Echo published details of compensation payouts to to prisoners at jails in its area. A total of £16,365 has been