WhatDoTheyKnow isn’t just a place to make Freedom of Information requests.
Jump to this week’s FOI stories…
Well, if you’re MP Rupert Lowe it’s not a place to make FOI requests because WhatDoTheyKnow has suspended his account.
Some of the reporting makes it look like the ban was for making lots of requests (more than 1,000). But a few thousand requests over a couple of years isn’t necessarily that many if they’re mostly round robins (sending two to every council is around 700 requests).
The reason given for the suspension seems to be the leader of political party Restore Britain was using the account to send general messages to public authorities or for personal messages, rather than only to request specific information.
He appears to have had a Pro account (some of the requests have been made as batches, which is a Pro feature). Which means communication on more recent requests is likely to be non-public, so it’s not clear what the issue that led to the suspension was.
Mr Lowe has criticised the decision as “censorship” and “not in the spirit of transparency”.
But it doesn’t prevent him from continuing to make FOI requests.
By making them through WhatDoTheyKnow, you’re trading the convenience of the tools and platform the offer for having less control over the request process. You agree to the platform rules and they can suspend the account if they think you’ve broken them.
WhatDoTheyKnow hasn’t commented further on the suspension.
Other WhatDoTheyKnow-related enforcement action
The Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO) has been using poor response rates on WhatDoTheyKnow as the basis of enforcement action against some public bodies.
For both the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust and the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, a review of requests on the site led to them being asked to provide FOI statistics.
Between October 2024 and March 18, 2026, the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust responded to just 54.5% of requests within the 20 working day time limit. It had a backlog of 432 requests, with the oldest dating back to October 2024.
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Trust reported responding to 26% of requests in a timely manner, and had a backlog of 95 requests, with 35 over six months old. It had been without a dedicated FOI officer since September 2024.
Both trusts now need to come up with an action plan to tackle overdue requests and slow responses.
But…
Enforcement notices do at least put public bodies on notice that they need to improve their FOI performance. The issue is if that improvement doesn’t stick.
The Met Police was given an enforcement notice in May 2024 requiring it to clear a backlog of 362 overdue requests within six months. It also needed to come up with a plan to increase the proportion of requests answered in time from between 60% and 67%.
The action plan didn’t work and the backlog didn’t stay cleared.
The ICO has issued another enforcement notice as the response rate had crept up to 70.8% by February this year. It had a backlog of 106 requests with six over six months old.
The Met Police is hoping to answer 80% of requests on time by this time next year (2027). It can’t come up with a timeline for getting to 90%. Answering 90% of requests in time is regarded as adequate performance.
Since the FOI Act came fully into effect in 2005, the Met Police has never achieved an on-time response rate of better than 75.9% (achieved in 2015).
The ICO has said the police force now has to clear it’s backlog by October 1. It also has to answer at least 90% of requests on time for January to March next year and again for April to September.
Be nice to an FOI officer, skip a request
The vast majority of requests made through WhatDoTheyKnow are published publicly (and Pro requests are made public eventually). Which can make it a good resource for FOI stories.
It’s a good place for getting inspiration, finding out what information public bodies are likely to hold or not, and getting an idea of technical language used. But there’s no point sending the same request if someone’s already made it.
If you find an interesting response for your local area, that can form the basis of a news story. With a link back to the request on WhatDoTheyKnow.
Some stories via this route have been pet thefts in the West Midlands, the saga of bounced schools admission emails in Essex, the (lack of) personal information about a Westminster wardrobe, lots of train delays, and a potential Eurovision economic boost.
Is this Freedom of Information request relevant…
In Wales, one of Reform’s candidates in the Senedd elections has had multiple FOI requests refused as vexatious by Merthyr Tydfil Council.
Confusingly, they’re complaining about this on the Facebook page for the Afan Ogwr Rhondda (which covers Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and RCT). Alongside lots of dodgy AI-generated graphics.
This might be because the branch chair there is standing in the neighbouring Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr constituency.
The reasons for the Section 14 refusal given by Merthyr are multiple requests, ‘overlap’ in subject matter, requests covering multiple departments, and repeated follow-ups. Which sounds a bit like a weekly long unfocused request, including asks for information that’s already been provided (but didn’t say what they wanted) or refused, plus a load of other emails in relation to the previous half a dozen requests.
Sending lots of requests in a short period of time isn’t necessarily vexatious. Having some requests refused as vexatious for being confused or overlapping, and sending follow-ups, doesn’t mean all your requests are vexatious. But requests need to be potentially answerable (aim for focused and specific) and have an identifiable public interest (it goes without saying that they need to be politely and respectfully worded).
Looking at some of the other requests posted to the Facebook group (which rather support the above theory of why their requests are getting refused), terrible graphics aren’t the only thing AI has had a hand in (ChatGPT loves a bit of pointless boilerplate).
Some other Freedom of Information news
Taking a break from rowing with the Scottish Government, the Scottish Information Commissioner has issued the first ever FOI Practice Recommendation relating to poor record keeping at a Scottish public authority.
Perth and Kinross Council took a decision to abolish the director of economy, place and learning without creating a single record of it (it claimed only verbal discussions were had).
The Foilies reward the public bodies that are the best at being the worst at FOI in North America. This year’s winners include:
- DOGE for firing FOI officers so requests go unanswered
- government contractors accused of deleting databases of government data
- the disclosure log that’s only going to include things Richmond City Council think the public should see
- the Department of Homeland Security for it’s new (and useless) way of recording government business carried out on work phones – via screenshot rather than archiving messages
- and Vancouver City Council for introducing a fee for making FOI requests (having not learned from the government in British Columbia that while it may reduce numbers, requests just end up costing more to deal with).
This week’s Freedom of Information stories…
E-bikes & e-scooters on fire
E-bike and e-scooter fires reached a record high last year, new figures suggest.
There were 432 blazes involving e-bikes during 2025 – a 38% jump compared with a year earlier. Meanwhile, 147 e-scooter fires were reported, up 20% from the 123 seen in 2024.
The PA news agency sent Freedom of Information requests to all 49 fire brigades in the UK and asked for the number of incidents recorded between 2021 and 2025.
Emergency alerts
The Government considered using the emergency alerts system during 2024 summer riots, which targeted mosques and asylum hotels, a freedom of information request has revealed.
The alert system was launched in 2023 to warn the public of a danger to life in their area, with mobile phone users receiving a loud siren-like sound and a message on their devices if they are at risk.
A freedom of information (FOI) request submitted to the Cabinet Office by the Press Association has revealed a list of “near misses” – when alerts were considered but not actually sent out. Southport incident
In another case, an alert to issue a “boil notice” to 40,000 people in the Brixham area of Devon was considered after reports of contaminated drinking water were giving residents severe sickness and diarrhoea.
Police cars rammed
Data obtained by Belfast Live through a Freedom of Information request shows there were 504 incidents involving police vehicles in Northern Ireland during 2025 — the equivalent of at least one crash every day.
Among those were 54 cases in which police vehicles were deliberately rammed, amounting to roughly one such incident every week.
The total cost of damages to the taxpayer reached £706,116.04, with £162,056.81 attributed specifically to ramming incidents.
Floods on the line
Rail passengers in Wales are facing growing delays and cancellations as flooding increasingly hits the network, according to new analysis based on Network Rail data.
Figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggest flood-related disruption affecting services in Wales has risen by around 256 per cent compared with the mid-2010s.
Between 2022 and 23 December 2025, services affecting passengers in Wales generated an average of around 2,366 passenger delay minutes a year due to flooding. That compares with an average of 664 a year between 2014 and 2017.
Flagged
No sponsorship agreements have been signed yet for the Union Flag banners which Lee Anderson claimed would not cost Nottinghamshire taxpayers ‘a single penny’.
The Reform-UK run county council spent £75,000 putting up 164 banners across Nottinghamshire and, although they will eventually be used to commemorate a range of events and advertise council services – like fostering – the banners have only been used so far to display the Union Flag.
The confirmation came in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted to Nottinghamshire County Council and, in its March 20 response, the authority said: “We have had a small number of enquiries from organisations expressing interest in sponsoring some of the banners.
Ferry cancellations
Scotland’s struggling CalMac ferry service is turning into an election campaign issue. It’s probably easier to demand improvements from the Scottish Government than appease God in the hope of better weather.
Being publicly-owned means the operating company is subject to FOI (the Welsh equivalent for both being covered by FOI and government-owned is the underutilised Cardiff Airport).
The Gourock to Dunoon ferry was cancelled for ‘technical reasons’ more often than any other CalMac service in the last five years, new figures have revealed.
A total of 6,670 cancellations blamed on breakdowns affected the service between 2020 and 2025, according to figures released by the Scottish Government under freedom of information – more than on all of CalMac’s other services put together.
Late buses
Veterinary students and other University of Bristol staff are voicing their concerns over the quality of U2 bus services, a vital route that runs directly to the Vet School’s Langford Campus.
According to a freedom of information (FoI) request lodged with the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (WECA) by Epigram, the U2’s punctuality has fallen dramatically.
Between September 2024 and January 2025, U2 buses reached Langford campus on time 90.08 per cent of the time. A year later, across the same period, this had fallen to 60.31 per cent.
First Bus considers a bus to be ‘on time’ if it is between one minute before and five minutes and 59 seconds after the scheduled time of arrival.
Hospital thefts
More than 70 thefts were reported across hospitals in Essex in 2025, figures showed.
Items snatched from staff, patients and relatives included money and electronic devices, as well as medical equipment.
It happened at hospitals in Harlow, Basildon, Southend-on-Sea, Broomfield and Colchester, data supplied under the Freedom of Information Act revealed.
Church crime
The Countryside Alliance’s latest investigation has revealed that in 2025 nearly 4,000 crimes were committed on church property as well as other religious premises.
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were made to all of the UK’s 45 territorial police forces. At the time of writing, 44 police forces had responded to the requests, with 37 of them providing figures.
The figures show that there were 3,637 records of theft, burglary, criminal damage, vandalism and assault from January 1 to December 31 2025. An additional 172 crimes of different categories brings the total recorded crimes to 3,809.
Car sales
Devon’s police have predicted £300,000 of income from its vehicle recovery scheme in a year.
The force’s vehicle recovery scheme covers those seized for having no insurance, breakdowns, burnt out vehicles and those damaged in accidents, those linked to serious crime, stolen or abandoned.
The income comes from charges to owners and through sales of vehicles at auctions.
Car service
The identity of a car that was used by the mayor of Reading to get to and from engagements has been revealed, as well as the tens of thousands of pounds spent on it.
Thanks to an FOI, the Local Democracy Reporting Service can reveal that the latest mayoral car was a Tesla Model 3, which the council spent tens of thousands of pounds on.
The Tesla, an all-electric car, was hired through a local hire company from March 2021 until the agreement was discontinued in May 2023.
Since then, the mayors have used public transport or taxis to get to and from mayoral duties.
Paternity leave
Research from The Dad Shift, based on responses of local authorities to Freedom of Information Act requests, found only 16 out of 154 councils that responded offered more than two weeks.
None offers the six weeks at 90 per cent pay that The Dad Shift and other campaigners are calling for, with only 32 per cent of councils giving dads both weeks off at full pay. Some 58 per cent pay one week at full pay and one at statutory, and 10 per cent leave dads with only statutory pay across both weeks despite evidence this prevents working class fathers taking it up.
AI assistance
Inverclyde Council spent nearly £5,000 on its AI chatbot ‘Clyde’ since its launch last month.
The council website’s new AI tool has been used 298 times since the service went live on Friday, March 13.
The total cost was revealed in a freedom of information request (FOI) made by the Greenock Telegraph.
A council spokesperson said the £4,500 spent on bot ‘Clyde’, including one-off initial deployment costs, is being funded through a ‘specific digital modernisation budget’.
It is being trialled for an initial two-year trial period ‘to gauge its impact.’
Exotic pets
Crocodiles have been the most popular exotic animal for private ownership across the North East since 2016, council documents reveal.
The dwarf caiman has seen the most successful applications for private ownership since 2016 according to a region-wide freedom of information request.
One monkey and several species of wild cats have also been logged in private hands throughout the region.
Certain animals require a licence to own under The Dangerous Wild Animal Act 1976. Applications are made through local councils but you can get an unlimited fine and up to six months in prison if in possession of an exotic animal without a permit.
Image by Stefan Maritz on Pexels
