We’ve had 109,653 Freedom of Information  and Environmental Information Regulations requests made on WhatDoTheyKnow this year. In the run up to the end of 2022 here’s a countdown of 12 of the more unusual ones that have caught our eye this year…

12: Bats

National Highways released 1.25 TB of bat survey data carried out for the Arundel bypass scheme. This was made up of over 115,000 files, that included 786 videos – that’s over 250 hours of footage – 54,570 audio files, 354 spreadsheets and 2,532 images.

We like this because we think it is the largest ever release of information, and as the climate crisis brings urgent challenges for our public institutions to address, access to environmental information will be increasingly valuable to businesses, campaign groups and the general public. You can read more about this release here.

11: Vaccines

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency released the nucleotide sequences of the AstraZeneca & Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines used in the UK, after an initial refusal was overturned on review. The response says the companies involved consented to the release.

We liked this because it is a great use of FOI to get such important medical information released and available in the public domain.

10: Bins

Sheffield City Council released the location of every public bin in the city.

We liked this because not only is it really useful information; it is the sort of data that councils should be making freely available to citizens.

 

 

 

 

9: Underground

Edinburgh City Council released the sewer and cable plans for parts of the city centre.

We liked this because they are chaotically beautiful — not what you’d expect from an underground asset plan.

 

 

8: Textbook

The Open University released a full textbook in response to a request for the information held on the Early modern Europe: society and culture c.1500-1780 module(s).

We liked this because it’s not not often that you see full textbooks being released.

 

 

 

7: Tower Bridge

The City of London Corporation released a list of the past Tower Bridge lift dates, times, and vessel names from the start of 2022 until now.

We liked this because it generated a long and sometimes amusing conversation on Reddit.

 

 

6: War memorabilia

The Ministry of Defence released a WW2 medal card.

We liked this because we’ve never seen something like this obtained by FOI before.

 

 

 

 

5: Honours board

The Charter Trustees of the Town of Margate released their Freedom of the Town list in a more unusual format.

We liked this because the information released was a photo of a painted wooden board. This is, after all, still a form of recorded information — and a nice permanent one.

 

 

 

 

 

4: Seaside nuisance

Brighton & Hove City Council released a copy of all of the bye-laws that apply to the seafront.

We liked this because of the phrase: “no annoying gramophones on the beach”, which may be a slightly outdated view of the worst possible noise nuisance.

 

 

 

3: Big cats

North Wales police released the details of big cat sightings in 2021.

We liked this because the information disclosed in the request was used for a number of news articles in Wales.

 

 

 

2: Library books

One of our users has been doing some research into the top 25 books borrowed from libraries in 2021; here’s an example of one of them.

We liked this because it’s fascinating to see what books people are choosing to read, and how this varies between different areas of the country.

 

 

 

1: Trains galore

And finally, here at WhatDoTheyKnow the team are all big fans of trains. This means we tend to notice the more interesting disclosures on train related topics. Here are some of our favourites from this year:

 

 

 

a. Network Rail released the engineering drawings that were produced during the construction of the London & South Western Railway’s station at Branksome, near Bournemouth in the mid to late 1800. 

We liked this because the drawings are beautifully crafted and not something that we get to see very often.

b. Northern Trains Limited released the .wav file of the two jingles used for their station automated announcements system.

We liked this because it’s unusual for audio files to be released and we’ve found so many uses for this!

c. London North Eastern Railway Limited (LNER) released some information about the voiceover artists used for the automated announcements on the Class 800 and Class 801 fleet of trains

We like this because it shows that FOI responses don’t need to be formal or complicated; they just provide, where possible, the information that the request-maker has asked for. LNER is  particularly good at this.

d. Transport for London released 3D station layout drawings for the Elizabeth line.

We liked this because it’s really interesting to see how the new stations on the Elizabeth line have been designed, and how the layout works with their surroundings.

 

 

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We hope you enjoyed 12(ish) of our favourite FOI requests from this year.

You can find out more information about the WhatDoTheyKnow service and  how to make requests on our help pages.

If you’d like to help WhatDoTheyKnow keep up their good work, you can help in two ways, either by volunteering us or by making a donation, any amount small or large is greatly appreciated.

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Image credits:

Vaccines CDC; Bins Charlotte Harrison; Tower Bridge: R Spegel; Brighton seafront Tom Wheatley; Big cat: Mana5280; Library: Dollar Gill