What Staffordshire County Council’s breakdown of FOI applicants tells us about the authority

Staffordshire County Council’s decision to ‘name and shame’ organisations costing it money through Freedom of Information requests has prompted a lot of criticism. My main bugbear is that, in the scheme of council spending, the cost of handling FOI requests remains tiny, as illustrated brilliantly by the Daily Mirror’s Ampp3d data journalism website here. Staffordshire

Going up, going down: The end of the of the football season in newspaper front pages

Nobody covers a football club quite like the local newspaper. The highs and the lows, the frustrations and the delights (with the sports desk normally being blamed for the former by readers, but rarely thanked for the latter). So it’s no surprise that when the not-quite-life-and-death matters of promotion and relegation are dealt with, the

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

FOI Friday: Swine flu deaths, speeding points, paper cuts in hospital and fuel prices

So, how many people did die of swine flu? For reasons known only to itself – although the fact it keeps being named and shamed by the Information Commissioner for its poor record on FOI might be a clue – the North West Strategic Health Authority banned hospital trusts from giving out figures on swine

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

#walsall24: How a council overcame the ‘no-one understands what we do’ dilemma

Just a quick mention for #walsall24, a 24-hour tweeting project from Walsall Council. A bit like Greater Manchester Police’s tweetathon last year, the 24 hour tweeting operation from Walsall Council aimed to show people just what the council does. Unlike the GMP live tweet, Walsall Council appears to have encouraged staff to use their own

20 FOI ideas to kick off 2011

There has been a spike in traffic coming to my blog this week using the search term ‘FOI ideas.’ Quiet first week back at the office maybe? So, here are 20 FOI ideas to kick off 2011, in no particular order. Happy new year! 1. Call outs to pubs and clubs Which pubs and clubs

FOI Friday (On a Tuesday?): Knives in court, World Cup bid costs and councillor pay rises

I didn’t get round to writing this on Friday – so it’s late. But hopefully, still worthwhile… 1. Seized at the court doors Where’s the one place you might not expect crime to be committed? We’ve already established that police stations are prone to crime, but what about courts? The Lancashire Evening Post used FOI

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

Complaints about food We start this week with one of those FOI stories which will have the anti-FOI brigade sucking their teeth as saying ‘What a waste of money.’ The Mail on Sunday reported on complaints made by MPs to the Commons catering department. One went so far as to say the menu depicted a

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

Accessing petitions Here’s an unusual one to kick us off this week, submitted not by a newspaper or journalist, but by a political party. I try and steer clear of political FOIs because they are, by their nature, one-sided, but it’s the information Labour got that interests me here. Not numbers or stats, but a