FOI Friday: Roadworks hell, hidden art, naughty nurses and bedblocking patients

Plagues of roadworks < Get Surrey Dismay has been expressed over a ‘plague’ of roadworks on a stretch between Bramley and Guildford in the past three years. Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that more than 860 individual projects were carried out on the A281 from 2012 to 2014 – an average

FOI Friday: Social workers sacked, unsolved crimes, bailiffs after benefit cuts and dodgy drivers

Thirty-year-old unsolved murders in Surrey – Surrey Advertiser/GetSurrey A total of 41 murder cases in the county – the earliest dating back to 1974 – remain unsolved to this day, the Surrey Advertiser can reveal. Data released under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed murders in Epsom, Ash, Guildford, Effingham, Ashtead, Virginia Water and

Arise, your newspaper: How regional newspapers covered the New Year Honours

If you saw the national newspapers or TV news on Saturday, then you’ll know that The New Year Honours were somewhat dominated by  Olympians. And why not? 2012, after all, is a year which will be remembered for sport.

FOI Friday: 999 attacks, bin fines, obese babies and plastic surgery

Area-by-area crime rates – and how many are solved (Oxford Mail) There’s been a lot of debate about how valuable, or otherwise, the police crime maps are. They tell you about crime a month later, aren’t that accurate when it comes to naming the location and won’t tell you if the crime has been solves.

FOI Friday: Cops on desk duty, idle ambulances, data losses, council refurbishments and schoolchild crimes

Coppers on desk duty The debate rages on about whether government cuts are going to hit frontline services or the just the fabled bloated back offices and the Manchester Evening News came up with a new angle into the discussion this week: the number of frontline police officers on the desk duties through illness. 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