Public interest is a powerful thing for Freedom of Information.
A decision notice from this week shows how the importance of the public being able to find out information about public bodies outweighs potential damage to those public bodies.
In May 2023, Wirral councillors decided to purchase the Pyramids and Grange shopping centres in Birkenhead for £10.5m as part of regeneration plans for the town centre.
The shopping centres had been bought by Mars Pension Fund in 2011 for £70m. But income has seen a decline in recent years.
In February 2025, the Liverpool Echo used the Freedom of Information Act to ask for the latest individual values for major properties the council owns.
The council had published the values of these properties grouped together. That revealed the total value of these buildings had dropped by more than £9m.
Refusing the Echo’s request, Wirral Council in March argued the information was commercially sensitive and should not be released.
The Echo complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which investigated and ordered the release of the information.
Wirral Council said if the information was released, this “would undermine the council’s bargaining position in relation to tenancy agreements and rental income, both with existing and future prospective tenants”.
However, the ICO said the council provided “fairly limited evidence” to back this up, though it accepted disclosing the information could impact the council’s own commercial interests and would likely affect income. It also said the council hadn’t published only provided generic public interest arguments lacking in any detail.
Instead the ICO was more convinced by the Echo’s arguments that releasing the information was in the public interest. Those were based around “transparency and accountability for the use of public money, scrutiny and oversight in decision-making which can be significant and have long-term consequences for the public purse”.
Missing children
More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing, according to data obtained by the Guardian.
Freedom of information data from Kent county council (KCC), which is controlled by Reform UK, has documented 345 children going missing from their area, with 56 of those still missing.
No service
Specialist ADHD services for adults in England are stopping taking on new patients as they struggle to cope with demand, a BBC investigation has shown.
The BBC received information from 59 services, which accounts for the majority of those providing support in England, after submitting freedom of information requests.
The responses showed:
- 15 trusts had halted all or part of their referrals – some cover large areas and have closed their waiting lists to just some places
- In Cheshire, the service for adults has been closed to new patients since 2019
- Of the remaining trusts, 31 were rationing care by bringing in exclusions, such as by age or severity
- In one region, Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board, is being threatened with legal action for restricting adult assessments to people under 25 only
Cyberattacks
Hackers have launched five cyberattacks against Britain’s drinking water suppliers since the beginning of last year, according to reports filed with the drinking water watchdog and partially disclosed to Recorded Future News under freedom of information laws.
None of the attacks impacted the safe supply of drinking water itself, but instead affected the organisations behind those supplies.
The data shared by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) showed the watchdog received 15 reports from suppliers between January 1, 2024, and October 20, 2025. These were sent under the NIS Regulations, which is just one part of the extensive legal framework governing the security of drinking water systems in Britain.
Of these reports, five regarded cybersecurity incidents affecting what the DWI called “out-of-NIS-scope systems” with the others being non-cyber operational issues.
Drone crash
A senior police officer has been handed a misconduct notice after a child was seriously injured by a police drone.
Kent Police said officers were called to reports of an assault on the Isle of Sheppey at just after 16:00 BST on 2 August 2025 and deployed a drone to search for a suspect.
A Kent Police spokesperson said: “While in operation it struck an overhead cable and fell to the ground, hitting a child and injuring their hand.” The child was taken to a London hospital with serious hand injuries, they added.
The details were unearthed by Ian Hudson, a drone commentator and analyst, after a string of failed Freedom of Information Act requests.
Slow response
Four in five EU Settlement Scheme administrative reviews waiting more than two years for a decision
In a recent freedom of information request, the S.A.F.E project asked the Home Office for information on how long EU Settlement Scheme administrative reviews are taking to decide, in light of the ever increasing published processing time.
Housing disrepair
A white paper by Manchester law firm Pabla & Pabla – based on Freedom of Information Act requests made to all 317 councils in England – sought to prove whether the anecdotal evidence that housing disrepair claims were on the rise was actually true.
It received responses from 78 councils – many others having transferred their housing stock to housing associations – and just three of 100 housing associations, which are not currently required to respond to information requests..
The data showed that the volume of housing disrepair claims has risen across all respondents by 392% between 2020 and 2024 – from 1,829 claims a year between them to 8,999.
True crime
This is an interesting use of Freedom of Information to help contribute to a bigger publication.
Freedom of Information requests and media reports have been used to compile a timeline of all 1,000 cases, highlighting the haunting details that continue to baffle investigators.
A serial killer who was never detected by police may have been pinpointed by a new ‘murder map’ of 1,000 unsolved cases in the UK.
The map shows that two women were strangled in Cardiff in strikingly similar crimes, which were committed just a few weeks apart in 1943. But perhaps because the murders were investigated during wartime blackouts, it appears that detectives didn’t link the crimes at the time, and both remain unsolved to this day.
Prison deaths
Forest Bank prison in Salford has seen 27 deaths in just five years, raising serious questions about the safety and care of inmates.
The Manchester Evening News can reveal, through figures provided under the Freedom of Information Act, that from January 1, 2020, to August 31, 2025, the PPO was notified of, and subsequently investigated, 27 deaths of prisoners at HMP Forest Bank.
Overpaid
A quirky accounting rule has meant some staff at a central London council were overpaid £480,000 over five years.
Westminster City Council said it was still waiting on £99,000 to be returned, but has recovered most of the overpayments, according to responses to Freedom of Information requests by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
The council said the majority of overpayments occur when an employee leaves after the payroll cut-off date.
Watch theft
Freedom of Information data obtained by Watches2U, the UK’s largest independent online watch retailer, shows more than 6,800 luxury watches worth over £3,000 each have been stolen nationwide since 2022 – with West and South Yorkshire now among the worst-affected regions outside London.
West Yorkshire Police recorded more than 250 luxury-watch thefts since 2022, while South Yorkshire Police logged 245 incidents, placing the two forces among the top regional hotspots for high-value watch crime.
Don’t raise a glass
Not one single Scottish Labour MP or MSP pushed the UK Government to get a better deal for Scotch whisky in the months after the trade agreement with the US was announced.
A Freedom of Information request shared with The National asked if any ministers at the UK Department for Business and Trade – which is responsible for negotiating the US trade deal – had received “any correspondence” from any Scottish Labour MPs or MSPs between May 8 and September 10.
The department said in its response that “no information is held in scope of your request” – meaning no Scottish Labour MPs or MSPs contacted any ministers about whisky tariffs in that period.
Image by Olena Bohovyk on Pexels
