This week’s FOI Friday took so long, there’s now a new public body subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Services run by Greater Anglia are the latest to transfer into public ownership (as of Sunday (October 12)). Which means it joins the growing list of rail operators you can make FOI requests about trains to.

Other FOI news:

The Australian Government’s Bill to amend the FOI Act is potentially struggling to get the support it needs. The Bill would introduce more charges for requests, ban on anonymous requests, and increase powers to deter vexatious, abusive and frivolous requests.

When the legislation, which has been introduced into the House of Representatives (lower house), reaches the Senate (upper house), Labor will need the support of either the opposition or the Greens to pass the Bill. The Greens are definitely against, while the opposition Coalition has said the fees could become “a transparency tax”, but are waiting for a full security briefing.

One issue is the government hasn’t really backed up claims the reforms are needed to because foreign actors and bots are exploiting FOI laws.

The claim about AI generated requests seems to be based on high numbers, but no analysis has been done on whether or not they are AI generated. And there would be a difference between people using the technology to help draft requests and bots lodging them. (Martin Rosenbaum has an interesting blog on this issue for UK FOI requests).

Meanwhile, the FOI Act isn’t working! That’s probably because you’ve made a Subject Access Request (you still need to complain to the ICO).

Very very long waits

How long people will have to wait for different treatments on the NHS is a regular topic for FOIs. But these delays are the worst by some distance.

More than 48,000 people in the UK were waiting for their first NHS gender clinic appointment as of March 2025, a 12.5% increase since the previous year, according to new data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and seen exclusively by QueerAF and What The Trans!?

The analysis, which uses figures from March 2024 to March 2025 painstakingly put together through a series of FOIs, shows the average estimated waiting time to access an initial appointment at a gender clinic is now 25 years across the UK.

In Scotland, average waiting times have increased to 58 years, and this appears to have been driven not only by a reduction in staffing but because of a complete collapse in the number of initial assessments being delivered at the Glasgow service, where the average waiting time for an initial assessment now sits at an astonishing 224 years.

Knives in schools

Incidents of very young children taking knives into primary schools have been revealed by a BBC investigation.

Police in Kent recorded an assault involving a four-year-old pupil, while officers in the West Midlands reported that a six-year-old had taken a flick knife into class.

There were 1,304 offences involving knives or sharp objects in 2024 at schools and sixth form colleges in England and Wales, a Freedom of Information request by the BBC has found. At least 10% were committed by primary-school-aged children, police data suggests.

Children accused of crimes

A nine-year-old boy has been accused of the rape of a male under 13 on Anglesey. The alleged Llangefni incident was reported to police in late 2023, and the report has yet to be assigned an outcome.

In a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to North Wales Police, the North Wales Chronicle asked for the number of Gwynedd and Anglesey incidents reported since September 1, 2023, where the suspect was aged between zero and nine.

North Wales Police’s response stated that 44 such reports have been made since September 1, 2023 in Gwynedd, and 20 on Anglesey. Among these were the aforementioned nine-year-old boy accused of rape on Anglesey in 2023, as well as four reports of a sexual assault on a female under 13, and three of sexual assault on a male under 13.

Homelessness deaths

The number of people who died while homeless in the UK reached a record high last year, according to new figures. The Museum of Homelessness, which compiles the data, said that 1,611 homeless people died in 2024.

The figure is 9% higher than the year before, with the majority of deaths being linked to suicide or drugs, with spice and nitazenes becoming increasingly deadly.

The data is collated using information from coroner’s courts, media coverage, family testimony and Freedom of Information requests. The government no longer publishes official data on the numbers of deaths of homeless people.

Care costs

Complex care arrangements are expensive.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Denbighshire County Council is paying roughly £35,000 a week in care bills for this child, who has significant disabilities and complex behaviour needs and requires 24-hour care.

Following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Journal/Free Press, the council has confirmed that the exact weekly cost of this child’s care package is £35,133. This equates to an annual expenditure of £1,826,916.

In its response to the FOI request, Denbighshire County Council also provided the following breakdown of these weekly costs:

• Staff salary – 94 per cent (£33,025.02)
• Management costs – 4 per cent (£1,405.32)
• Staff expenses – 1.4 per cent (£491.86)
• Child’s living expenses (e.g. food, clothing, activities) – 0.6 per cent (£210.80)

Suspended police officers

Three police constables and one chief inspector were suspended from Wiltshire Police last month, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Request. A total of nine officers are currently suspended from the force on full pay.

Nine serving police officers have been found guilty of gross misconduct this year. Some of these offences include attempting sexual communication with a child, possession of indecent images of children and sending misogynistic, sexualised and offensive images via WhatsApp.

Mouldy homes

Housing associations are partially covered by the FOI Act in Scotland. In England, tenants should be able to make requests to their providers for similar information from April 2027.

Dozens of people have been hospitalised amid a ‘total failure’ to deal with mouldy Scots homes. The data, obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to every local authority and housing association, shows that reports have skyrocketed from 8,712 to 26,514 across Scotland and 758 to 4,609 in Glasgow.

However, the true number of people living in mouldy homes is expected to be significantly higher, as multiple social housing providers have only recently begun to gather data, and the numbers do not include private tenants.

Flawed tests

A hospital in Derbyshire has been confirmed as among those affected by errors in thousands of diabetes tests, it has been confirmed.

In September a BBC investigation found problems with machines meant at least 55,000 people would need further tests, with some wrongly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and even prescribed medication they did not need.

A Freedom of Information request has now shown more than 2,100 patients screened by Chesterfield Royal Hospital were affected.

Dodgy driving

Since 2022, road users from across the country have captured over 230,000 potential driving offences and sent them to local police forces. Operation Snap has been helping members of the public aid the police in catching dangerous drivers by allowing people to submit videos of road incidents to their local forces.

People have submitted 9,775 videos to Humberside Police. The figures come from a Confused.com Freedom of Information (FOI) request to all UK constabularies.

The results from the FOI request showed that across the country 18% of reports resulted in a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN). Most video submissions related to careless or inattentive driving, which made up 63% of submissions.

E-scooter crackdown

The number of e-scooters seized by Humberside Police has more than doubled year on year. Humberside Police figures have also revealed that e-scooters were involved in 80 road traffic collisions between April 2022 and March this year.

Under the current law, it is illegal to use a privately owned e-scooter on public land. Data collected by Personal Injury Claims UK from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests show Humberside Police seized 121 e-scooters in the year to March 2025, which represented a sizable increase from the 51 seized in the year before.

The figures from 29 forces in England and Wales, show that 5,544 e-scooters have been taken off the streets since 2023.

Road rage

As ‘road rage’ isn’t an offence in and of itself, it’s not entirely clear what data police forces were asked for here.

South Yorkshire Police has responded to hundreds of road rage-related incidents, shocking new figures reveal. Police data shows 212 were logged between 2020 and 2024, and this year alone has already seen 18 flare-ups.

The figures, released under a Freedom of Information request by legal experts at RTA Law, reveal the extent of anger behind the wheel. Offences ranged from assault to wounding.

Smoking on planes

The number of arrests made after passengers were caught smoking on planes at Birmingham Airport have been revealed. The details have been revealed following a Freedom of Information Act request made to West Midlands Police.

One person was charged and sentenced with a guilty plea with smoking in UK-registered aircraft at a time when smoking was prohibited and received a conditional discharge for 12 months and told to pay costs.

Another person was arrested due to being aggressive and to prevent Breach of the Peace. This person was released with no further action after being taken to custody. The investigation found insufficient evidence.

Bin fines

Derby City Council issued 24 fines during a six-month pilot scheme aimed at reducing the number of bins left out on pavements.

The Labour-run authority said it launched the scheme on nine streets in March in response to residents’ concerns about the “significant obstruction” caused by bins being left out.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request published on the council’s website showed the council spent £9,176 on the initiative and gave out 299 warnings to households, in addition to fines.

Image by Daniel Kist on Pexels