Some classic and creative uses of the Freedom of Information Act this week.
There’s some FOI stories which turn up quite often in this Friday list (not mentioning potholes). And others that are a bit new and different.
One of the aims with this weekly blog is FOI ideas that could be applied in other places. Ones that could support other people’s campaigns or generate stories elsewhere.
Not every FOI story will work like this. But littering and vandalism are local news staples, laptops can go missing anywhere, and movies and TV series are filmed all over the place.
Online grooming
A four-year-old boy was among the victims of online grooming, according to data which showed such offences have reached a record high.
A new offence of sexual communication with a child was introduced in England and Wales in April 2017, to tackle groomers who target under-16s through mobile phones and social media. The offence has been recorded in Northern Ireland since 2015 while a similar offence was introduced in Scotland in 2010.
Data obtained by the NSPCC from police forces across the UK showed 7,263 online grooming offences were recorded in the year to March – almost double the 3,728 recorded in the year to March 2018. The NSPCC, which sent freedom of information requests, said it received data from all forces except Lincolnshire.
Care home evictions
Thousands of elderly and vulnerable people have received eviction notices from their care homes in the last year, the Big Issue has found.
A total of 7,261 people living in nursing and residential homes were given a ‘notice to quit’ between August 2024 and September 2025, a Freedom of Information request to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) revealed.
Once people receive this eviction notice, they have 28 days to find a new place to live or they risk facing homelessness.
Attacks on staff
Council workers in one Merseyside area are facing more and more abuse just for doing their job. Workers have been threatened, punched, hit with a cricket stump, bitten, had hair pulled from their scalp, or even had their homes targeted.
New data revealed in a Freedom of Information request to Wirral Council shows the number of abuse incidents faced by council employees and contractors has massively increased in recent years. In 2021 and 2022, there were 38 and 30 incidents reported respectively.
The following year in 2023 this increased to 66 before rising to 93 incidents in 2024. In 2025, 58 incidents were reported between April and October suggesting numbers this year could rise even further.
Misconduct
The scandal-hit Metropolitan Police investigated more than a thousand officers for misconduct in the last four years – but fewer than a third got the chop.
Just 413 officers lost their jobs or voluntarily quit over misconduct allegations, despite 1,345 being probed for wrongdoing. The shock figures, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, came after a BBC Panorama programme revealed a toxic, misogynistic culture in Britain’s largest force.
Taxi crimes
The number of sexual offences committed by taxi drivers in the past three years has been revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
In the past three financial years, Devon & Cornwall Police recorded 34 offences, the FOI request shows. Twelve of the total 34 offences were committed around midnight.
Eleven of the offences related to sexual assault of a female, with 13 relating to rape and the remainder relating to exposure and sexual communication.
Lost laptops
A total of 133 laptops and mobile phones have not been returned by staff leaving Thurrock Council in Essex since January of that year. Seventy-seven devices were also reported lost or stolen, a Freedom of Information request revealed.
The Labour-led council said it always took action when equipment was not returned.
One of the most expensive devices that it could not find was a £626 laptop, the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed. The total value of devices not returned by outgoing staff was £23,117 and those lost or stolen were worth £13,872.
Lost value
A Merseyside shopping centre lost millions of pounds in value less than a year after a council spent more than £10m buying it. The Pyramids and the Grange shopping centres were bought by Wirral Council in May 2023 for £10.5m as part of regeneration plans for the town centre.
Wirral Council was told to release the estimated value of the centres following a decision by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This was following a successful appeal by the ECHO after a Freedom of Information request was refused by the local authority.
Now the ECHO can reveal in March 2024, the council valued the shopping centres as being worth £7.5m, £3.06m less than what it paid for them just 10 months before.
Vandalism
Highland Council has spent more than £100,000 on vandalism repairs in the last three years, according to figures obtained under Freedom of Information (FoI).
Schools, public toilets and play parks were among the sites damaged.
The total amount of money had increased year-on-year with £27,000 being spent in 2022-23, £38,000 in 2023-24 and £41,000 for 2024-25.
Littering
The number of people fined for throwing rubbish out of their cars in the Bradford district has soared by 2,400 per cent in the last five years, shocking figures show.
Results of a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request to Bradford Council reveal 1,653 fines have been issued so far this year for littering from vehicles – up from 66 in 2020.
In total, between 2020 and so far this year, the council has handed out 6,280 fines for vehicle littering.
Running a studio
This is an FOI story where the story is the lack of answer!
Bristol City Council has again declined to disclose whether the local authority-owned Bottle Yard Studios is profitable for taxpayers, and if so, by how much.
This month, the city council rejected a Freedom of Information request from investigative journalist and council transparency advocate Andrew Lynch. He requested the council release even the most basic financial figures related to the operations of the Bottle Yard.
The Bottle Yard, one of Bristol’s significant cultural triumphs, is a council-owned facility situated in a former bottle factory. It has served as the location for a vast array of major TV and film productions, bolstering Bristol’s reputation as one of the country’s leading cities for the film and TV industry.
However, the council has not disclosed any financial data regarding the studios’ operating costs, the income it receives from production companies, or the amount of taxpayers’ money invested in recent years.
Location fees
St John’s College has earned more than £112,000 by renting out its grounds for movie sets, over ten times the amount cashed in by other colleges.
A Varsity investigation has uncovered a large variation in the amount earned by colleges from commercial filming projects, with St John’s earning by far the most. After receiving information through Freedom of Information requests, Varsity is able to compare the income of 19 different colleges, although several of these reported having had no projects filmed since the start of last year.
John’s featured in Prime Target, an Apple TV+ series which premiered in January 2025 and follows the adventures of a fictional Cambridge Maths student who becomes entangled in an international espionage plot.
Queens’, who declared an income of £10,000 from eight different commercial projects. It featured significantly in the BBC drama Ludwig, starring Peterhouse alumnus David Mitchell. Alongside Queens’, filming took place once again at Johns, as well as at the University Library.
‘Space hogs’
Securing a study spot in the uni library can be a challenge. A freedom of information request (FOI) by The Tab Edinburgh to Edinburgh University reveals how many people actually “hog” seats in the main library.
The university set up a pilot scheme between May 5 and 9. Two members of the university Facilities Team conducted headcount patrols twice a day in the main library and left leaflets on unattended desks which read: “Don’t be a space hog”, to urge students not to save seats.
The FOI found that in one week 972 students left their unattended belongings at a desk for up to one hour. This was shown in photographs taken of unattended belongings.
There were seven instances of belongings being boxed up and stored under the desk if the belongings were there over the allowed time of one hour. There were two instances of these belongings being taken to the EdHelp desk and being managed as lost property.
Persistence
A learner driver spent more than £1,700 on the driver theory test after failing 74 times.
Each sitting costs £23, meaning the candidate who finally passed on their 75th attempt last year spent a total of £1,725. The new figures also revealed that another learner has taken the test 128 times without success, at a cost of £2,944.
The highest number of attempts at the practical test before passing last year was 21, costing between £1,302 and £1,575 depending on when the person took the tests. Two people have taken the practical test 37 times without passing, spending up to £2,220 each.
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