Nobody fights a three-year FOI battle for the clicks.
A couple of weeks ago, FOI Friday covered the Romford Recorder’s battle to get a report into a dossier of racism and sexism complaints out of Havering Council.
Havering Council has finally released the (heavily redacted) information but not without releasing a statement of attacking the Recorder for asking for the information in the first place!
Council chief executive Andrew Blake-Herbert said: “From the relentless campaign the Recorder has run – in what they claimed to be was in the public interest – it seems they hold little regard for hard working council workers who keep the borough’s services running for our residents.
“Instead, they risk creating potential discord which in turn could inflame community tensions in return for a perceived ‘scoop’ and some hits on their website.”
To be fair, a tribunal did rule that it was in the public interest to release the information, so the newspaper claiming that doesn’t seem like a stretch.
Attacks on paramedics
Violence and abuse against paramedics and emergency call handlers is on the rise, with reported cases up by more than a third since 2019, the BBC has found.
Almost 45,000 assaults were recorded by ambulance services across England over the last five years, with staff saying they had been punched, kicked, threatened with weapons and subjected to racist, homophobic and religious abuse.
The BBC submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to every ambulance service in England, which showed there were 44,926 physical and verbal assaults recorded on frontline and operations staff between 2019 and 2023.
Fines
On-the-spot penalties issued for offences including swearing, shouting, idling, loitering and begging, known as “busybody” fines, jumped 42% in 2023, according to a report.
The majority of the 19,162 penalties in England and Wales – up from the previous record high of 13,433 in 2022 – were issued by private enforcement companies contracted by councils, the research found.
The report used freedom of information legislation to ask councils about penalties for breach of public spaces protection orders (PSPOs), powers that allow councils to ban activities in public spaces.
It found that the 39 councils that employed a private enforcement company for PSPOs issued a total of 14,633 penalties, while the 261 councils that did not employ a private company issued 4,529.
Concerns
More than 400 ‘concern for person’ incidents have been recorded at the Kessock Bridge in the last six years. Data from Police Scotland shows officers attended 421 such incidents between January 1, 2019 and September 30, 2024.
There were 51 concern for person calls at the stretch of the A9 connecting Inverness and the Black Isle in 2019. This figure dropped to 37 in 2020, when there were periods of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The stats, which were released via a Freedom of Information request, show 62 incidents in 2021. There was a further rise in 2022 when there were 104. The number rose to a high of 115 incidents last year.
Rough sleeping
Derby has seen a big rise in people sleeping rough over the past few years and one charity boss has warned that this is merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
Nearly 350 people were classed by Derby Homes as Rough Sleepers over the past year, after a freedom of information act obtained figures showing that levels have increased from 189 in 2022/2023 to 347 in 2023/2024.
The figures were obtained by Advice.co.uk, which found that the housing association Derby Homes had logged 586 cases of rough sleepers since 2021.
Empty homes
Almost 3,000 homes in Glasgow lie empty for six months or more in damning new figures as the Scottish Government is accused of a “massive failure”.
Record numbers of families across the country are living out on the streets while 28,000 homes across the country remain vacant. A Freedom of Information request has uncovered that the huge number of vacant properties are lying empty, while millions of pounds are poured into low-quality temporary homes, hotels and B&Bs.
An FoI request by the Lib Dems asked all 32 local councils how many homes were long-term vacant or empty for longer than six months. Of those, 30 councils held the data, it found 27,954 long-term vacant properties, including 3,093 in Edinburgh, 2,929 in Aberdeenshire, 2,801 in Glasgow and 2,584 in Argyll & Bute.
Far from home
Dozens of homeless families are being sent miles outside of London as Westminster does not have enough temporary accommodation, a new Freedom of Information (FoI) into housing figures from 2020 has shown. Since 2020, Westminster City Council has sent people as far as 33 miles away to Southend-on-Sea in Essex and up to 23 miles away to North Hertfordshire and South Bucks, according to analysis carried out by Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
The LDRS also found the council using temporary accommodation in Thurrock, Slough, Epping Forest and Hertsmere. The distances were calculated by measuring the distances between Westminster City Council’s headquarters in Victoria to the closest border of each area outside of London.
Housebuilding
Local councils have told the government its flagship plan to build 1.5m new homes in England over the next five years is “unrealistic” and “impossible to achieve”, the BBC can reveal.
The vast majority of councils expressed concern about the plan in a consultation exercise carried out by Angela Rayner’s housing department earlier this year.
The responses, obtained by the BBC through Freedom of Information laws, potentially set local authorities on a collision course with Labour over one of its top priorities.
Irish language
Irish language and bilingual street signs in Northern Ireland have been vandalised more than 300 times in the past five years.
Almost £60,000 was spent by councils repairing and replacing the damaged signage, according to figures obtained by BBC News NI.
Some signs were daubed with paint or graffiti while others were burned, stolen or pulled down.
Paternity leave
New analysis of the government’s shared parental leave scheme shows uptake is skewed against lower earners in favour of wealthier families in south-east England.
The figures, from a Freedom of Information request submitted to HMRC by The Dad Shift, show the top 20% of earners make up 60% of those to use shared parental leave.
Just 5% of those who took up shared parental leave came from the bottom 50% of earners.
Tiger bite
A zookeeper has lost the tip of his finger while feeding a Siberian tiger its dinner.
The incident happened at the Big Cat Sanctuary near Ashford, and the zookeeper was taken to hospital and signed off for a month, according to the Telegraph.
Health and safety records released under freedom of information laws record how the zookeeper had cut the tiger’s food too small, causing it to rip off the tip of the middle fingers on his right hand.
The incident marks one of the 72 serious accidents at zoo and safari parks reported to the Health and Safety Executive last year.
Image by Engin Akyurt on Pexels
