FOI FRIDAY: Shop burglaries, looked after children a long way from home, army redundancies and homeless in B&Bs

‘Looked after’ children housed in different counties < < < Bury Free Press More than 130 looked after children in Suffolk are being placed outside the county as the demand for placements increases. Following a Freedom of Information request, the Bury Free Press can reveal that upto the end of February 135 out of the

FOI Friday: Council workers earning less than a living wage, mental health wards and publicly-funded competitions

From revealing the impact of hospital ward closures to the number of people working for councils below a living wage – here are 10 FOI ideas from around the country

Data: Eric Pickles goes on the attack again

Having never been a member of the Conservative Party, I’m not sure how I ended up on the mailing list from Conservative Party HQ. When the latest missive from London arrived today, it was marked up as being from Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, aka slayer of council newspapers and self-styled champion of transparency. In

FOI FRIDAY: Secret dossiers, missing prisoners, hate crimes and council redundancies

  1. Secret dossiers There’s a lot of focus on FOI as a tool to get data out of authorities at the moment, so I thought it was worth kicking off this week with a great example of what you get when you ask councils for full documents on things. Using FOI, the Leicester Mercury

FOI Friday: Parking tickets, pot holes, first class travel and international phone calls

With cutbacks looming, FOI request success stories relating to public spending seem to be rising, and dominate this week’s round-up of FOI stories from across the UK: 1. The fines issued to motorists for driving without due care Remember the famous story about the motoring ticket handed out to the driver who was eating an

Proof that FOI can be used in ‘old fashioned’ investigations?

Part of my job involves delivering Freedom of Information Act training sessions at various newspaper offices around the Trinity Mirror group. Every now and again someone will suggest that, good as FOI might be for getting information out of public bodies might be, it’s not substitute for ‘real’ investigations. The reference to ‘real’ tends to

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

1. How safe are you from crime in hospital? You’d like to think you were safe from crime in hospital, but the Liverpool Echo reports this week that that isn’t always the case. The Echo asked hospital trusts for details of thefts reported in hospitals in the region: SEVENTEEN sets of dentures, a nativity scene

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

Art for arts sake? Forget cash in the attic – there’s stuff worth real money being tucked away by local councils in the North East. The Northern Echo reports that councils in the region own £75million worth of art – much of it tucked away in storage. At a time when costs are being cut,

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

A council with 100,000 unsuitable images on its computers, a police force revealing it doesn’t investigate almost a quarter of reported crimes and the rising cost of parking fines – here are 10 stories made possible this week thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. 1. Buying British Councils up and down the country are