1. The 12 days of FOI

    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

    Scientist in laboratory looking at samples

    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

    Squirrel sitting on a litter bin in a park in the autumn

    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

    Diagram of Edinburgh City centre sewer and cable planEdinburgh 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 front cover of an Open University text bookThe 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

    Tower Bridge in London with a partially cloudy skyThe 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

    Picture of a hand written world war two medal cardThe 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 seafront in the sunshineBrighton & 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

    Panther sitting in the grassNorth 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

    person sat on a chair reading a book in a libraryOne 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

    Engineering drawings

    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.

     

     


    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.

    Image credits:

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

  2. WhatDoTheyKnow Transparency report: 2022

    WhatDoTheyKnow is a project of mySociety, run by a small team of staff and dedicated volunteers.

    In 2022 WhatDoTheyKnow users made 109,653 Freedom of Information requests via WhatDoTheyKnow.

    Those requests, and the responses they received, are public on the website for anyone to see.  

    What’s not quite so visible is the work that the WhatDoTheyKnow team, which is largely made up of volunteers, do behind the scenes.  

    Some of their most difficult calls arise around the removal of information. WhatDoTheyKnow’s guiding principle is that it is a permanent, public, archive of Freedom of Information requests and responses, open to all.

    The team works incredibly hard to maintain the archive in the face of challenges, including the reduction of legal risks; dealing fairly and transparently when people ask for information to be removed from the site; answering users’ questions; supporting citizens to use their rights to FOI; dealing with misuse of the service which breaches our house rules inappropriate content and keeping everything ticking over.

    Our default position is not to remove substantive public information requests and responses; however, we act quickly if problematic content is reported to us. And, to help everyone understand exactly what has been removed and why, where possible we record these details on the request page.

    To allow for a full 12 months of data, the date range used throughout this report is 1 November 2021 to 31 October 2022.

    Headline facts and figures

    • 16,354,872 visits to WhatDoTheyKnow.com this year.
    • 16,217 new WhatDoTheyKnow user accounts created this year, taking the total number of accounts to 239,540. This represents an increase of 7.6% in the total number of site users since last year.
    • 8,912 total number of email threads in the support inbox in 2022… that’s an increase of 11.2%, making it all the more crucial that we continue to recruit volunteers to help spread the load.
    • 1,381 requests hidden from WhatDoTheyKnow in 2022
      …in the context of 109,653 requests made in the year, and a total of 867,303 requests currently published on the site.
    • 171 published requests where we redacted some material in 2022
      …usually due to the inappropriate inclusion of personal information, or defamation.

    And in more detail

    Requests made on WhatDoTheyKnow flagged for our attention

    The table below shows the reasons that requests were reported by our users via the site for admin attention this year. 

    Note that we also receive many reports directly by email, so while not comprehensive, this is indicative.

    Reason for attention report Total number
    Vexatious 117
    Not a valid request 109
    Contains personal information 89
    Request for personal information 85
    Contains defamatory material 33
    Other 642
    Total* 1,075

    *The number of requests flagged for attention this year is up 40% on last year. This is largely related to a single campaign of misuse.

    Material removed from the site

    The following tables show where members of the admin team have acted to remove or hide requests from WhatDoTheyKnow in the last year, and the reason why.

    At WhatDoTheyKnow  we have a policy of removing as little material as possible, while seeking to run the site responsibly and take different viewpoints into account. Removing substantive FOI requests and responses is a last resort and something we do very rarely. However, we act quickly to remove problematic material.

    Request visibility Total number
    Discoverable only to those who have the link to the request 2
    Visible only to the request maker 1,282
    Hidden from all site visitors 97

     

    Reason for removing from public view Total number**
    Not a valid FOI request 1,117
    Vexatious use of FOI 43
    Other (reason not programmatically recorded*) 221

    * Current processes do not create an easily retrievable list of reasons beyond the two above, however due to site improvements made in autumn of this year we expect to be able to provide more detailed information on this in the future.

    ** The number of requests hidden or removed from the site this year is up by 68% on last year. As above, this increase is largely related to a single campaign of misuse. 

    Censor rules (targeted redactions to hide the problematic part/s of a request) Total number
    Number of censor rules applied 746
    Number of requests with censor rules applied 171
    Number of requests with censor rules applied which are still publicly visible, but with problematic material hidden 165

    * Censor rules are used for many purposes, including redacting problematic content and removing personal data which should not be present

    Cases relating to GDPR rights 

    These are typically cases relating to requests to remove data published on the site as per the rights afforded under GDPR, the UK’s General Data Protection Regulations.

    Right type Total number of cases*
    GDPR Right to Erasure 214
    Data breaches by third parties 79
    GDPR Right to Rectification 15
    GDPR Right of Access 21
    Data breach – internal** 6
    GDPR Right to Object <5
    Total 340

    * Not all issues raised resulted in material being removed from the site.

    * “Data Breach – internal” refers to cases where WhatDoTheyKnow has identified that a data breach may have been caused due to our own staff actions. We take our obligations seriously, and use such instances as a learning opportunity, so these are recorded by us even if very minor, and often when they’re nothing more than a near miss.

    High risk concerns escalated for review 

    Our policies ensure that certain issues can be escalated for review by the wider team and, where more complex, by a review panel that includes mySociety’s Chief Executive. Escalation is typically prompted by threats of legal action, complaints, notifications of serious data breaches, potential defamation concerns, safeguarding, complex GDPR cases, or cases that raise significant policy questions.

    Case type* Total number
    Defamation 49
    Data breach 40
    GDPR Right to Erasure 33
    Complaints 19
    Safeguarding / Public harm 13
    Takedown 13
    GDPR Right of Access 9
    Police user data requests 7
    Site misuse 7
    Data breach – internal 5
    Other 39

    * Email threads may be either automatically categorised by the system, or manually categorised by the WhatDoTheyKnow admin team on the basis of the information given by the person reporting them. Some cases can relate to two types: for example a GDPR Right to Erasure request may also be a complaint. For the purposes of this table, such instances have been included in the counts for both concerns.

    Users

    User accounts Total 
    WhatDoTheyKnow users with activated accounts 239,540
    New user accounts activated in 2022 16,217
     
    Reason for banning users in 2022 Total 
    Spam 2,160
    Other site misuse 300
    Total number of users banned in 2022 2,460
     
    Anonymisation* Total 
    Accounts anonymised in 2022 139

    * Accounts are anonymised at the user’s request, generally to comply with GDPR Right to Erasure requests.

    Users are banned and their accounts may be closed due to site misuse and breach of the House Rules. Anonymised and banned users are no longer able to make requests or use their accounts.

    User data requests

    The table below shows the number of requests that we received from third parties for the personal data that we hold on our users in 2022. Details of which types of data we hold can be found in our privacy policy. As stated in our privacy policy, we do not provide this information to anyone else unless we are obliged to by law, or the user asks us to.

    Type of request Total 
    Police/law enforcement requests for user data 7
    Other requests for user data 6

     

    Material released Total 
    Number of requests, where court orders were produced and we provided the material as required 2

     

    Thank you for reading

    We produce this report as we demand transparency from public authorities and it’s only right that we also practise it ourselves. 

    Additionally, we hope that the report goes some way to showing the type of work the team do behind the scenes, and that running a well-used site like WhatDoTheyKnow is not without challenges.

    If there are specific statistics that you’d like to see in subsequent Transparency reports, or you’d like to know more about any of those above, do drop the team a line

    If you’d like to help WhatDoTheyKnow keep up their good work, please consider volunteering or making a donation. Any help small or large is greatly appreciated.

    Image: Meriç Dağlı

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  3. How to find out the history of an ex-military Land Rover

    Suppose you’ve bought a Land Rover but you don’t know anything of its history. Might it have had an exciting past as a military vehicle? Has it had any major faults in its previous life? Freedom of Information is one way to find out.

    And indeed, a number of people have been using WhatDoTheyKnow to discover more about the history of their ex-military Land Rovers by making a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Defence.

    What information is available?

    We’ve seen requests both for the military service history of a vehicle (for example which military units it was assigned to) and the maintenance record (details of inspections, servicing, faults and repairs). 

    Any information held is generally provided free of charge to anyone who asks — there is no requirement to prove that you are the owner or keeper of the vehicle. Here are some examples:

    How to make a request

    Freedom of Information (FOI) requests can be made in public by using the WhatDoTheyKnow website to  ask for information from the MOD. We would obviously prefer that people use our site, but FOI requests can also be made by writing a letter or sending an email.

    Many of the requesters include both the chassis number and the registration number in the request, to help the MOD identify any relevant information held. 

    Will I get the information I ask for?

    In some cases, information may be withheld using exemptions contained in the Freedom of Information Act 2000. For example, the MOD tends to redact the time taken to carry out repairs, to protect the commercial interests of the businesses they contract for this purpose. 

    In rare cases, information may be withheld in order to safeguard national security or to protect the UK’s defensive capabilities. 

    The MOD has publicly released a copy of the MERLIN database, in which details of military vehicles are recorded, and it may be worth checking that first if you are interested in making a request.

    In the case of some previous FOI requests, where no information is held, the MOD has advised requesters that the Royal Logistic Corps Museum may be able to assist with their research (see for example this MOD letter of 25 September 2018).

    Reasons that public authorities keep records about assets they no longer hold

    The requests about ex-military Land Rovers highlight the fact that public authorities often hold records about assets they no longer own, and that in some cases this information will be of value to the new owners.  

    There are various reasons why records are kept after the asset is sold or otherwise disposed of. One is to help people who may have queries in the future. A great example of this practice is referenced in a response by Aberdeen Council to an FOI request made through WhatDoTheyKnow in June 2021.

    The electronic record held by Aberdeen City Council […] not only lists everything we have, but also everything that we once had as well. This is to ensure that we have a records trail for future research/provenance etc”.

    Usage of FOI law in the UK

    We think the requests about ex-military Land Rovers are interesting because they show the versatility of the UK’s FOI legislation. 

    Not every FOI request has to be about holding public authorities to account: requests can simply be made for information that people find useful for their businesses, their hobbies or their everyday lives. Making such requests in public helps other people who might be interested in making a similar request themselves. In addition,  if there is an important public interest story hidden in the response, making the request in public maximises the chances that someone will find it.

    Image: AlfvanBeem, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

  4. Help WhatDoTheyKnow find contact addresses for public authorities

    You can send Freedom of Information requests to more than 45,000 public authorities on WhatDoTheyKnow. For each of those authorities we need an email address to send those requests to, which means we often need to do some maintenance to keep everything up to date.

    For some authorities in our database we don’t have a working email address. We might have had one in the past but it’s now out of date, or the authority might have merged and taken on new contact details – there are many reasons for missing email addresses, but they all leave us in the same predicament: we don’t know where to send your FOI requests for those bodies.

    Can you help us find them?

    If you have a little time to spare, a small amount of Googling could be a really big help for our users. Just five minutes here and there is all that’s needed to do a little bit of research to find the correct address.  

    We’ve made a list of all authorities with a missing email address

    The best starting point is almost always the authority’s website. Look for a dedicated contact email address for Freedom of Information requests.

    Top tips for searching:

    • Check the contact page.
    • Check the footer on the homepage.
    • Try looking for Freedom of Information policies or Publication Schemes,  or sometimes an email address can appear in the privacy policy.
    • Remember some public authorities such as schools and parish councils have very similar names, so make sure you are looking at the right one.
    • If you can’t find a website for the authority itself, there are some other places that you can look: for example the NHS services site  or the Get Information about Schools site.

    Once you’ve found the right place, make a note of the contact email address. We prefer to use generic email addresses, for example that starting with foi@ or information@ as these tend not to change so often, so if there are multiple addresses given, these are the best ones to go for.

    Let us know

    If you find some of these missing email addresses please let us know.

    We need both the new email address and the source (website address) where you found it, so we can verify the information.

    You can send us this information by clicking on “Ask us to update FOI email” link on the public authority’s page. Just fill out the form with all the details that you’ve found.

    Screenshot of pubic authority page on WhatDoTheyKnow showing where you can find the “Ask us to update FOI email" link
    Then our team of volunteers will use your input  to update the database, and you’ll have ensured that people can make requests to the authority. That’s a really useful result.

    Time poor but rich in other ways?

    We know that your time is very precious and not everyone has the opportunity to help us out with tasks. If you are able to make a donation instead, that is also very helpful toward keeping our FOI service up and running.

    Your contributions, however small, really help. Donate here.

     

    Image: Marten Newhall 

  5. A change in the monarchy: how it does (and doesn’t) affect FOI

    [UPDATE: Since this post was published, the 19 September has been declared an official bank holiday – our assumption in the final section of this post, that ‘no bank holiday will be formally declared’, and the conclusions we came to as a result, were incorrect. We’ve updated the section accordingly.]


    On 8 September 2022, Buckingham Palace announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 

    mySociety runs the WhatDoTheyKnow website, which lists many authorities related to the monarchy, the Royal household and associated offices. 

    As a non-partisan UK registered charity, we recognise that some of our users will view the monarchy as being a political institution, while others will not. We ask all our users to be respectful in their communications and to continue to follow our House Rules.

    The constitution of the United Kingdom

    When a monarch dies in the UK, they are immediately succeeded by their heir, even before the coronation has taken place. The Demise of the Crown Act 1901 provides that the holding of any office under the Crown is not to be affected in any way by the death of the reigning monarch. 

    What this means in practice is that Government ministers, civil servants and military personnel continue to hold office and that public authorities will continue to exist without interruption. Where this becomes relevant to WhatDoTheyKnow is that FOI requests do not need to be resubmitted.

    The names of public authorities

    Where appropriate, our volunteers will update the names of public authorities and the notes on the site to reflect the fact that King Charles Ⅲ is now the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. For example, we will rename the Queen’s Printer for Scotland to the King’s Printer for Scotland when the authority publicly updates its name.

    Not all bodies with “Queen” in the name need to be renamed. For example, The Queen’s College, Oxford was named in honour of Queen Philippa of Hainault and does not require a change. A number of schools and other public bodies were named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, such as the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre and we’d expect that they will continue to use their current names.

    We’ve also updated the site to take account of the fact that Prince William is now the Duke of Cornwall. Under a royal charter from 1337, the position of Duke of Cornwall is held by the eldest son to the reigning monarch provided he is heir to the throne.

    We have never listed the monarch as a public authority on WhatDoTheyKnow, but we continue to list the Royal Household.

    Accession Council

    We expect the Accession Council to convene shortly at St James’s Palace. The Accession Council is a body that meets twice following the death of a monarch. The purpose of the first meeting is to formally announce the death of the monarch and proclaim the succession of the new sovereign. The second meeting will be the first Privy Council meeting of the new monarch.

    National mourning

    The day of the state funeral will be a day of national mourning in the UK, and has now been formally declared as a bank holiday.

    This means that WhatDoTheyKnow will automatically treat 19 September as a non-working day for the purposes of calculating the time limits for complying with Freedom of Information requests. Even before we understood that the day would officially be a bank holiday, we had made this adjustment. This would have meant that our position differed from the position set out in FOI law; however, we believed it to be the most reasonable approach in the circumstances.

    Bank holiday matters aside, we encourage people making FOI requests to recognise that some employees of public authorities will have a higher than normal workload at present and to be patient and courteous when dealing with public officials.

    Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  6. More than a million public FOI requests have been made through Alaveteli sites

    Has our open source Freedom of Information platform Alaveteli had an impact on transparency around the world? We’ve got more than a million reasons to say that yes, it has!

    From the makes and models of over 18,000 cars stolen in Argentina to statistics about apricot farming in Tunisia; information about food labelling laws in Uruguay to what was on the menu when visiting heads of state met with the Australian Prime Minister,  Alaveteli has enabled people to ask for, and receive, a colossal amount of information that otherwise would most likely not have been openly available.

    Our own FOI site, WhatDoTheyKnow, runs on Alaveteli. It’s also free as open source software  to anyone around the world who wants to set up an Access to Information service for their own country or jurisdiction — and in the 11 years it’s been available, many have done just that.

    Key to Alaveteli is that both FOI requests and responses are published, meaning that each site builds up its own archive of information over time. Even when information is not held by the authority, public knowledge increases, and when requests go unanswered, the very fact that a request was made shows that there is public appetite for the information.

    We noticed that the ticker had passed a million at the end of July this year. The lion’s share — more than 840,000 requests — represents requests made through WhatDoTheyKnow. The others are from jurisdictions as wide-ranging as Rwanda, Australia, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Europe alone, 17 Alaveteli sites are operating; five of these have been launched since 2019, thanks to support from Adessium and Swedish Postcode foundations.

    We hope to be able to work with the network of Access to Information platforms in Europe (including some that are not running on Alaveteli) to strengthen their individual and collective impact. We’re looking to help build and connect the ‘community of interest’ around FOI; and to undertake more coordinated and strategic advocacy efforts to improve Access to Information at national and regional levels – all of which will help ensure continued access to information over the long-term.

    Thanks to WhatDoTheyKnow volunteer Helen Cross for finding the examples cited at the beginning of this post, and many more, during a multilingual trawl through the collective Alaveteli sites.

  7. Challenging public bodies who refuse to accept FOI requests by email

    While running mySociety’s Freedom of Information service WhatDoTheyKnow.com we’ve noticed that some public authorities are refusing to process valid FOI requests made via email, including some sent via our website. A few public authorities have gone so far as to switch off their dedicated FOI email addresses, and have been telling our users that they need to fill in a webform, or make a request by post.

    This practice is against the law. For a Freedom of Information request to be valid, all that’s required is that a) it’s made in writing; b) it includes the requester’s name and an address for correspondence; and c) it describes the information being requested.

    Requests made via email are valid and should be processed promptly, however they are received. We contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office, who confirmed that:

    “Whilst a public authority can request a form is filled in, you are not obliged to do this” and “this should not be made a compulsory requirement.”

    We believe that citizens shouldn’t need to have a detailed understanding of FOI law in order to have valid requests for information logged and answered. Public authority staff should be trained to recognise valid requests, however they are received. The refusal by some authorities to recognise and process requests for information has led to unnecessary delays in requests being answered, and to some requests not being answered at all.

    User-centred FOI

    Whilst there are obvious benefits to public authorities from using case management systems, these should be capable of dealing with email and handling requests that are made via other means.

    Where web-forms are an authority’s preferred form of contact, these should be simple to complete and not require requesters to hand over more personal information than they are required to by law. We’ve seen web-forms which ask requesters for information such as their date of birth, whether they are a journalist and the purpose of their request, for example, none of which the authority needs to know, and some of which might prejudice their response. Sometimes these additional fields are marked as compulsory.

    We’ve also noticed that some authorities have started to reply to FOI requests using a “noreply” email address. This is poor practice because it makes it harder for requesters to ask for clarification or to request an internal review. Ideally, responses to requests should be sent from an address that accepts incoming mail.

    How we’re responding

    If a public body turns off its FOI contact email address and directs requests to a web-form, we try to find an alternative address to send requests to. We do all we can to get our users’ requests delivered, and we invariably succeed.

    In a handful of cases we’ve resorted to sending our users’ requests to public bodies’ Chief Executives as part of our efforts to both get our users’ requests delivered and to encourage authorities to abide by Access to Information law.

    Have you seen this practice?

    While we have only seen this behaviour at a relatively small number of public bodies so far, some of those adopting this approach have included significant authorities such as local councils. It is important to identify and challenge this practice before it spreads more widely, so please let us know if you spot any examples. If you receive a message suggesting you have to make your request again via a web-form, do challenge that, citing the ICO guidance on valid requests.

    We are keen to see the Information Commissioner step in and tackle systemic problems with the way public bodies deal with requests for information. We are encouraged by the recent commitment from the Information Commissioner’s Office to deliver “more systemic enforcement action against public authorities that clearly and consistently fail to meet their FOI obligations”. The fact we publish FOI requests and their responses provides evidence which can support the Commissioner in this work.

    Here are some examples:

    • “All FOI requests have to be put in writing to the Freedom of Information Officer, […] or by completing our online form.” [View on WhatDoTheyKnow]

    • “Can I ask that you please submit your enquiry via our website. The FOI process has recently changed and we have a form that will ask for all the information we need to process this.” [View on WhatDoTheyKnow]

    • “This Freedom of Information request has been received via a mailbox that does not record new requests. Please make your request using the online form under How to make Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations Requests on the Council’s website” [View on WhatDoTheyKnow]

    • “All freedom of Information requests now have to be applied for using our online form (see link sent in my colleagues previous email to you). Once we have your request it will be responded to within 20 days of receipt.” [View on WhatDoTheyKnow]

    Image by Ben Wicks (Unsplash Licence)

  8. Faster and better targeting of requests to multiple bodies on WhatDoTheyKnow Pro

    WhatDoTheyKnow Pro is the paid-for, premium, version of our Freedom of Information service WhatDoTheyKnow.com, designed for journalists, academics, campaigners and others whose needs exceed what our free service provides.

    Features available to Pro users include the ability to delay publication of requests and responses; and to make requests to multiple authorities at the same time via the batch request tool. 

    We’ve just made it much easier for Pro users to add relevant bodies to a batch request via a list of authorities within specific categories.

    WhatDoTheyKnow Pro batch: browse by category

    Our database contains FOI contact addresses for more than 42,000 authorities. Using our service saves you from having to source appropriate contact details yourself, and we’ve now made it even quicker and easier to make batch FOI requests. 

    Since WhatDoTheyKnow Pro’s launch, creating a batch request has involved searching for bodies and adding them individually to the batch. WhatDoTheyKnow’s fantastic volunteers curate over 200 categories to help users on the main site to explore and navigate the UK authorities subject to FOI, and we’ve now incorporated these listings into WhatDoTheyKnow Pro’s batch tool.

    As a result, requests are more likely to be sent to the bodies that hold the information being requested, and the number of requests sent to inappropriate bodies is minimised.

    We’ve been trialling this feature in a limited beta period for a while, and thanks to our funding from the Swedish Postcode Foundation we were able to work with handlingar.se to iron out some bugs and performance issues before making it available to all Pro users.

    We hope the new feature will aid some great cross-authority research, while helping to ensure that requests are targeted to appropriate bodies. 

    Let us know if there are additional categories you’d like us to add!

    Image: Nick Youngson (CC BY-SA 3.0)

  9. Publicly owned Northern Trains Limited wanted to keep its Managing Director’s £245-250k salary a secret

    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:

    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

    Image: Ben Garratt (Unsplash licence)

  10. Release the bats

    Our Freedom of Information service WhatDoTheyKnow has just seen what we think is its largest ever release of information. National Highways has released 1.25 TB of bat survey data, made up of over 115,000 files, including:

    • 786 videos – that’s over 250 hours of footage 
    • 54,570 audio files
    • 354 spreadsheets
    • 2,532 images

    Requester Emma Tristram has been using data released via WhatDoTheyKnow to campaign against the proposed construction of the A27 Arundel Bypass. Commenting on the release, she told us: 

    “It’s fantastic that through WhatDoTheyKnow this recent bat survey data by National Highways is now available to the public. With these up to date bat surveys those fighting the devastating Arundel bypass scheme hope to strengthen their case that the scheme should be cancelled. The scheme would ruin four villages as well as a huge, very biodiverse wildlife area, which Natural England say is of international importance for bats.”

    In response to a consultation about the proposed road building scheme, Natural England confirms the exceptional importance of the environment in and around the South Downs National Park and the need for its protection. They describe the area as containing irreplaceable and rare habitats and priority habitats (Habitats of Principal Importance) which “support an outstanding assemblage of species”. These include numerous maternity roosts of rare bats including Barbastelle, Bechstein’s and the Alcathoe bat.

    The request was dealt with under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). EIR, like Freedom of Information requests, can be used to access more than just documents, correspondence and paperwork. 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. Requests about how limited and in some cases irreplaceable environmental resources are being managed are just as important as requests around how public money is being used. By gaining access to raw data such as this, environmental campaigners are able to independently examine and verify the results of any studies that have been carried out. 

    Due to the size of the release, the authority has made the information available using a file sharing service. When authorities reply to requests made via WhatDoTheyKnow in this way, we will do our best to host their responses by uploading the data to our own servers. Hosting a release of this size poses some logistical challenges, but we are looking at ways of making the data available. If you have any suggestions about how we can best achieve this, please get in touch.

     

    Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library (CC by/2.0)