The Government isn’t doing a great job of dispelling fears its planning to restrict the Freedom of Information Act.
Jump to this week’s FOI stories…
Following stories the UK Government is apparently considering cutting the cost limit for dealing with requests, MPs have been using parliamentary questions to check if this is an actual plan.
George Greenwood, investigative reporter at The Times, has a round-up of the, not exactly enthusiastically pro-FOI, responses on his blog. None of the answers amount to a denial of any plans to change the FOI Act. And the Cabinet Office press office didn’t say there were no plans when asked.
George’s view is MPs asking questions about this will make it a bit harder for the Government to try and make any changes to the FOI Act. As concerns about the threat has made it beyond the usual people (journalists who like FOI and the Campaign for Freedom of Information), any attempt is likely to face more pushback. Doesn’t mean the Government won’t try though.
Avoidable Freedom of Information requests
Given all the concern about the increasing volume of requests, it might be in the Government’s interests to avoid the ones it could.
The number of parliamentary questions, which allow MPs to get information from the Government on its policy and operation, have also increased in recent years. The House of Commons Procedure Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into how they’re working.
Evidence to the committee suggests MPs are resorting to using FOI to get information when their questions aren’t answered.
In theory, information that would be released under FOI should be included in an answer to a parliamentary question. But MPs complain they’re getting brushed off (including getting told to check documents and datasets that don’t contain what they’ve actually asked for).
As there’s no right to appeal with parliamentary questions, putting in an FOI for the information becomes the preferred option.
One other link between parliamentary questions and FOI is cost limits. The threshold for parliamentary questions is set at 140% of the FOI limit. If the Government did cut the FOI cost limit, it would impact here too.
FOI requests avoided
The plus of publishing more information is it saves you from receiving Freedom of Information requests for the same information.
Think how many requests from the Taxpayer’s Alliance have been avoided over the past 15 years since the Localism Act made it a requirement for councils in England to publish details of staff pay over £50,000.
Fishing trips
Random or speculative requests, particularly those likely to be time-consuming, sometimes get cited as a reason to restrict FOI.
But there can be good reasons for going broad and meandering.
An article looking at the problem of journalists inadvertently leading investigators to the sources passing them information includes an example where making ‘unusually precise’ FOI requests helped connect the dots.
More Freedom of Information improvements needed
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a load of practice recommendations to councils in the North West for not publishing statistics showing how they’re doing on answering FOI requests. The 10 councils were:
- Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council
- South Ribble Borough Council
- Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council
- Pendle Borough Council
- Hyndburn Borough Council
- Chorley Borough Council
- Cheshire West and Chester Council
- Cheshire East Council
- Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council
- Greater Manchester Combined Authority
The FOI code of practice says public bodies with more than 100 full-time equivalent employees should publish stats on things like how many requests they get, how many have been granted in full, and how many were answered in 20 working days. The statistics should be published on a quarterly basis.
The ICO seems to be working its way through public bodies checking they’re publishing FOI performance statistics. It previously issued practice notices to most of Northern Ireland’s government departments for the same issue.
Now there’s an idea…
Having previously appeared to suggest making a few FOI requests might be extremist behaviour, BBC thriller The Capture finished off its latest series implying you might need to resort to extortion to get your FOI request answered in 20 working days.
Although, given the police force involved was the Met, it might not be the worst plan…
In last Sunday’s episode, a dodgy journalist demands the press officer she’s blackmailing ‘fast-track’ an FOI request. The plot doesn’t reveal what, likely to get a Section 30/31 refusal, information was being sought.
This week’s Freedom of Information stories…
Unpaid
Freedom of Information requests are revealing more about the background to the fire that temporarily closed Glasgow Central rail station, causing massive travel disruption, and destroyed a listed building.
The Union Street fire started in a vape shop at 105 Union Street which had failed to pay almost £10,000 in non-domestic rates (NDR), commonly known as business rates.
In the wake of the fire, The Herald submitted a request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 asking Glasgow City Council how much it was owed in NDR, and the deficit for each of the last four years.
The local authority revealed it is currently owed a cumulative £88,799,117.54, having billed £1.4bn over the financial years of 2021-22 to 2024-25, meaning a little over 6% has gone uncollected.
The shop in question was also not legally registered to sell vapes.
The Herald asked Glasgow City Council for the total levied in fines against shops illegally selling vapes and/or tobacco, and how many businesses that applied to.
Between 2021-22 and 2025-26, a total of 49 businesses were fined for operating illegally. A total of £13,600 was levied, with no fines issued in the first year followed by £400 in 2022-23; £5000 in 2023-24; £5,800 in 2024-25; and £2,400 in 2025-26.
NHS jobs
Thousands of NHS staff at health trusts across England are to lose their jobs as employers struggle to balance their books, according to research.
Unison said its study estimates at least 21,000 roles are due to be cut by 2028 in hospitals and other health facilities.
The cuts were revealed by trusts in response to freedom of information requests by Unison and are in addition to job losses at NHS England and integrated care boards announced last year, it warned.
Compensation
The Prison Service has paid out compensation 53 times in the past three years to prisoners who were assaulted by staff in jails in England and Wales.
The payouts totalled £428,000, meaning the average payment was around £8,000. The bill was picked up by taxpayers.
The figures were disclosed by the Ministry of Justice following a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Telegraph. They cover the period from April 2023 to March 2026. Over the same period, there were 147 payouts totalling £10 million to prisoners assaulted by other prisoners, and 99 payouts totalling £6 million to staff assaulted by prisoners.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment complaints within the Scottish Government have risen in recent years, according to new figures obtained by The Herald, amid mounting concerns over how misconduct is handled.
Data released under Freedom of Information laws shows nine formal allegations of sexual harassment raised by Scottish Government staff were recorded between 2022 and early 2025, with numbers increasing year on year.
Officials confirmed there were no recorded complaints in 2020 or 2021. One case was logged in 2022, rising to two in 2023 and three in both 2024 and 2025.
Police vetting
The PSNI has confirmed a total of 11 police officers have failed Developed Vetting (DV) procedures over the last five years.
DV, also known as Level 6 vetting within the PSNI, can only be applied for after passing the previous five levels of Police Vetting.
It is required for ‘designated roles’ and which can include the Public Protection Branch investigating child abuse or domestic abuse, Close Protection Unit, and those managing sensitive intelligence.
The figures were revealed in a Freedom of Information response which the PSNI partially answered as they were unable to categorically confirm if the officers in question remain in post after failed vetting.
Clean water
The monitoring of marine pollution by the Scottish Government’s green watchdog has been dubbed a “scandal” following the discovery that it rates 400 of Scotland’s coastal waters as being environmentally fine based on wildlife samples from just 54 of them.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) samples insects, crabs and worms from single sea lochs to classify as many as 20-40 other lochs as having a “good” or “high” environmental status. They can be up to 58 miles apart.
In response to a freedom of information request, Sepa released a large spreadsheet listing the coastal waters and firths which are “classified as part of a group”. It reveals that 87 per cent gain their good ratings from samples of wildlife taken from elsewhere.
Carers’ benefits
Thousands of unpaid carers could still be required to repay large, and potentially unfair, debts, as the government begins a review of past benefit cases.
On Monday (13th April), ministers launched an audit of more than 200,000 historical carer’s allowance cases. An estimated 25,000 carers who received unlawful overpayment demands since 2015 could see their debts reduced or cancelled.
A freedom of information request, published this month, revealed around 22,500 carers were given overpayment notices in the three months since an independent review was produced. The report, published in November, highlighted problems in the system caused ‘avoidable hardship and distress’ and led to public money being misspent.
The numbers included about 1,400 carers contacted in January 2025, even though the rules to calculate their debts had already been withdrawn by the Department for Work and Pensions.
SEND appeals
A local authority has spent more than £1m fighting legal cases against the parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in the last four years, despite losing the majority of tribunals.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request found that 626 SEND tribunals had been lodged against West Northamptonshire Council between April 2023 and the end of January 2026.
SEND transport
A city councillor will no longer provide school transport services for the City of Doncaster Council after he claimed children are “often trained to comply” with special education needs criteria by their parents in order for them to receive benefits.
Councillor David Knight’s register of interests reveals he is a director for Ward Transportation Ltd, a position he states is “unpaid”.
A Freedom of Information response from the council in August 2025 revealed Ward Transportation Ltd was one of 32 firms the council used to provide school transport services to take children with SEND from their homes, to school, and back again.
Venue costs
The re-opening of the Guild Lounge in Preston as a temporary venue has been successful say Town Hall chiefs, despite it losing £70,000 in its first year.
A Freedom of Information request from Blog Preston shows the challenging environment for the foyer venue – which is currently recruiting for two staff members as it looks to adapt its theatre and live shows offering.
The first year of operating for the Guild Lounge, which began with a burst of shows but has since scaled-back the volume of live shows, saw it incur costs of £190,008 and it brought in income of £119,660 – a loss of £70,348.
Acid attacks
Latest figures from police forces that cover Staffordshire and Shropshire show a lack of suspects identified.
An investigation, launched through a series of Freedom of Information requests by Legal Expert, shows West Mercia Police recorded 12 acid attacks in the last three-years. But data shows that in 10 of those cases, investigations failed to identify a suspect.
School break-ins
A total of 221 burglaries and attempted burglaries were recorded at schools, colleges, and universities in Bradford between 2021 and 2025, according to new figures.
The data was gathered through a Freedom of Information request by Nothing But Padlocks.
Only six per cent of incidents (47 cases) in West Yorkshire resulted in a charge or summons.
Blocked roads
Landowners across the UK are blocking the delivery of 117 miles of traffic-free active travel routes, forcing locals to take matters into their own hands, according to campaigners behind a new toolkit designed to help rural communities push for greenways and active travel routes.
This week a new toolkit was launched by active travel campaigner, journalist, and road.cc contributor Laura Laker, entitled ‘Rural path campaigns: Where magic meets tarmac’, containing useful tips and case studies which aim to “empower” locals to create greenways in their areas.
A Freedom of Information request submitted as part of the project found that of 73 local authorities responsible for delivering greenways, land access is holding up delivery for 23 of them, totalling 117 miles of routes.
Car charging
New research by Vauxhall has found that 42% of councils will have cross-pavement charging available by the end of 2026.
Cross-pavement channel charging allows EV owners to safely charge their vehicles from their home by running a charging cable through a discreet, self-closing channel installed in the pavement to their home charging wall box.
Currently, seven councils out of the 134 which responded to the Freedom of Information request have live cross-pavement charging in their constituencies, with a further 21 in the trial stage, and 28 planning to roll out cross-pavement charging in 2026.
Stuck in A&E
More than 700 patients aged 95 and above waited longer than 12 hours at A&E last year, new figures show.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats said “catastrophic” waits in emergency rooms were “putting some of the country’s most vulnerable people at serious risk”.
A freedom of information request by the party found 736 people over the age of 95 waited more than 12 hours at A&E between January and October 2025.
Pigeons
Scotrail authorised almost 200 “pigeon culling” visits last year, a Freedom of Information request reveals.
The requests, sent by the Manchester Pigeon Rehab (MPR) group, found that in 2025 ScotRail ordered 196 visits to 29 stations and depots across Scotland.
Deer
Scotland’s publicly-funded forestry bodies have spent more than £134m controlling deer over the last decade, The Ferret can reveal.
Data obtained via freedom of information details the deer management bills footed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) and Scottish Forestry, which are ultimately funded by the taxpayer.
It also specifies the huge stretches of deer fencing put up by FLS to contain the animals over seven years – equivalent to nearly triple the length of mainland Britain by road.
Spider bites
Hospital admissions from spider bites have doubled in England in the last decade, with experts blaming the rise on the “explosion” in the population of false widows.
Provisional NHS figures show there were 100 admissions as a result of “contact with or toxic effect of spiders” in 2025 compared with 47 in 2015, a freedom of information request obtained has revealed.
No cycling
A new Freedom of Information request sheds light on the demise of the RideLondon cycling festival.
London Marathon announced the festival’s “indefinite pause following operational and financial considerations of the event’s future direction” in February after having gone “on hiatus” in 2025.
Founded before the London 2012 Olympics, the festival at one point comprised men’s and women’s WorldTour races, sportives that imitated the Olympic Road Race course and visited several London landmarks, and the Brompton World Championships.
Struggles with funding and sponsorship, date clashes with Trooping the Colour, and the challenge of finding a suitable route due to Transport for London’s reluctance to close the newly-built Silvertown Tunnel for 15 hours all appear to have contributed to the event’s end.
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