When Joanne Bartley saw a bus go by with an advert for a local private primary school on its side, she knew there was something amiss. 

“It just happens that I’d recently made a Freedom of Information request through WhatDoTheyKnow, to check 11-plus pass rates at various primary schools,” she explained. “I was researching whether wealthier schools had more success than schools in poorer communities.”

Joanne lives in Kent, which unlike many counties, still assesses children with the 11-plus test. The bus advert claimed that 94% of the school’s pupils passed it, giving them access to grammar school.

“I had never seen a pass rate as high as 94%, not even in prep schools which can be mostly about 11-plus tuition,” says Joanne. 

“So I found the school’s true pass rate, which was much lower, and reported the school advert to the Advertising Standards agency. They upheld the complaint and the advert had to be withdrawn.”

What do small victories like this achieve? Joanne puts is succinctly:

“My FOI request meant that no more parents were conned into paying expensive school fees because of some dodgy statistic! Because most of the country got rid of grammar schools decades ago, the government doesn’t scrutinise the 11-plus test processes very much, and there’s little analysis of entry to grammar schools either.”

Joanne now works for a group called Comprehensive Future, which campaigns for fair school admission and an end to the 11-plus. FOI is a tool they frequently turn to.

“We use WhatDoTheyKnow an awful lot to look at social inequality in access to grammar schools. I use FOI to check how many disadvantaged pupils access the schools, to find out about appeals to these schools and more.”

The campaign’s findings frequently inform media in the education sector, national news stories, and even debates in Parliament. 

“FOI requests helped us see the numbers of disadvantaged pupils in the schools that were given £64 million by the government to expand to admit more children from poorer backgrounds. 

“We found that the policy had not worked as planned – perhaps this is one reason this fund has now been withdrawn. The story was covered in Schools Week and Comprehensive Future.

“And we had a story in the I newspaper, on the large percentages of privately educated pupils who attend grammar schools, based on this FOI request.

“We also looked at how few looked after children (children in care) attend grammar schools compared to other secondary schools and this was highlighted by a Conservative peer in a Lords debate.  

“Baroness Berridge said: At the census date last year, 68 of our grammar schools had no looked-after children at key stages 3 or 4. That is a product of not giving priority admissions and selecting on the basis of the entrance test only. If I think back to my school and remove all those children, it would have been a poorer education.

“She must have come across the figure about looked-after children on your website as we hadn’t given it to anyone at the time. So you see WhatDoTheyKnow is a useful resource for everyone!

“The FOI Act means that there’s transparency around school entry, and this is a very healthy thing. WhatDoTheyKnow is also super useful to see what other people are asking about schools and see their results.”

We were glad to hear this: Joanne’s examples make it clear that WhatDoTheyKnow helps campaigns get their causes into the national conversation. It’s free, and available to everyone, and as you can see from the examples given, it can be a very powerful tool.

Joanne agrees: “I just wanted to show the power of your site to make a difference to campaigns like ours. Freedom of Information creates openness around a problem in education that is not much talked about.

“I love WhatDoTheyKnow – it’s made a real difference to our campaign.” 

 

Have you used our Freedom of Information website, WhatDoTheyKnow, for something noteworthy? Or do you have fond memories of it that you’d like to share? Please tell us all about it here.

Perhaps you’re:

• A journalist who used FOI requests sent via the site (or the Pro service) to inform news stories
• A campaigner who changed hearts and minds with facts you uncovered through FOI
• An activist who requested information that was of use to yourself or a wider community
• A request-maker who used the site independently to discover information you wanted (or needed) to know
• A developer, volunteer or supporter who remembers the launch of the site or some other milestone in its history
• An organisation that’s used WhatDoTheyKnow’s capabilities within your own app or site

Or maybe none of these labels apply, but you’ve got something to tell us about your use, or memories, of WhatDoTheyKnow. See yesterday’s post for a look back on its 15 years so far!

Also, perhaps you have a vision for where we should go next: new features we could consider adding; partners we could work with; or ways in which we can advocate more effectively for transparency from our public authorities.

We’re all ears

It’s mySociety’s twentieth anniversary year, and like any organisation celebrating a significant milestone, we want to reflect on what’s been achieved. Just as importantly, we’re also taking the opportunity to set our course for the future.

Over the course of the year, we’ll be inviting your memories, thoughts, ideas and stories around everything we do — and we’re starting with WhatDoTheyKnow.

If you have something to share, please go ahead and fill in our form here; or if you want more detail of the sort of things we’re looking for, read on.

Looking back

WhatDoTheyKnow was launched in 2008, after a 2006 call-out to our supporters and followers to suggest what project mySociety should work on next. The chosen suggestion, originally conceived as the Freedom of Information Filer and Archive, was a response to the UK’s rights under its then-fairly-new Freedom of Information Act.

The vision has changed surprisingly little since then: as Tom Steinberg said at the time:

We think that the best way to build a top quality archive is to simultaneously build the best possible “File an FOI request” tool, and then publish both the requests and the responses made through it in the archive. From the private desire to easily file FOI requests we hope that we can generate the public benefit of an easy to use archive.

Were you following mySociety’s blog at the time of that call-out? Were you one of the first people to use WhatDoTheyKnow when it was launched? Have you been a volunteer at any time in the site’s history, and if so, has that affected any other areas of your life for the better?

Great uses of WhatDoTheyKnow

Over the years, we’ve heard about some truly gratifying and impactful uses of the service: we’ve written up many of these as case studies.

There’s the campaign to find out how much asbestos is in our schools, another to turn empty shops into premises for start-ups, and not to mention a dogged – and successful – attempt to get the West Ham stadium contract released.

More recently, you may have seen the account of one organisation’s effective campaign against surveillance cameras which seemingly send worrying data back to China.

We’re always hungry to hear stories like these, and even more so in this anniversary year. Please do fill in the form to let us know if you’ve changed the world, in big ways or small, by using WhatDoTheyKnow.

To the future

As part of our thinking around #Democracy2043, we’d love to hear which way you think transparency is headed in the UK, and what mySociety’s place is in that future.

This one requires a bit more head-scratching, but there are no wrong answers, and we’d love to hear thoughts about how we as an organisation need to adapt, or what wider society needs to put in place to allow for healthier, more transparent public institutions.

And so, if you have thoughts about any or all of these areas, please go and fill in our form now. Thanks!

2023 is a momentous year for us, marking not only mySociety’s 20th anniversary but also the 15th birthday of our flagship Freedom of Information (FOI) service, WhatDoTheyKnow.

For over a decade and a half, we’ve been working to empower journalists, activists and campaigners, researchers, and tens of thousands of curious citizens to access information from UK public authorities.

Fighting your corner

It’s hard to imagine what the UK’s FOI landscape would look like without WhatDoTheyKnow, but in the early days, we faced many important battles to establish the right to have requests responded to via our platform at all. 

And they’re not over: even today, we face fresh challenges, such as from public authorities who are putting barriers in the way of our users by refusing to answer valid requests unless these are submitted using a particular form. We are determined to continue to highlight poor practice and defend users’ information rights.

Half a million pieces of information

One of the advantages to using WhatDoTheyKnow is that it serves as a permanent archive of requests and responses. Any information that you get released using WhatDoTheyKnow is accessible to others to share and build on. From humble beginnings, there have now been over 500,000 requests that have resulted in the release of at least some information, turning this into a valuable resource.

Given the depth and breadth of the information on the site, it’s hard to pick a few examples to illustrate the impact of requests made through the service but here are some notable releases:

A 2013 request revealed the existence of the Home Office’s Interventions and Sanctions Directorate (ISD), which was responsible for overseeing the controversial hostile environment policy. Working with public and private sector partners, the ISD restricted access to benefits and services for irregular migrants, ensuring that sanctions were enforced. Four years later, the Windrush scandal exposed the devastating human consequences of this policy.

A request to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) uncovered a dispute with HMRC. This made front page headlines, after it was revealed that certain MPs had sought to utilise public funds to employ experts to complete their expense claims for them.

A 2021 request to the Science Museum revealed that the museum had signed a sponsorship agreement with Shell, where it gave an undertaking not to do or say anything that could damage the reputation of the oil company. The existence of this ‘gagging clause’ was reported by Channel 4 News and the Times among others.

Empowering others

Whilst it would be tempting to try to measure the platform’s success by the remarkable volume of information that has been released, or the myriad of news stories that have been written as a result, for me, WhatDoTheyKnow’s true strength lies in its ability to empower individuals. By simplifying and demystifying the requesting process, WhatDoTheyKnow has made it more accessible to individuals who might have otherwise never considered submitting a request for information.

The impact of WhatDoTheyKnow has stretched far beyond the United Kingdom. WhatDoTheyKnow gave rise to Alaveteli, the open-source FOI software that’s helping to open up governments across six continents. In addition to our core platform, we’ve also developed WhatDoTheyKnow Pro. Specifically tailored to journalists, this service enables users to keep their requests private while they work on their stories, before sharing the source data with the world.

None of this would have been possible without the dedication of our volunteer team, who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to offer guidance and support to our users, as well as managing the day-to-day running of the site. We’re immensely grateful to them, and all of our donors and funders over the years, whose continued backing has ensured the ongoing success and growth of the service. 

We are excited about the next 15 years and we look forward to building on what we have already achieved to help more people to access more information more easily than ever before.

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Image: Cottonbro Studio

Scrutiny of government ministers’ meetings with lobbyists has been boosted by the Open Access UK project from Transparency International UK, which integrates with our Freedom of Information service WhatDoTheyKnow. 

The fact that meetings between ministers, and people or organisations outside of Government have taken place is published, as required by the Ministerial Code, but typically, few details are proactively released. 

The Open Access UK service collates published declarations of meetings, and provides special links to WhatDoTheyKnow where users can find a pre-written Freedom of Information request for each meeting, asking for:

• The agenda
• The list of attendees, including details of any organisations they represented
• Copies of briefing notes and papers prepared in advance
• Notes or minutes recording  what was discussed
• Any correspondence associated with the attendees, including messages sent to follow up on the meeting

The service covers almost 90,000 ministerial meetings which have taken place since 2012, and it’s being actively maintained, with 1,500 more meetings added last month.  

To identify meetings of interest, searches can be carried out for the name of an organisation (such as a company, charity, union, or lobby group), minister, or by subject matter/policy area. Anyone interested in details of what happened at a meeting can request such information in public via WhatDoTheyKnow with a couple of clicks. You can also follow requests on any meeting, whether or not you are the person who submitted them.

It appears that meetings listed don’t only include physical ones, but online events and phone calls. Some detailed Government guidance on what should, and should not, be included in ministers’ transparency disclosures has been released via WhatDoTheyKnow (though the Government initially refused the request); more up-to date material also appears to be available, including a “pandemic-related update” which specifically covers remote meetings. 

The service does not currently cover meetings with ministers’ special advisers or civil servants where ministers are not present themselves, but Transparency International UK are inviting contact from anyone who would like to fund expanding the scope of the service to cover such meetings.  

 Responses to requests

The service has been running for some time, so everyone can see examples of how requests made through it have been responded to. 

There is a wide range of responses: in some cases the information sought has been substantively released promptly, while in other cases the responses have been less forthcoming.

As one would expect, the names of junior officials attending meetings, and involved in correspondence, are typically redacted. Often though, details of the substance of the matters discussed are also withheld. Exemptions commonly cited include those applying to “formulation of government policy” and “commercial interests”. Those exemptions are not absolute, but are subject to a public interest test: material should be released if the public interest in releasing it outweighs the interest in keeping it secret. 

Public bodies are permitted to delay a response while they consider whether the public interest lies in disclosure or not. We are concerned about the impact that such delays have on the speed of responses: we have noted examples of such delays both in responses to these requests and elsewhere on our service.  

We encourage requesters to ask for internal reviews if they are unhappy with the response to a request. 25% of internal reviews to UK central government departments result in the release of additional material, so asking for reconsideration is often worthwhile. We also provide advice on referring responses to the Information Commissioner, who is empowered to make decisions on whether information should be released or not. 

Ten things we’ve spotted in responses

(more…)

On 31 May 2022, Northern Trains Limited (Northern) wrote to us to demand that we stop publishing the salaries and job titles of the ten highest paid managers at the company. The Department for Transport had released this data in response to a request made via our Freedom of Information service, WhatDoTheyKnow. The request for removal was not only made on behalf of the company, but was also represented as being a request on behalf of the “director group”, which we have interpreted to mean those senior staff at the company whose salary data has been disclosed.

Having carefully considered our position we are continuing to publish this information.

Table: Salaries of the highest paid managers at Northern Rail Limited in £5k bands. 

Job title	Salary Banding (£)
Managing Director	245,001 – 250,000
Chief Operating Officer	210,001 – 215,000
Finance Director	165,001 – 170,000
Commercial and Customer director	150,001 – 155,000
Strategic Development director	145,001 – 150,000
Engineering Director	140,001 – 145,000
People Director	120,001 – 125,000
Regional Director	115,001 – 120,000
Programme Director	110,001 – 115,000

Source: DfT Freedom of Information release – released on at 30/05/2022

 

There is a strong public interest in favour of the release of information that helps people to understand  how resources are apportioned within an organisation. As we understand it, the Department for Transport has dealt with the FOI request in line with current best practice for transparency surrounding senior officials and high earners in the public sector, and has acted in accordance with current guidance from the Information Commissioner.

Northern Trains Limited, which operates under the ‘Northern’ brand, is wholly owned by the Department for Transport. The Government proactively publishes the exact salaries of the highest paid public sector employees as part of their regular proactive transparency releases. It would seem reasonable that Northern would also be expected to make similar information available about the salaries of its most senior staff, particularly when the salaries of senior officials at similar and related companies are already public. This includes those working for Northern’s parent company, DfT OLR Holdings Limited, Network Rail, and High Speed 2 Limited. Northern’s sister company LNER publishes information on the salaries of its directors in £5k bands on p46 of its latest annual accounts. In respect of DfT OLR Holdings Limited, the Government proactively publishes the salaries of their Chief Executive (£235,000-239,999), Group Finance Director (£220,000-£224,999) and Chair (£150,000-£154,999).

Northern routinely publishes exact salary information for junior roles on their careers website, and the material released by the Department for Transport is very similar to this. Recently, Northern has advertised that they will pay a full-time train cleaner based at Wigan £18,500 and a grade B maintenance worker based at Newton Heath £33,035 a year. We believe that Northern should have no objections to us publishing that their Managing Director receives a salary of between £245,001 and £250,000 a year.

We don’t know why the Northern Managing Director’s salary has been omitted from the data proactively published by the Cabinet Office. Perhaps they’ve been confused by the complexity of corporate structures involved, and have not looked beyond companies directly wholly owned by the Government when seeking to identify highly paid and senior public servants who should be included. We asked the Cabinet Office to comment and they shirked responsibility for the data they publish saying: 

“Although Cabinet Office compile and publish the £150k list on GOV.UK, other departments provide us with the list of salaries to be included. DfT will have sent us their senior salaries list covering its departments, agencies and non departmental public bodies. You would be best to direct your query to them, and they should be able to advise why this salary fell out of scope.”

We contacted the Department for Transport for comment but as of the time of writing we had not received a substantive response.   

We don’t know if there is an issue with the criteria for proactive publication of salaries by the Cabinet Office or if the Department for Transport have not followed the existing criteria. 

We strongly believe in preserving and promoting transparency and openness, and the accountability of those in positions of power and in maintaining a public archive of Freedom of Information requests and responses. We carefully consider all requests to remove material from our website. We balance the interests of individuals and organisations asking us to take material down with the interests in favour of continued publication.

Northern’s attempt to keep the salaries of its senior executives secret came while the threat of strike action on the railways over pay was growing. On 7 June 2022, the RMT announced 3 days of national strike action in what it called “the biggest dispute on the network since 1989.” Northern is expected to be one of the companies whose services are affected. When assessing whether to keep publishing the information, we considered the journalistic value of the data released. We expect the senior staff salaries, and the attempt to keep those salaries hidden from the public, may well be considered especially newsworthy during this period. The material that was released will help to inform the ongoing debate around pay levels in this sector.

We list DfT OLR Holdings Limited, and the three rail companies it owns on behalf of the British public, on WhatDoTheyKnow so anyone can make FOI requests to them in public. All the bodies are subject to Freedom of Information law:

• https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/dohl
• https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/northern
• https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/southeastern
• https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/lner

We thank Northern Rail for drawing our attention to this release of their senior management salary data, which might otherwise have gone largely unnoticed.

For more information on how we deal with takedown requests like this, and our legal basis for processing personal information see: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/privacy#legal_basis

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Image: Ben Garratt (Unsplash licence)

We’ve recently been considering whether we should add individual courts to WhatDoTheyKnow.com, so that users could make FOI requests to them in public. Doing so would certainly align with our wider mission of making it easy to access information from public bodies; but there are also some clear reasons against their inclusion. 

In this post we’ll examine both sides of the issue. But first, some context.

At the moment, FOI requests for information held by courts can be made via the listing on WhatDoTheyKnow for the courts service, HMCTS. Individual courts are generally not considered to be authorities in their own right, so this would mean adding bodies that are not strictly subject to FOI themselves — which is not a new concept for us: we will often list parts of public bodies separately if we think this will help our users.

Transparency is particularly important when it comes to courts, as they exercise the power of the state and their decisions can have huge impacts on individuals, organisations, the environment and society. 

In favour of listing individual courts

Further to our general principle that it is good to give access to governmental bodies serving the public, there are some more nuanced reasons to include courts in our listings:

• Requests often end up there anyway. On receipt of a request better answered by a local or individual court, HMCTS will often forward it to them, or advise the request-maker to contact the court directly themselves. The FOI process may be quicker and more efficient for all parties if requests are just sent directly to the court in question.
• It would serve an educational purpose Listing courts individually would promote the fact that FOI requests can be made for information held by courts.
• Information can be obtained from courts via FOI. Statistics, information on spending, details of room usage etc. could all be requested from courts, and we would expect such requests to be successful. Section 32 of the FOI Act exempts court records, meaning they’ll just refuse an FOI request for these, but you should be able to access other information that they hold.
• Separate requests may not trigger the cost limit Under Section 12 of the Act, authorities can refuse FOI requests if it will take them more than a certain number of working hours to provide the information. Requests made to a series of individual courts may not be aggregated for the purposes of considering the cost limits, and more information may be obtained via a series of requests made to individual courts than would be obtained via a request made to the court service centrally.

Against listing individual courts

There is really just one substantial reason against listing courts, but it is important and we give significant weight to it:

• Courts may release sensitive information When authorities respond to a request made through WhatDoTheyKnow, the information they release is published on the website. But there are rights other than FOI that give access to information from courts, eg section 5.8 of the Criminal Procedure Rules and Part 5 of The Civil Procedure Rules 1998. Court officers may consider that, due to these provisions, they are required to release information which it would be irresponsible, and sometimes illegal, to publish in response to requests made through WhatDoTheyKnow.

In conclusion

Having worked our way through these pros and cons, we conclude that listing individual courts on WhatDoTheyKnow is currently high risk, and probably not the best way to pursue greater transparency from the court system.

As in other areas, rather than improving the way requests for information are handled, proactive publication of material such as information on cases before courts, and their outcomes, would be preferable. Information which it is not appropriate to publish should be separated from other material by the courts service.   

Another approach is to make FOI requests to bodies such as the police, for material they have presented to courts, and such requests may well be successful. 

It is worth noting that there are currently three courts listed on WhatDoTheyKnow:

• Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
• The High Court of the Justiciary, which is the supreme criminal court of Scotland.
• The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council

Due to the nature of the work that these courts undertake, we believe they are lower risk listings than others. In the case of the Supreme Court they do even have their own FOI contact point and publication scheme, so should be used to responding responsibly and appropriately to FOI requests.

If you want to join the discussion of the question examined in this post, you can do so on the public “ticket” for this issue on GitHub, or you can contact the WhatDoTheyKnow team.

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Image: Tingey law firm

Using WhatdoTheyKnow Pro, this project pieced together a nationwide dataset, and generated important stories at both national and local levels.

Sold from Under You, a project from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, revealed how much publicly-owned property has been sold off across England, as a response to austerity measures. In all, TBIJ discovered that over 12,000 buildings and pieces of land have been disposed of, bringing councils revenue of £9.1 billion — some of which has been spent on staff redundancies.

In collaboration with HuffPost, the findings were presented in the form of an interactive map which allows users to explore sales in their own area.

The investigation required a significant amount of data collection via FOI requests to 353 councils, work which was aided by WhatDoTheyKnow Pro. More than 150 people across the UK, including local journalists, took part in the collaborative investigation. As well as HuffPost’s coverage, stories were run in regional news outlets across the country. The project has now been shortlisted for the Data Journalism awards.

We spoke to Gareth Davies from TBIJ to understand how the organisation approached this ambitious project, and what part WhatDoTheyKnow Pro played in it. Here’s what he told us:

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“The Bureau has been investigating the local government funding crisis in the UK for the last 18 months. The initial part of this particular investigation focused on the overall financial health of local authorities and used data to determine which were under the most pressure. We then wanted to look at the impact of the funding crisis so teamed up with Hazel Sheffield and her Far Nearer project to look at the public spaces that were being lost as a result.

“At the start of the investigation we undertook a research period to determine what local authorities are required to publish about the buildings and land they own, and how many of them were adhering to those rules.

“We discovered that while councils have to publish annual lists of the assets they own, this does not include vital information such as who assets were bought from or sold to and the prices paid.

“Also, two thirds of councils update the same spreadsheet each year, meaning change over time is lost. As a result it became apparent that FOI would be required to obtain the information we were interested in. FOI is a tool we have used for a number of stories, particularly those produced by our Bureau Local team.

“The information we wanted could be divided into two groups: what assets councils were buying and selling, and what they were doing with the money raised when an asset is sold. The research period showed we would need FOI to obtain this data.”

More than 700 FOI requests

“To reduce the risk of requests being refused for exceeding the cost/time limit, we needed to submit two separate requests to each of the 353 local authorities in England.

“Previously I had submitted and managed bulk FOI requests via email. However, staying on top of more than 700 requests would have proven very challenging. I was aware of the WhatDoTheyKnow Pro platform but hadn’t used it before, so thought this would be the ideal opportunity to test it out.

I don’t think I would have achieved that without WhatDoTheyKnow Pro

“It was useful to have up-to-date contact details for each authority and to be able to send the FOI requests in one go. But probably the most useful feature was the way in which WhatDoTheyKnow Pro tracks the status of each request and shows you when the public body in question has exceeded the statutory time limit. This made it a lot easier to stay on top of which councils needed to be chased and when I needed to do it.

“Managing so many FOI requests was still challenging and very time consuming but it would have been much harder by email. The first batch of requests had a success rate of more than 95% and the other (which was more detailed)  was around 85%.

“I don’t think I would have achieved that without WhatDoTheyKnow Pro and, as a result, the investigation and interactive map we created would not have been as comprehensive.”

Refining the requests

While councils have to publish annual lists of the assets they own, this does not include vital information such as who assets were bought from or sold to and the prices paid

“I sent requests to one of each type of local authority (London borough, metropolitan borough, unitary, county and district) to test what, if any, information councils would provide. The fact that all of those requests were successful meant I had confidence when submitting the batch requests.

“It also allowed me to include additional information in the bulk requests, because some of the test councils erroneously withheld, under Section 40, the identities of companies. As a result I added a note to the request highlighting that this would not be a correct application of that exemption.

“As each response came in I recorded them in two separate spreadsheets — one showing what assets had been bought/sold and another containing information about how the money raised from asset sales had been used. Gradually we built a comprehensive picture of what was happening with public spaces, and that was crucial for our story.”

Bringing about change

There have been tangible results from this investigation.

“The government launched an investigation into the sale of assets by Peterborough Council as a result of this particular story, focusing on that area.

“We submitted our findings to an inquiry currently being held by the Communities and Local Government select committee and were mentioned by name during the first day of oral hearings.

“And last month the Public Accounts Committee announced it would hold a similar inquiry into the sale of public land. Several councils halted their property investment policies after our coverage revealed how much they had borrowed to fund the purchases.”

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Thank you very much to Gareth Davies for talking to us about the Sold From Under You project.

Find out more about WhatDoTheyKnow Pro.

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Image: Daniel von Appen

Coroners have a key role: they investigate deaths and make recommendations for making society safer, addressing issues which have led to potentially avoidable deaths.

Despite this, coroners, and coroners’ offices, are surprisingly not generally subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

At WhatDoTheyKnow.com we list many public bodies which don’t actually fall under Freedom of Information law as part of our advocacy for greater transparency.

While, over time, we’ve listed a number of coroners following requests from our users, volunteers have recently significantly improved our coverage and we now believe we comprehensively cover all coroners in the United Kingdom (in Scotland the Procurator Fiscal performs a role analogous to that of a coroner). You can view the full list on WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

What do coroners do?

According to the Government, coroners investigate deaths that have been reported to them, if it appears that:

• the death was violent or unnatural
• the cause of death is unknown, or
• the person died in prison, police custody, or another type of state detention

Coroners investigate to find out who has died; how, when, and where. They also, rather excitingly, have duties relating to treasure and inquests are held to determine if material found should be defined as such, as well as establishing who found it, where and when.

Coroners around the country have different systems and the degree to which they proactively publish their findings varies. So, as with requests to any public body, you should check their website — if they have one — to see if the information you are seeking has been published before making a request. Often a coroner’s website might be a page, or pages, within a local council site.

Coroners’ Reports to Prevent Future Deaths, and responses to them, are sometimes published by the Chief Coroner on the Judiciary website. Statistical information on the work of coroners is published by the Ministry of Justice.

What information might be requested from a coroner?

• Information about upcoming inquests and hearings.
  • Even where a coroner publishes an online listing, you might want to seek more information so that cases of interest can be identified (asking for the “brief circumstances” of a death, for example).
  • You might want to ask for information about upcoming inquests relating to those who died in state custody, or those relating to deaths in, or following, collisions on roads — or any other category.
  • Or you could request the policies relating to publicising upcoming hearings, to determine if any online listing is comprehensive for example, or to find out if there are mechanisms in place to inform certain people about upcoming hearings. The content of recent notifications of upcoming hearings could be requested.
• The formal “Record of Inquest” relating to a particular case
• Reports to Prevent Future Deaths and responses to those reports Though note that, where a response is from a public body which is subject to Freedom of Information law, making a request to that body might be the best approach.
• Documents relating to particular investigations Regulation 27 of The Coroners (Investigations) Regulations 2013 states: “The coroner may provide any document or copy of any document to any person who in the opinion of the coroner is a proper person to have possession of it”.
• Information relating to reports of treasure received and the coroners’ findings in those cases.
• Information about decisions made by a coroner These can include decisions to exhume a body, discontinue an investigation, or to hold all, or part, of an inquest in private.
• Correspondence to/from the Chief Coroner and Deputy Chief Coroners.
• Information about the administration of the coroners’ service You might want to ask for information relating to a coroners’ pay, expenses, costs, fees charged, and for information on their performance. Some requests of this nature might be better directed to the relevant local council.

Pracicalities of requesting

While increased transparency surrounding the circumstances of deaths can lead to safety improvements throughout society —  for example in our industrial workplaces, hospitals and roads — the families of the deceased do of course deserve sensitivity and respect. We’d suggest that all those requesting, or acting on, information from coroners which relates to people’s deaths should be considerate of that.

Coroners will not be used to receiving requests for information made in public via our service. If you are one of the first people to do so, there may be some initial difficulties. Please let us know how you get on: we would be interested in hearing about your experiences.

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Image: Thomas Hawk (CC by-nc/2.0)

What can you do if you suspect your local council of financial misconduct?

One solution is to take a good hard look at their books; and thanks to the Local Audit and Accountability Act we all have the right to do just that for a set 30-day period each year.

The People’s Audit is a volunteer-run network of people who are keen to raise awareness of these little-known rights, in the belief that local government spending should be open and accountable to local people.

At the same time, they’re using the Act to good effect themselves, as they probe into spending anomalies in their own borough of Lambeth. They’ve found that the Freedom of Information Act has proved a useful complement to their auditing activity.

Investigating financial misconduct

We spoke to Ben Rymer from The People’s Audit to find out more. What exactly have they uncovered to date?

“Perhaps the most worrying finding was around the Fenwick Estate regeneration project in Clapham. The chosen supplier was almost £6 million more expensive than some others who tendered. This is a massive red flag as the likelihood of this sum being accounted for by quality of work alone is slim.”

There’s plenty more: Ben says they’ve made concerning findings around public housing, procurement and contract management and how major works are overseen, from possible price fixing between contractors to payments for work that was never done.

For example, the group say that a sampling of some of the housing blocks on the Wyvil Estate in Vauxhall indicates that the council paid its contractors for more than twice the number of repairs that were actually carried out.

They also claim to have found evidence of land in Kenningham and Streatham being sold to a private developer at a discount of at least £1m, without any competitive tender.

And another major finding was that costs for Lambeth’s new town hall — originally flagged as a money-saver for residents — have overrun by more than £50 million.

Two Acts working together

So, some substantial discoveries. Where does Freedom of Information come into the picture?

Ben says that the two Acts can be used together, to good effect. “The Local Audit Act requires access to be given to documents relating to costs incurred by the council in the preceding financial year. Once these have been obtained, FOI requests can then be targeted more precisely using the insights gained from such documents.”

But there is a slight snag: with the Local Audit Act offering access only within a specific period of 30 days each year, the FOI Act’s prescription that a response must arrive within ‘up to 20 working days’ does not allow for much wiggle room, especially if the FOI response generates more questions that might be answered through scrutiny of the accounts.

Ben says that unfortunately, responses to both Acts are often delayed, refused on the grounds that they would take too long (despite similar requests to other councils being processed without an issue) or just ignored. “An extreme example is our attempt to obtain the original budget for Lambeth’s new town hall, which we have now been trying to get hold of for 18 months!”.

But all of this notwithstanding, WhatDoTheyKnow has been a useful tool for the FOI side of the People’s Audit’s investigations: “It is an easy way to organise FOI requests, and the fact that it’s all in public means that other people can use the information in the responses — though we do also submit requests directly to the council.”

“One notable success was when one of the team received some emails via WhatDoTheyKnow following the audit inspection period in 2015 which showed that the council had agreed to install gyms in libraries months before any public consultation on the idea.”

Making change

So, the group have uncovered plenty of concerning information — but have they actually made a difference?

Ben says that they’ve achieved a good amount of local and national press attention. More importantly, they’ve seen an increased focus on financial issues among the people of Lambeth, especially in the run-up to the local elections in the spring. “Given that we are all volunteers with day jobs and families we think this is a pretty good result!”

And they believe that there’s been some effect within their local authority too, although not as wholehearted as they would have liked. “They have published their responses to citizen audit requests and are making more positive noises about the importance of transparency.

“However, they are also imposing arbitrary limits on the amount of information which citizens can request and have put in place ‘guidance’ around requests which we think may be intended to discourage further requests.”

Your turn?

If the Local Audit and Accountability Act is new to you, you may be wondering whether you should be using it yourself. The People’s Audit think you should consider it:

“Local Government financial scrutiny is really important and these powers need to be used to their fullest to prevent wasteful spending or corruption. Many people don’t realise that councils are often £1bn+ organisations, or that UK councils spend a total of over £92bn a year. Yet since the Audit Commission was abolished there is very little scrutiny of this spend.

“Many local newspapers have closed in recent years so citizen audits and hyperlocal publications have become more important.

“The powers are hugely underused currently. However what we’ve hopefully shown is that a group of committed individuals can use them to good effect.”

If you’d like to do the same, find out more on the People’s Audit website.

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Image: Mark Longair (CC by-sa/2.0)

When you submit a Freedom of Information request, of course, you’re asking for a defined piece of information; a successful request is one where that information is provided.

Sometimes, though, a response will provide more than has been asked for.

We always appreciate it when a public servant goes above and beyond the call of duty, so when one of our volunteers happened across this response, it was passed around the team for everyone to enjoy. It’s helpful, factual, and fulsome, with far more background detail than was asked for.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this response, though, is that it’s from a body that is not actually obliged to respond to FOI requests at all.

Neighbourhood planning forums

Neighbourhood Planning Forums are defined on the Gov.uk website as bodies which “[give] communities direct power to develop a shared vision for their neighbourhood and shape the development and growth of their local area”.

They came into being in 2012 as a result of the Localism Act, and you can check whether there are any near you on this map.

Neighbourhood planning forums can help set the policies against which applications for planning permission are assessed, so they have a significant potential impact on local areas. It’s even possible for planning permission for a development to be granted proactively if this is proposed by a forum and approved in a referendum.

We’re not aware of any law which would make Neighbourhood Planning Forums subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But so far we’ve included eight of them on WhatDoTheyKnow.

Listing bodies not subject to FOI

Wait — so if they’re not obliged to respond to FOI requests, why are they included on WhatDoTheyKnow?

Well, we often add bodies with a substantial public role when we believe that people ought to be able to make transparent and visible requests for information to them.

For example, we listed Network Rail and the Association of Chief Police Officers on our site before they became subject to the Freedom of Information Act (though we’re disappointed that ACPO’s successor body the National Police Chiefs’ Council is not yet formally subject to FOI).

You can see more than 450 bodies which fall into this category (ie, they are not subject to FOI but we believe that they should be) on the site.

In the case of Neighbourhood Planning Forums, in addition to their clear, significant and public role, there are a couple more relevant factors:

First, the Environmental Information Regulations, which allow you to ask for information around environmental issues, cover a wider set of public bodies than FOI and we think it’s likely Neighbourhood Planning Forums are subject to those.

Additionally, many of them are parish or town councils which have been designated as the local planning forum. Parishes and town councils are certainly subject to FOI.

Adding more Neighbourhood Planning Forums

If you looked at the map we linked to earlier, you’ll have noticed that there are many more Neighbourhood Planning Forums than the eight we’ve listed on WhatDoTheyKnow — hundreds, in fact.

Unfortunately, an FOI request that one of our volunteers, Richard, made in 2016 to request details and email addresses of every Neighbourhood Planning Forum was turned down; otherwise we’d have used this information to add them all to the site.

If you’re keen to see these bodies made accessible for requests through WhatDoTheyKnow, there are a couple of ways you can help:

• We’re happy to add any more that are proposed to us — just fill in this form and give us any contact details as you can find.  If you want to help us add more than a handful then get in touch and we’ll arrange a more effective way of working.
• If you can’t find any public contact details, you could try making an FOI request to your local planning authority  — this is your local council responsible for planning, who are also the ones to designate neighbourhood planning forums in your area — to ask them for any forums’ contact details. If you obtain the contact details we will of course add them to WhatDoTheyKnow.

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Image: Martin Deutsch (CC by-nc-nd/2.0)