A refused or unanswered Freedom of Information request can still be a story.
(But you can read about some successful ones below).
This Local Democracy Reporting Service request to Cardiff Council about the amount of money it made it made from the Blackweir Live gigs this summer follows a familiar path.
The council doesn’t respond in 20 working days. The reporter sends a reminder. Still nothing, so they get the Information Commissioner’s Office involved (strongly recommend doing this if you’ve got an overdue request).
A response only turns up when the reporter approaches the press office about a possible story about the overdue/ignored/avoided FOI request.
Probably not surprising but it’s refused as “the information is commercially sensitive and therefore exempt from disclosure” (why do I suspect that might be the entirety of the refusal).
Hopefully this is a story with a bit more to go. Opposition councillors are not that impressed with the lack of transparency. Given the council sold closing off the park for the concerts on the basis that it would generate much needed income for the local authority, there’s likely to be a strong public interest argument for an internal review.
Getting the press office involved to get your FOI answered (or writing an article about council cover-ups for a lack of response) isn’t really an option for many requesters.
But it might be nice to divert some comms cash over to the (not usually well-funded) FOI team.
Scottish Labour (yes, more FOI enthusiasm from political parties north of the border) obtained freedom of information data showing the Scottish Government health directorate and health boards have spent more than £34 million on communications staff in the past five years.
The figures showed spending more than doubling over the period to just over £6.9 million in the last full financial year.
Institutional misogyny
Police Scotland has been accused of sexism, misogyny and violence against women at both institutional and individual levels, according to a review obtained under freedom of information laws.
The report describes the force as having a “toxic” culture akin to “a boys’ club,” where inappropriate behaviour by senior male officers is commonplace. It cites a pattern of inappropriate jokes and comments targeting younger female officers, often from more senior colleagues, and highlights an “implicit understanding” that women who raise concerns risk retaliation, such as blocked promotions.
Crime on buses
Hundreds of offences have happened on board buses in the West Midlands this year. And the services where passengers have to put up with the most crimes have been revealed following a BirminghamLive investigation.
Thankfully, crime on board buses is relatively rare.
Most offences have been recorded this year on the number 14 service, which runs from Birmingham city centre to Chelmsley Wood – 30 in total as of the end of July. Others buses near the top of the crime list include the numbers 74, 6, 95 and 97.
Details were released by West Midlands Police following a freedom of information request.
Long mental health waits
Waiting lists for mental health treatment extending to as long as more than seven years have been highlighted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
Figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show the patient, who started receiving treatment in 2024-25, had waited 2,736 days.
In NHS Dumfries and Galloway, a patient waited 1,265 days – more than 180 weeks – before starting their treatment last year, with another patient in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde waiting 1,229 days.
Fake fat jabs
A planned price rise for the weight loss drug Mounjaro, has led to warnings it may lead to an increase in black market sales. As of September 1, a month’s supply of the highest dose of the weight loss drug will jump from £122 to £330.
According to a freedom of information request by Chemist4U, 18,300 illegal weight-loss and diabetes medications were seized by Border Force at Heathrow between June 2024 and June 2025.
Deepfakes
Police forces across Britain are not equipped to deal with deepfakes generated by AI, which could result in miscarriages of justice and see prosecutions collapse. Deepfakes are videos, pictures or audio clips made using AI to look real.
A Home Office letter obtained by the i Paper, sent to all British police forces in 2024, warned of the significant threats posed by deepfakes, including that the technology could aid terrorist groups and threaten border security.
According to the letter jointly signed by then police minister Chris Philp and security minister Tom Tugendhat, one potential risk is that innocent people could be wrongly accused of crimes based on AI-generated evidence and those guilty of offences could escape justice by fabricating alibis.
According to data released under the Freedom of Information Act only two police forces have since developed a framework to counter these risks, and even those forces – Surrey Police and Sussex Police – admit that the “simple reality is that on occasion it will not be possible to definitively conclude whether material is genuine or fake”.
Vape fires
The Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service was called to reports of a vape on fire on Thursday. The crew immersed the vape in a bucket of water to extinguish the fire.
Earlier this year, online vape store The Electric Tobacconist conducted a Freedom of Information request to all 39 fire services in the UK to reveal the number of vape-related fires in recent years.
The data showed that from 2020 to 2024, there had been an increase in vape-related fires from 89 reports in 2020 to 399 in 2024. In total, 1,056 fires relating to vapes were recorded across the fire and rescue services – that’s one fire almost every other day since 2020.
Packages
Small parcels shipped from China to the UK that aren’t subject to import taxes more than doubled in value last year, as British businesses complain of unfair competition.
These small packages rose in value from £1.3bn in 2023-24 to around £3bn in the latest financial year, exclusive data obtained by the BBC shows.
The UK government is reviewing the rules on so-called low-value imports. Low-value imports, which are worth £135 or less, are currently exempt from customs duties.
The £3bn worth of these parcels from China made up 51% of all the small parcels shipped to the UK from around the world last year. That was up from 35% in 2023-24, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) figures obtained by the BBC via a Freedom of Information request.
Ageing NHS buildings
A Scottish Liberal Democrats freedom of information request to all of Scotland’s health boards found the NHS still relies on 597 buildings that were built seven decades ago.
Ayrshire’s oldest NHS hospital buildings include:
- Brooksby House Hospital in Largs, which dates back to 1897
- Lady Margaret Hospital on Cumbrae, which was built in 1900
- Biggart Hospital in Prestwick, built in 1910
- Arran War Memorial Hospital, which was built in 1922.
Closed pools
Two public swimming pools have closed in Wiltshire since 2014.
The closures are part of a wider trend across the South West, where nine council-owned pools have shut or been sold since 2014/15, according to a GMB union investigation.
The closures represent nearly 10 per cent of all public pools in the region.
The figures were gathered through a Freedom of Information request sent to councils across the UK.
Press the button
Responding to a Freedom of Information request (FOI) submitted by a passenger in May, Transport for London (TfL) has now confirmed exactly what happens if you push the emergency button on the big white ‘Help Points’ found on tube station platforms.
According to TfL’s response, once pressed, emergency buttons on Passenger Help Points (PHP) ring through to the station operations room. If not answered after a certain time the call will be routed through to the London Underground Control Centre.
In the FOI response TfL said that five stations don’t have the help points. Since 2016, TfL has not pursued a prosecution or issued any penalties related to improper use of the emergency alarm.
Image by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Pexels
