FOI Friday: Absestos claims against councils, zero hour contracts, councils with millions in the bank and police encounters with men in fancy dress

Absestos claims made against councils < Manchester Evening News own hall bosses throughout Greater Manchester are facing a ‘ticking timebomb’ of mounting claims from people struck down with conditions linked to deadly asbestos. Manchester council paid out almost £600,000 in damages to victims in the last year alone, an M.E.N. investigation has found. The 2013/14

FOI Friday: Saying sorry to dodge court, parents smacking children, arsonists wanting to work in schools and the safety of bail hostels

Saying sorry to get away with violent crimes < Eastern Daily Press Fears over the misuse of restorative justice measures have been raised after the revelation that Norfolk Police have used informal agreements to deal with more than 7,000 crimes since 2010 – including almost 3,000 violent offences. The measures can be used by officers

FOI Friday: Teachers ignoring FGM advice, fines for school parking, food shoplifting and hospital repairs backlogs

Teachers ignoring FGM guidance < London Evening Standard Less than half of headteachers in London have read official guidance on stopping female genital mutilation, new figures revealed today. The guidance, which tells teachers how to identify girls who are at risk or who have suffered mutilation, was emailed to every school in the country. But

FOI Friday: Ambulance call out hot spots, crisis fund rejections, Premier League policing and missed 101 calls

Most frequent ambulance call out homes < BBC The Welsh Ambulance Service is urging people to think before dialling 999, after one home rang for an ambulance 290 times in a year. Of the call-outs to the property in Colwyn Bay, Conwy, 98 resulted in hospital visits. The service spent 3,660 hours dealing with the

FOI Friday: Air gun attacks, stressed out students, pauper funerals and troubled families

Bedroom tax rent arrears < Wolverhampton Express and Star Out of 3,803 Sandwell people affected by the removal of the Government’s spare room subsidy, 2,432 have now fallen into rent arrears. But the Labour-led council has not yet evicted anyone for falling into arrears as a result of what has become widely known as the

April Fools Day, as told by the regional press

According to Martha Gill, writing in The Guardian, Twitter has killed April Fools Day. Why? According to Gill, the fact that you see hundreds of brilliant jokes on Twitter, day in, day out, means the idea of a once-a-year occasion to make up funny stories is no longer required. Bobbins. If anything, social media has

FOI FRIDAY: HIV cases rise, council spending on credit cards, school transport appeals, active GMC investigations and more

HIV cases rise sharply < < < Plymouth Herald THE number of people who have tested positive for HIV in the city in the last five years has risen by 60 per cent, The Herald can reveal. Figures from Derriford Hospital’s GUM Clinic, released to The Herald under a Freedom of Information Request, show that

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: Asbestos, Facebook, police cells and sham marriages

10 good examples of FOI in action from the local, regional and national media: 1. Asbestos found at public buildings – Milford Mercury Asbestos, known as the silent killer, is regularly the subject of health and safety campaigns – so an FOI which reveals that the majority of council buildings in an area contained asbestos,

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

1. Schooling ‘on the cheap’ Schools are bound by the Freedom of Information Act,  but have 40 days to reply. That can make FOI-ing schools a bit of a challenge, but the results can pay off, as demonstrated by the Norwich Evening News this week. It found that high schools in Norwich are employing a