FOI Friday: Investigating business grants, frisky Welsh folk and the 104-year-old criminal

1. Spending money to talk about cuts The Waltham Forest Guardian reports on an interesting spending choice at the local council – an £18,000 advertising campaign to tell people the council would protect local services which people care about. The campaign follows on from another £27,000 campaign to find out which services people wanted protecting.

FOI FRIDAY: Wrongly-released prisoners, compo for teachers, police bill for mobile phone records and dodgy measures in the pub

Looking for an FOI idea? Here are 10 which made headlines recently…. 1. Wrongly released prisoners The Liverpool ECHO used FOI to find out how many prisoners had been released from the city’s two prisons by mistake over the last few years. In total, nine were – including several who had been convicted of violent

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,