It sometimes seems like a new government provides an opportunity for public bodies to have a whinge about the FOI Act.

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council complained about the number of requests it receives, in a statement outlining its efficiency to the new Labour government.

In its statement, the council said: “The reality is that lots of the requests are from people looking for business, journalistic requests and other government departments.

“Whilst some are of course worthy, others have no public interest element yet require work to answer.

“The council asks that the government significantly revise the scope of the act to reduce the burden on councils.”

The first question here is, should government departments have to resort to FOI to get information they need?

The second bigger problem is with the hedging on ‘obviously some requests are important’. Yes, and if we had a system where public bodies can reject requests they thought were frivolous, would they answer any? And if people could make requests that were in the public interest, do you think arguing about whether or not each request was would take up less resources?

Back in 2012, the government carried out a major review of the operation of the Freedom of Information Act. The evidence submitted was broadly public bodies complaining about the burden and journalists, campaigners and members of the public pointing out the important things they’d discovered through FOI.

The House of Commons Justice Committee concluded the “additional burdens [of the Act] are outweighed by the benefits”. It said the cost to public authorities must be weighed against accountability, with evidence of cost savings, either when erroneous public spending was revealed or potential scrutiny led to better decision making.

FOI Friday is a weekly reminder of the importance of FOI. Every week, it shows the kind of stories that can only be uncovered using the Act.

And not all of them are ground breaking exclusives of national importance (some of them are) but often even small stories are a vital part of understanding local issues.

Hopefully (particularly given its enthusiastic use of FOI in the run-up to the election) Labour will, at least, ignore the call to attack the FOI Act, or, better still, mount an enthusiastic defence of the Act (a girl can dream!).

---

---

Still working

Hundreds of doctors and nurses have been left free to practise unchecked despite being accused of serious sexual assault and rape in the last six years, The Independent can reveal.

Between 2018 and 2024, some 248 doctors faced allegations of rape, sexual assault or attempted rape without their licences being suspended, according to new figures from the General Medical Council (GMC).

The scandal-hit Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) had more than 400 nurses practising without restrictions after sexual offence allegations between 2019 and 2024.

Babies in B&Bs

Inside Housing’s live data dashboard uses Freedom of Information requests to track the numbers of children under five living in temporary accommodation and B&Bs.

It estimates that in England, Scotland and Wales, as of March 2024 there were nearly 34,900 households in temporary accommodation with children aged under five, and nearly 3,000 in B&B accommodation.

Train delays

Railway users have faced nearly 15,000 cancellations due to human and technical errors, including more than 1,000 incidents this year, according to data released by Network Rail in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Since 2019, passengers have lost 988,419 minutes sat on trains left waiting on platforms or motionless due to these failures – equivalent to 686 days or almost two full years’ worth of delays. Stationary trains which are held at red signals can quickly result in backlogs.

Council Tax

One of the things that might relief the ‘burden’ of FOI on councils is them actually using exemptions properly. This FOI mostly didn’t need to be an FOI and therefore could have been dealt with by a swift Section 21 refusal (I’m a big fan of not sending an FOI when you don’t need to).

Coventry council is owed more than £27 million in unpaid council tax. Over 50,000 payments were outstanding as of the end of the last financial year, including some dating back to 2019 (this is probably the only bit of new information).

The overall sum owed is more than double the amount in 2013, almost a decade ago. The latest figures were released by the council in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by Accident Claims Advice.

Councils publish information about their council tax arrears each year (the 2023/24 data was published in June) – you can find England data in Table 9 here.

Cloned cars

Car cloning involves criminals stealing or copying another car’s registration plates, often choosing plates from a vehicle that looks similar to theirs. They can then accumulate fines, which go to the innocent owner.

A BBC investigation, based on a freedom of information request sent to all London councils, revealed a 64% surge in car cloning leading to fines being cancelled over three years. It found the number of cases rose from 22,450 in 2021 to 36,794 in 2023.

Overall fines issued went up by 20% over the same period. Some councils saw more than 1.5% of all their traffic fines linked to cloned vehicles. Hackney topped the list with nearly 2% of tickets issued attached to cloned cars.

Sick pay

Cheshire East Council paid out more than £700,000 to agency workers in the last two full calendar years – to cover for staff sickness.

Figures obtained by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) through a freedom of information request (FOI), also revealed 63,644 working days were lost at the council in the same period – between January 2022 and December 2023.

Cows

More cows could be kept indoors for the whole of their productive lives, animal welfare campaigners have warned, after the BBC found a rise in “megafarms”.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the BBC show the number of larger-scale beef and dairy farms in Britain has increased from 756 to 802 in five years, now holding more than 915,000 cattle.

Image by Tim Gouw on Pexels