FOI Friday: Illegal immigrants, councils using dating sites, suspended staff and the long cost of PFI

How many miles of roadworks in your area? < < < In Cumbria MOTORISTS in Cumbria face around 600 miles of roadworks every year. Figures obtained in a Freedom of Information response showed that, at the end of January, there were 217 miles of roadworks to be completed by the end of this month. The

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

Cars for the political top cats It’s been a week for hearing about cutbacks in the public sector. Councils will argue they are as a lean as they can be anyway. But the South Wales Echo, using FOI, has learnt that £350k a year is spent £350k on top-of-the-range cars to ferry their political masters