Freedom of Information requests aren’t vexatious just because they’re kind of stupid.
Jump to this week’s Freedom of Information stories…
Southampton Council refused a Freedom of Information request about housing complaints relating to supernatural phenomena as it was deemed to be vexatious and not in the public interest.
The requester complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Data protection officer Chris Thornton told councillors at the governance committee the ICO had indicated they were minded to “overthrow” the local authority’s decision as it believed there was a public interest.
I think this is less the public interest in whether people are complaining about ghosts in their council-owned homes and more the public interest in the vexatious exemption having a reasonably high bar. Otherwise it’s a little easy to abuse for every slightly time-wasting request.
A vexatious request is one that is a “….manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of a formal procedure”.
The four broad themes of vexatiousness:
- the burden (on the public authority and its staff)
- the motive (of the requester)
- the value or serious purpose (of the request)
- any harassment or distress (of and to staff)
Asking about complaints relating to supernatural phenomena mostly lacks serious process (because supernatural phenomena isn’t real).
But it doesn’t mean people never describe their problems using those terms or that there isn’t any value in understanding how public bodies deal with issues where tenants lack coherence or are potentially being vexatious themselves.
Answering a single polite request about such complaints, with a likely quick answer of none, is probably less of a burden than refusing it as vexatious. Especially as vexatious refusals are more likely to turn into more time-consuming internal reviews and complaints to the ICO.
Changes
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will become the Information Commission on Wednesday (September 30).
The Commission will take over all the functions and responsibilities of the ICO to become the UK’s independent data protection regulator (and be responsible for FOI as well, I guess).
Broadly, not much will change with day-to-day regulation. Whether the new governance structure leads to changes to strategy over time is more wait and see.
Instead of a Commissioner, the Information Commission will be made up of a non-executive chair and seven board members, as well as a separate chief executive.
The ICO hasn’t actually had a Commissioner for several month as the previous one left under a cloud following investigations into his behaviour.
Missed targets
Freedom of Information isn’t optional. And with the ICO getting slightly better at enforcement, councils are more likely to be called out for poor performance.
Dudley Council only answered 51% of requests within the 20 working days between April and June, according to a report to its Core Business Scrutiny Committee.
The problem seems to be a bit more requests but also not enough resource to handle them.
Councillor Qasim Mughal said: “I wouldn’t mind if this was the first time that this has been raised but it is now the third time time in this committee since I’ve been here and it’s getting worse.
“How many times will this committee hear ‘our demand is really high and we can’t cope’?
“At some point we have to say we are not doing what is our requirement and we need to put resources in there, I’m sick of hearing the same excuse.”
Meanwhile, Renfrewshire Council is trying to tackle growing financial and operational pressures using AI. As part of a £5m three-year transformation programme, it’s planning to introduce AI agents to support dealing with its Freedom of Information inbox.
This week’s Freedom of Information stories…
Overdue support
At least one child with special educational needs has been waiting more than four years for an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
An EHCP is a legal document outlining the education, health, and care support a child or young person with special needs is entitled to receive.
A response to a Freedom of Information request shows the council currently has 655 open EHCP assessment cases and that a total of 351 assessment cases in Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole have now exceeded the legal 20-week deadline.
Of the overdue cases, 164 have been pending for between one and 10 weeks, 113 for 11 to 20 weeks, 61 for 21 to 30 weeks, and 13 for over 30 weeks.
Drone incidents
Rogue drones are targeting Britain’s military bases almost daily, leaving the UK vulnerable to growing threats from Russia and Iran, The Independent can reveal.
Some 340 security incidents involving drones were reported at or near Ministry of Defence sites in the year to August 2026, data obtained under freedom of information laws show. In 2025, there were a total of 250 incidents recorded – double the 126 recorded the year before.
Maternal mental health
A Freedom of Information request by the Centre for Mental Health (CFMH) found that after responses from 35 of England’s 36 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), most of them do not commission services for black maternal mental health.
Five of these ICBs do not hold information on these services.
The findings also show most ICBs lack a full scale of the work that’s taking place in their area to tackle the issue, such as training delivered by community organisations.
Outstanding warrants
According to shock new figures, released by Police Scotland under Freedom of Information, there are currently 8,998 outstanding arrest warrants waiting to be executed.
Of that total 1,420 relate to Group One offences including crimes of violence such as murder, culpable homicide, attempted murder and serious assault.
The most wanted is Derek “Deco” Ferguson for the murder of barman Tam Cameron, who was shot dead in the car park of the Auchinairn Tavern in Bishopbriggs near Glasgow in 2007.
Domestic abuse
Newly released figures show Lancashire Constabulary recorded 725 domestic abuse-related crimes in the eight days following England games during the 2026 tournament, compared to 616 on the match days themselves.
This represents around an 18 per cent rise in incidents after each fixture.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by 101 Great Goals, reveals a consistent pattern of increased domestic abuse following England matches, regardless of the result.
Traffic wardens
Traffic wardens working for Cumberland Council have been subjected to eight recorded physical assaults while carrying out their duties across Carlisle, Workington and Whitehaven, according to a Freedom of Information response.
The incidents, recorded between 2024 and 2026, include wardens being pushed, spat at, threatened with violence, and having objects thrown at them.
In two cases, vehicles were allegedly driven towards officers.
Sell off
Argyll and Bute Council has raised more than £8.4m by selling property over the last 16 years, including former schools, public toilets, council buildings and an outdoor centre.
The sales were revealed following a Freedom of Information request.
The highest price in the newly released data, £1,187,320, was paid for Castle Toward on the Cowal Peninsula, while the Hermitage Park depot in Helensburgh brought in £968,250. The latter is now a privately run care home.
Venue help
Support funding for York venues has fallen from more than £150,000 in 2021/22 to just over £10,000 during the 2025/26 period.
Data obtained from a Freedom of Information request has shown that during the 2021/22 period funding from City of York Council and central Government amounted to £159,728 with large amounts of Government money being used through Covid support schemes such as the Assisted Restrictions Grant (ARG).
In 2025/26, the only disclosed revenue grants were £4,200 to the National Centre for Early Music and £6,537 to YPO Productions for Guildhall Orchestra concerts staged at the Barbican.
Meeting videos
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority stopped publishing its Board and committee meetings on YouTube, which cost nothing, and moved them to a paid webcasting service under a £24,000 contract signed off by one officer, without competitive tender and without an Equality Impact Assessment.
The details were released in response to a Freedom of Information request from CambsNews. The Authority also confirmed that captions for deaf and hard of hearing viewers have been switched off since the new system launched in June 2025.
Train compensation
More than 48,000 people had their criminal convictions overturned after a 2024 ruling that train companies had spent years unlawfully using the fast-track Single Justice Procedure (SJP) to prosecute alleged fare dodging.
Letters went out to all the people who had been wrongly convicted, and newly-released Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data shows £4,900,096 in fines, costs, and court fees have been repaid so far.
But figures show that more than half the people who paid their fines have not yet come forward, with £2,603,463 in financial penalties waiting to be repaid, while thousands more affected people may not even know that their convictions have been overturned.
After the data release, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, the MoJ has been accused of not doing enough to track down all the victims of the scandal.
Menopause care
Data obtained by ITV News via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests reveals that menopause training remains a fragmented and often neglected component of undergraduate medical education in England and Wales.
The investigation asked every medical school in England and Wales to disclose the curriculum content, duration, and delivery method of their menopause training.
Several universities reported providing as little as a one-hour lecture on the topic across an entire five-year course. Approximately 20% of the universities that responded to the FOI requests were providing less than 90 minutes of structured, dedicated teaching on menopause.
Rural roads
With a total of 32 forces responding to the FOI submission, the data supplied showed that 342,700 speeding offences were recorded on 60mph single-carriageway rural roads between 2021 and 2025.
West Mercia was the police force area with the highest number of rural 60mph speeding offences: a total of 55,993 during the past five years.
Avon and Somerset, followed by Cambridgeshire, completed the top three areas, accounting for 42 percent of speeding offences between them.
Dog attacks
Dog-on-dog attacks were reported to police once a week on average in Norfolk last year, new data has revealed.
The number of cases where a dog attacked another dog has been on the rise since 2021, with 2025 showing the highest number of incidents reported to Norfolk Constabulary in five years.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the force has revealed there were a total of 52 incidents in 2025, a 73pc increase of 30 reported in 2021.
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which manages Royal Preston Hospital and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital, recorded 302 admissions in 2025 where an external cause code was used for someone being bitten by a dog. It was one of just six NHS providers in England to record more than 300 admissions under the code.
The figures have been released as part of wider NHS data obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Across England, there were 10,808 hospital admissions in 2025 where the primary diagnosis or cause of admission was a dog bite, dog attack or injury caused by a dog.
Vape sales
Figures obtained from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request have revealed that of 22 outlets caught selling vapes to children in Sunderland in the last three years, none were given any punishment other than a written warning.
Over a three year period up to 2025-26, Sunderland City Council’s trading standards department made 78 underage test purchase attempts compared to 185 shops in the city that could sell a vape (based on Office for National Statistics figures).
Airport arrests
A man arrested at Bournemouth Airport on suspicion of rape was one of 19 people detained at the site over four years, according to a Dorset Police Freedom of Information response.
The force recorded 19 arrests at the airport between August 1, 2022, and August 1, 2026, for offences including rape and sexual assault, immigration offences, public order incidents and warrant executions.
Closed lanes
Cameras captured 582 incidents of drivers ignoring Red X signs on motorways in the West Mercia area in 2024. In 2025, West Mercia Police sent out 814 notices for the same offence.
The Red X signs indicate when a lane is closed and it is illegal to ignore them.
A Freedom of Information response, published on the force’s website, revealed the figures but did not specify the locations of incidents.
Fake alcohol
A North Ayrshire pub could face potential criminal action after alcohol reportedly sold as a leading vodka brand was found not to be genuine, newly released documents have revealed.
A Freedom of Information response from North Ayrshire Council shows three samples of purported Smirnoff vodka taken from licensed premises this year were found not to be authentic.
Working abroad
Oxford city councillors have worked from 10 different countries around the world this year and rejected from working from 5.
Elected members of the city council have had requests to work from Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland and USA approved for 2026.
Seven requests to access emails abroad have been approved this year, according to a freedom of information request by the Oxford Mail. But five have been rejected, requesting to work from Australia, Saudi Arabia, USA and Zambia.
Wild animals
More than 100 ‘wild and dangerous’ animals are living in Lancashire, a survey has found.
The survey found no licensed dangerous wild animals in Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Burnley, Fylde, Hyndburn, Lancaster, Pendle, Preston, Rossendale or South Ribble.
West Lancashire’s figures remain unknown because the council did not answer the Freedom of Information request.
The data shows that a serval is licensed in Chorley. The wild cat is native to Africa. The Ribble Valley is home to two ostriches and 100 wild boars. A Cuvier’s dwarf caiman, a type of crocodile, is registered in Wyre.
‘Art’ trail
A council spent more than £11,000 on an ‘AI slop’ deckchair trail as part of a North Yorkshire town’s 400th anniversary celebration.
A controversial deckchair trail celebrating Scarborough’s 400th anniversary as the original seaside resort cost North Yorkshire Council £11,688, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed.
Photo by Emmanuel Codden on Pexels
