A good result to a Freedom of Information battle this week.
Channel 4 New’s Fact Check has put together a really in-depth look into nurse staffing levels – or the gaps in those – across England. The data comes from a Freedom of Information request, which NHS England initially refused.
The article comes with a search tool to see the situation at your local hospital – making it a great example of getting local data from a central source.
Meanwhile it’s Sunshine Week in the US, Prince Harry has apparently been declared a public body for FOI purposes (or this is just a rubbish headline).
Not so safe staffing
Following a ten-month battle, the Channel 4 News FactCheck team can reveal a vast NHS dataset showing the gap between how many nurses hospitals plan to have on wards – and how many there actually are.
The data shows a third of England’s acute hospitals are consistently missing more than one in ten of the nurses they have planned for on average across their wards
The nurse fill rate for every hospital in England was first published in 2014 under then-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. But in 2018, under then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the NHS shelved its publication.
The NHS has continued to collect this vital information in the six years since, and Channel 4 News’ FactCheck team obtained this data through a Freedom of Information request lodged in 2024 which was initially refused by NHS England. After nearly a year-long battle, we have finally accessed the files.
Complaints about cops
A police officer who had had 45 official complaint allegations made against him still remains employed by Hertfordshire Constabulary, it has emerged.
The number of allegations made against the officer, across 18 separate cases over the last 10 years, was revealed in the police force’s response to a Freedom of Information request from The Local Democracy Reporting Service.
However, the force refused to provide details of the nature of the allegations, stating that this constituted “personal information.”
It confirmed that the six officers who had received the most complaints in the last 10 years were still employed as of last month when the Freedom of Information request was submitted.
School attacks
Violence in schools has become such a serious problem that one Edinburgh teacher officially requested self-defence training.
A Freedom of Information survey of local authorities by the Scottish Conservatives found that a similar request had been made in Aberdeenshire.
Old equipment
Scottish patients are having to rely on X-Ray machines, MRI scanners and CT scanners which are decades old.
Freedom of Information Requests by Scottish Labour have shown that there are at least 99 X-Ray scanners still being used in Scottish hospitals which are over 10 years old. Some 54 of these are more than 15 years old.
The Society of Radiographers said: “The widely accepted benchmark age at which equipment should be replaced is 10 years.”
Interpreters
Sometimes the answer to your FOI is no information held. And that’s the story.
The Cardiff Deaf Support Group (CDSG) is calling for Welsh regulations to be changed so complaints about British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter services are publicly disclosed.
The CDSG has helped several deaf patients lodge complaints with health boards, often regarding requests for BSL interpreters being ignored. This has led to appointments being cancelled or postponed, potentially affecting patients’ health and wellbeing.
The CDSG recently made a Freedom of Information request to the Cardiff and Vale Health Board to ask how many complaints had been made by deaf patients about BSL interpreter services. The health board responded that no central records are kept.
Out of order
The amount of time lifts on the London Underground (LU) have been closed due to lack of staff has almost doubled in the last year, new figures reveal.
Lifts were out of action for 6,197 hours in 2024 compared with 3,301 hours in 2023 and 2,480 in 2022, a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats shows.
Cat cafes
Cat cafes have seen a boom in popularity in recent years, allowing customers to come in, interact with the furry felines and sometimes even adopt them.
However, the RSPCA and Cats Protection said the cafes should not be operating because it was “almost impossible” to meet the welfare needs of cats in this environment, where they were likely to be stressed by enforced proximity to other felines and strangers stroking them.
There are currently more than 30 cat cafes licensed in England, with 44% of those licences granted in the last financial year, according to a recent freedom of information request to all councils in England and Wales by the charities.
Image by Markus Reiter on Pexels
