Our partner organisation Climate Emergency UK put us in touch with Mat Allen, based in Northern Ireland. They described him as “one of our most dedicated Scorecards volunteers” — and when we heard what he’s been up to, we could certainly see why.

Volunteering for CE UK is, for many, an opportunity to do something tangible and impactful around climate action. “Getting busy and doing something useful can counter the effects of negative stories,” Mat told us.

So how did it all begin? He explains: “My wife forwarded me a link to an article about CE UK, and I was struck by the importance of somebody taking oversight of the action taking place to address that a third of greenhouse gas emissions that can be influenced by our councils. 

“That is a bit niche, but addressing the climate emergency requires so many things to be done at the local level that I thought this could be something I could usefully contribute to.”

Volunteering as a marker

So Mat got involved. “I signed up to be a marker for CE UK’s 2023 survey, and was assigned a batch of UK councils to score against the criteria laid out in the Buildings and Heating section.” 

There’s no denying that the marking work can be complex, so how did Mat find it? 

“The process was well documented”, he says, “with support from the small CE UK team, and other volunteers available to give guidance when needed. While searching the internet for the evidence that allows marks to be awarded, I found inspiring things happening in councils all over the UK, pockets of brilliance! Some I recommended for inclusion in the Best Practices section of the CE UK website for others to enjoy, and perhaps replicate in their own areas!”

Once the 2023 Scorecards, based on those marks, were published, Mat was able to assess his own region. “The challenge in Northern Ireland became apparent, with much lower scores than the rest of the UK. Our eleven Northern Ireland councils have many challenges — as do all UK councils — with the cost of living crisis putting immense pressure on service delivery, and the level of rates chargeable (yes, we still have rates over here!).

“I made useful contact with my own council, Mid and East Antrim, who gave consideration to our recommended ‘easy wins’ — the actions that can have greatest benefit with least expenditure. They were facing huge financial challenges that year.”

Coming back for more

That was enough to bring Mat back for the next round of work — and this time, he got even more involved!

“I was properly hooked by the time CE UK was seeking volunteers for the 2025 survey, and I signed up as a marker and an auditor, this time in the Transport section. 

“As an auditor, I reviewed the Right to Reply responses made by councils to their initially assigned marks, to determine if scores should be changed based on the new evidence they supplied. This was more challenging, often requiring further online research, and comparison with other councils, to ensure scores were  fair.”

One perhaps unexpected result that we hear from many volunteers is how assessing councils’ climate action can lead to a better understanding of the challenges they face. Mat feels this too:

“I’ve learned a lot while marking and auditing, both about the complexity of council operations, and about successful climate action. The council staff involved are trying their best to do the right things, but surrounded by challenges of understanding and prioritisation. I feel for them, as they try and do right by their ratepayers and the planet!”

Getting the word out there

A small organisation like CE UK doesn’t have a big marketing budget, so anything that helps spread the word is useful, especially from those on the ground who can forge links with their own councils. Mat was able to assist here, too:

“As the release date for the results of the 2025 survey approached, I wanted to get more impact locally than we achieved with the results of the 2023 survey. I signed up as an ambassador for Climate Emergency UK (have yet to be offered a Ferrero Rocher!). 

“Along with my daughter, we decided to act locally, trying to gain traction with my own and the other two County Antrim councils (Antrim and Newtownabbey, and Causeway Coast and Glens), by holding a public launch meeting in Ballymena to publicise our initiative.

“With help and support from CE UK and Friends of the Earth, we held that meeting in June 2025 in Ballymena. The climate change teams from Antrim and Newtownabbey and Mid and East Antrim Councils joined us, as well as Councillor Quigley and residents from all three target council areas. 

“Thanks to the efforts of Councillor McShane from Causeway Coast and Glens Council, we made contact with their newly appointed Climate Change Manager the following day on a Zoom call, and we look forward to ongoing useful engagement with CCC&G! 

“We were pleased to award the ‘Most Improved NI Council’ award to Antrim and Newtownabbey in the presence of our local newspaper, The Ballymena and Antrim Guardian.

“The meeting was worthwhile, helping us at CE UK better understand the challenges these motivated climate teams face, and I hope introducing those folks to useful case studies and information about best practice we can offer.”

Looking to the future

Mat is a great believer in communication, saying, “Perhaps the greatest challenge we all face, and more so in Northern Ireland than elsewhere in the UK, is public engagement, and our councils are important players as they have those everyday interactions and influence with residents and communities.

“The work goes on in councils all over Northern Ireland, and at CE UK we are taking stock and thinking of how we can best help our eleven councils progress essential actions to reduce emissions, bringing communities with them, and prioritising the needs of the vulnerable.”

Mat has found something valuable in CE UK, beyond the ability to get out and do something: a set of data that backs it all up:

“Taking effective action — in anything — is helped by objective measures and targets. Climate Emergency UK is the only organisation offering such measures in the UK, and we research and publish these measures for all councils for free!”

Finally, he says, “We hope to continue engagement with our three Country Antrim councils, and would like to make contact with, and help the other eight Northern Ireland councils add more objectivity, breadth and substance to their climate action plans. 

“We would welcome contacts from the Climate Change Teams and councillors across the province, and we hope to invite more councils to an event to launch the 2027 CE UK Council Climate Action Scorecards!

If you are reading this and you are one of those councils, do drop CE UK an email at declare@climateemergency.uk. 

Many thanks to Mat for sharing his journey as a CE UK Scorecards volunteer — we hope it will inspire others who are wondering how to play their part! CE UK are not currently recruiting for volunteers, but when the next round of activity starts up, you’ll be able to see opportunities on this page.

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Image: K. Mitch Hodge

The Council Climate Action Scorecards are only possible thanks to the work of volunteers, who attend training from Climate Emergency UK before going off to gather the multitude of data required to assess the climate action of every council in the UK.

We’re always keen to hear from volunteers about what motivates them, and any other results that have come from their enhanced understanding of councils and climate action.

And so we were pleased to hear from Lucy Bramley, who first explained how she had come across the Scorecards project. As with so many of the volunteers, Lucy was already involved in climate action, and saw the opportunity to do more.

“I am a Climate Ambassador for the Women’s Institute. We have periodic team calls, and on one of them Don from Climate Emergency UK popped in to tell us about the Action Scorecards.

“I was really keen to find out more, so I asked him to lead a call with others who are also interested in climate change and biodiversity issues in my area. That session made me realise the gulf that exists between councils and residents, even when the residents are environmental activists… and that made me keen to volunteer to support the work of CE UK in shining a light on what our councils are doing — good and bad.”

Lucy took what she learned still further, though, and had a useful route through which to do so:

“I deliver Carbon Literacy training to local authorities for a public sector non-profit. I’m not a full-time employee, but whenever I get to deliver a course, I mention the fact that councils can gauge their own success in their quest to decarbonise, and use their influence to encourage others to do so, by engaging with the Scorecards.

“In fact, most councils seem to have some awareness of the Scorecards, and usually the Climate Change Leaders are most knowledgeable. I have seen the discussion on the Scorecards spark actions which hopefully continue outside the course!”

When asked about longterm outcomes, Lucy says, “I have a much deeper appreciation for the complex and difficult nature of the work that councils have to do.

“I have been frustrated by the impression I get that councils do not seem to work together to share successful strategies, but over time networks do seem to be building.

“The Scorecards are flexible in terms of taking these burgeoning networks on board, and sharing their stories to help amplify local authority challenges and successes. I’d very much like to continue to get as many people as possible to understand and use the Scorecards.”

Many thanks to Lucy for sharing her valuable thoughts and experiences.

Scorecards are a joint project from Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Daria S

The Council Climate Action Scorecards project, which assesses local councils on their climate action, is only possible thanks to a large number of people who give up their time to volunteer. Their job is to source and analyse data from a variety of places, analysing more than 40 different possible pieces of climate action that councils should be taking on their path to Net Zero. 

It’s very worthwhile work, and the project has tangible results (just see our previous case studies) — which is obviously a great motivator for volunteers to get involved. But going through the process of training, and then the actual marking, has other benefits too: it adds to their knowledge, giving them a new, comprehensive overview of the climate sector and its many component parts.

We spoke to Scarlette, who volunteered as part of the 2025 cohort. Scarlette told us how she got involved, and how it took her down a new avenue.

“I’d been looking for a job in the environment sector following my Masters,” explains Scarlette, “and since this had been a long and slow process, I decided to look for volunteer opportunities to do alongside my temporary job. 

“I came across the advert for the Scorecards and felt it really aligned with my interests, particularly in the area of transport.”

While helping to assess councils’ action on transport, Scarlette came across a novel concept. Question 2.3 in the Scorecards asks “Does the council have enforced school streets across its area?”, with points awarded to councils with more than ten such streets year round, and bonus marks available for those with more than 30.

A school street is a road outside a school that is effectively closed to motorised traffic at drop-off and pick-up times. As the School Streets website notes, such schemes help tackle air pollution and road danger, encourage a healthier lifestyle and active travel to school for families, and lead to a better environment for everyone.

Once Scarlette found out about them, she was keen to get involved:

“I started volunteering as a School Street Marshal at a local school for a six month trial period. Prior to volunteering on the Scorecards I had never heard of the School Street initiative, and certainly wasn’t aware of any near me. The Scorecards led me to seek out this new role, and has encouraged me to get involved further with local campaigns.

“Volunteering with the Scorecards and the School Streets initiative has further cemented my passion for working in the environmental sector. I’ve been able to build on my academic knowledge within environmental law and have had the opportunity to gain more experience working in my local community with an environmental charity. I continue to look for further volunteering opportunities elsewhere to build on these experiences.”

We’re really glad to hear this, and wish Scarlette all the best in finding a permanent role in the environment sector: it certainly sounds like she’s acquiring some really relevant experience.

Scorecards are a joint project from Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Hammersmith and Fulham Council (CC by-nc-nd/2.0)

Prefer to watch this post as a video? Scroll down to the end.

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The Council Climate Action Scorecards are compiled by a cohort of volunteers, trained up by Climate Emergency UK. They’re currently recruiting for the next round of marking, so if that sounds like something you’d like to be involved with, check out the details here.

The knowledge that volunteers acquire isn’t just applicable to the Scorecards: it upskills them for life, empowering them to apply their knowledge to informed climate action. In that way, the benefits of the Scorecards project are more longlasting, and spread further than we might have expected!

Fiona Dyer was part of the volunteer cohort of 2023, and she shared her journey from climate-concerned to climate-informed. Her story can inspire us all — especially those who may be feeling powerless or hopeless in the face of the climate crisis.

Fiona explains: “At the start of the COVID pandemic I had to retire early from the NHS to look after my mum. I had more time to read, and the more I read, the more concerned I felt about the impact global heating and biodiversity loss was going to have on my children’s future. Across the world people were already suffering. 

“I heard about the CE UK Scorecards project from a friend, and decided volunteering would be something positive I could do that I could fit around my other commitments. I doubted whether my computing skills would be adequate, but the CE UK team was friendly and supportive, and we volunteers learnt from each other via a chat forum. 

“Reading through councils’ climate action plans to find information was challenging at times, but it also gave me a good understanding of the scope, powers and potential influence councils have to help communities mitigate and adapt to the challenges that lie ahead.” 

So, that’s where it started — but it’s certainly not where it ended! Fiona goes on to tell us how she could bring that acquired knowledge to a whole new arena.

“I went on to join Climate Action Durham (CAD), and learned that they’d held a Citizens’ Forum on Climate Action the year before, in collaboration with Durham County Council. 

“I suggested we used the Scorecards at the next forum, as up to date, publicly available research that would give us a better understanding of the breadth of topics councils should be addressing, as well as performance data. 

“It was agreed that by using the Scorecards we could more easily assess the council’s climate response plan: its strengths and weaknesses, how it compared with similar and neighbouring councils and how we could gauge improvement over time. 

“The citizens’ forum was held in the autumn, timed to be just after the publication of the Scorecards. As we had already established a ‘critical friend’ type relationship with the council, it was agreed that the introduction to the forum would be given by myself, alongside the council’s Neighbourhoods and Climate Change Corporate Director. 

“My presentation was a combination of some of the council’s own slides and slides I created using Scorecards data, chosen to highlight issues that would help focus discussion in the work groups that followed. 

“I would not have had the confidence to do this without my experience of being a Scorecards volunteer, as I have no previous experience in this area. It was also an opportunity for me to champion the broader agenda of increasing local democracy. “

That’s the increased confidence that knowledge can bring. And then, as Fiona explains, the event itself was enriched and informed by the Scorecards data.

“The Citizens’ Forum on Climate Action was open to anyone who wanted to attend. People were asked to choose the work group they wanted to be part of in advance: these broadly aligned with the Scorecard categories and they were given the link to the Scorecards website. 

“The questions and scores in each of the Scorecards categories enabled us to be more effective in scrutinising the council’s performance. 

“The council said they welcomed CAD’s involvement in consulting the public on its climate plans and being held to account in a constructive way.”

And from this one day emerged some longterm outcomes:

“The feedback from the forum work groups was written up in detail as a report, including nine specific recommendations. Where possible I used my Scorecards knowledge to cite examples of good practice by other councils for each recommendation, these were included as footnote references. 

“For example, Bristol use an Eco Impact Checklist that is applied to all their new projects. This report was shared with the council and made available to the public via the CAD website. 

“CAD members who facilitated the groups in the forum have continued to work with the relevant councillors, to varying degrees, as the next iteration of their climate plan is being developed. We will see how many of the recommendations are included in the new plan when it is published later this year. 

“As a group we intend to continue supporting, lobbying and campaigning where it is needed. We have just set up Durham Climate Hub, part of a national network of climate emergency centres and are continuing to work with the council’s community engagement officer. In the run up to this year’s forum we plan to hold sessions in the Hub on some of the forum themes to increase interest and participation from a broader section of the public. 

“I have suggested CE UKs training to various other groups, one of which I have co-hosted with CE UK using my local knowledge. It feels good to be playing my part in raising awareness of the challenges we face and working creatively with other people to improve local resilience, not forgetting the bigger picture and fundamental need for system change.”

Fiona’s account is a phenomenal example of how citizens can work together with their local councils to understand, oversee and encourage better climate action. It shows how the Scorecards training has a ripple effect that is tangible and longlasting. 

Big thanks to Fiona for sharing her experience — we hope it will inspire others who are looking for a way to take practical and productive action on climate issues.

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Image: David Ross

 

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

12: Bats

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

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

11: Vaccines

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

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

10: Bins

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

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

 

 

 

 

9: Underground

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

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

 

 

8: Textbook

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

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

 

 

 

7: Tower Bridge

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

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

 

 

6: War memorabilia

The Ministry of Defence released a WW2 medal card.

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

 

 

 

 

5: Honours board

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

4: Seaside nuisance

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

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

 

 

 

3: Big cats

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

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

 

 

 

2: Library books

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

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

 

 

 

1: Trains galore

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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Image credits:

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

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.

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Image: Meriç Dağlı

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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.

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.

 

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Image: Marten Newhall 

In the first post in this series I introduced our new focus around repowering democracy, and in the second I outlined how we think we need to change as an organisation to make this happen. In this final post we’ll give an overview of the new behaviours we’ll adopt across the organisation so that we’re better able to help repower democracy.

Over the next 10 years, we might have two general elections; maybe three rounds of various local elections; and quite possibly a vote for Scottish independence in 2023 – but by and large the elected leaders, civil servants, community leaders and institutions we already have in place today are the ones who will be making the big decisions about democracy and climate over the next decade.

With this in mind we’ve identified seven cross-cutting behaviours we need to adopt in order to deliver our strategy. Below, we introduce each behaviour and the key events and outcomes we are seeking to deliver as we incorporate these into our day to day work.

1. Partner for impact and diversity

We can deliver our greatest impact through and with others. We look for partners with the ‘same goals, different skill sets’: organisations and groups that want to achieve similar outcomes to ourselves, but that might be approaching it in a different way, or have a distinct set of skills so we can each complement what the other is doing.

Understanding, learning from, and seeking to collaborate with the systematic connections and existing networks already active in tackling the democratic and climate challenges ensure that we can best understand the unique contribution we can make to drive the most positive outcomes.

2. Build community everywhere

We’ll seek to build community everywhere, inside and outside our organisation – stewarding and supporting the growth of participant communities around our existing services, enabling a greater sense of ownership by those communities. We’ll help users to help each other more, reach new users, and provide more evidence for the benefits of becoming active citizens.

Building community is a core concept for understanding how to put more power into more people’s hands and better understanding societal needs beyond the needs of individuals. To make this happen we’ll become a more porous organisation, helping us improve at working with and collaborating with others to achieve our shared goals.

3. Advocate for change

Our research work to date has played a relatively passive role in putting forward practical and actionable ideas for how things might be done differently. Considering the scale of the crises we face, we need to advocate and push for more significant and swifter change – pulling the levers of power where they are open to us; aligning with movements for change where they are not.

At its simplest this means getting the word out about how people can work with us, find common cause, and pool our resources in order to increase active pressure for change. We’ll seek to expand our public policy and public affairs skills directly and through partnering, increasing our capacity to really dig into institutions to identify key decision makers and allies.

4. A drumbeat of experimentation

We want to recapture the early approach to experimentation which kickstarted mySociety by placing new bets within each of our programmes, to try new approaches and engage new users and participants who might not be familiar with our work or how they can make use of it.

We will look for every opportunity to move quickly and experiment widely – doing what’s necessary to learn, putting that into practice and looking for ways to ‘put money behind what works’.

5. Everyday equity and inclusion

Whilst technology can achieve many things, it can often serve to reinforce structural inequality. Representation in civic tech suffers from the same shortcomings as the wider tech and civil society fields: with predominantly white leadership and staff, the majority of technical roles and positions of power held by men, limited opportunities for those from historically excluded and as a result underrepresented groups – particularly racially minoritised and disabled people.

We need to better understand and deliver our services in the UK so that they benefit more marginalised communities, and actively work to diversify our workforce – leading to better outcomes for everyone.

6. Home is where the heart is

We started in the UK and we still run our largest active services here. Over the past 18 years we’ve worked with fellow civic technologists around the globe as part of the civic tech community, sharing, adapting and collaborating on building a movement of technology led participation.

Through this strategy we are recommitting to incubating solutions to democratic and climate challenges here in the UK first of all – and working in the open to support partners to adopt this work elsewhere. Through TICTeC we seek to better connect and equip others to undertake effective, evidence-based and impactful work that enhances public participation, transparency and accountability.

7. A bigger idea of team

We have an excellent, experienced and committed team. But we are often thinly spread and constrained around our capacity to explore new ideas at pace and scale and we need to be more inclusive and diverse both as a team and through the partners and communities we serve.

If we’re going to operate in a way that is commensurate with the crises we face, we’ll need to find new and imaginative ways to do more; enhancing our collective skills further, with new staff who can help us collaborate more effectively and work better with others to achieve our goals.

We’ll invest in community building roles, with outreach and network skills to give us more capacity to better connect, learn and collaborate; we’ll rejuvenate our approach to volunteering, expanding the ways for more people to contribute their time in more meaningful ways to support and extend our work – becoming a more open and porous organisation along the way.

We’ll work in partnership with people, communities and institutions to harness digital technology in service of civic participation.

We’ve learned a lot about what we need to change in order to make the shifts we’ve identified, in order to be ready to repower democracy.

Our experience over the past 18 years has taught us that advocacy campaigns and policy influencing is more effective when it’s done in partnership, and that we offer a specific set of skills and experience that many organisations do not have inhouse. We plan to partner more with a broad range of experienced people and partners outside of the organisation.

We need to rethink our definition of the team beyond the confines of just the staff – our volunteers, board members, and not least the wider community of which we are all part helps forge a bigger, better definition of what mySociety needs to be.

We’ve recognised that we can’t just play one side of the game: it’s not enough just to empower citizens, we need to prime institutions to be capable of responding to that empowerment.

And along with all of this we’ll need to increasingly rethink where power lies, and where we refocus our activity beyond government and the public sector.

Where we go next

The thoughts outlined in these three posts set out the direction of travel for our work over the next few years – over the next few months we’ll be working through what this means for our existing programmes and services, how we live up to the three shifts and fully incorporate our new behaviours.

In developing this thinking we’ve drawn upon support from across our whole team, board members, staff and volunteers, with lots of input from external peers and advisors. I’m especially grateful to the New Citizenship Project who have helped us imagine what the #citizenshift means for our day to day work and have helped us work though how we might put that into practice.

If you have any thoughts on how you might help repower democracy, I’ll put all three of these posts on Medium for comments and further discussion.

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Image: Ussama Azam

WhatDoTheyKnow is kept up and running by a dedicated team of volunteers. Do you have the time or skills required to help? If you think you might like to lend a hand, read on to see what they do on a daily basis, as well as some examples of desired site improvements. 

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Ginormous database

One of the volunteers’ many tasks is to maintain what we believe to be the largest existing database of public bodies in the UK (38,362 of them…and counting).

This requires quite a bit of time and effort to keep up to date: email addresses change; bodies merge, get new names or just cease to exist.

The turnover of the financial year always brings an extra slew of required changes; presumably many bodies like to use this date for a nice neat cut-off in their records. So, to give a snapshot of the sort of admin work the volunteers undertake, let’s take a look at every task April 1 brought the team this year.

New authorities

Thirteen new authorities were added. Some of them are so new that they haven’t yet had any FOI requests made through the site. Perhaps you’ll be the first?

• The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service was formed through the merger of two existing services.
•  39 NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups became defunct, and nine new bodies were added:
  • NHS North West London Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Black Country and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS North East London Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Frimley Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Hampshire, Southampton and Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group
  • NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group
• We also marked 2 NHS Trusts as defunct and added one successor: the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.
• We’ve added the new UK Health Security Agency, which has been set up to work on public health threats, combining elements of Public Health England with NHS Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre.
• All district, borough and county councils in Northamptonshire (eight in total) were abolished on 1 April to be replaced by two new unitary authorities:
  • North Northamptonshire Council
  • West Northamptonshire Council

When we add a new body that replaces an existing one, we also make sure that no-one can make requests to the now-defunct authority — while at the same time, requests made to it in the past, along with any responses, are still available to view, and requests in progress can still be followed up.

We also set up page redirects to the new body, and replicate all of the metadata that helps WhatDoTheyKnow’s system work behind the scenes. It might be a bit of a faff but it’s worth the effort to keep things running smoothly.

Many thanks to volunteer Martyn for completing the lion’s share of the work listed above.

How you can help

If you know of any other changes that haven’t been reflected on the site, please do let us know.

If this post has reminded you how much you enjoy admin, consider joining the team! We always need more volunteers to help us run the site, keep the database up to date, deal with requests to remove material, and support our users. Find out more here.

There are some specific tasks that are top of our wish-list, too:

• We’d love to do some intensive work on our list of parish level councils to make it comprehensive — this could mean a few people working systematically through a list, or several checking how well their local area is represented on WhatDoTheyKnow. Local democracy matters, more so than ever, and transparency is important for bringing happenings to light (as events in Handforth have recently reminded us!).
• We have ambitions to organise our bodies geographically, showing bodies which operate in particular areas, or showing maps of the areas covered by bodies. See this ticket for a discussion of some of the possibilities which we haven’t had the resource to completely finesse.
  mySociety has experience in mapping UK governmental areas, but we’re yet to integrate that expertise into WhatDoTheyKnow — do you have the required coding skills to make it happen?
• We’d like to do more organising of the bodies by their function too, helping guide users to the appropriate body fo their request.

If you have skills in web-scraping, spreadsheet wrangling, database maintenance or other relevant areas and think you can help us — please let us know!

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Image: Anastasia Zhenina

In our previous post, we identified WhatDoTheyKnow’s current need for sources of funding.

But WhatDoTheyKnow also needs more volunteers to join the team. Since the site’s launch, it’s always depended on a highly-motivated, active group of administrators who work to keep it running.

At mySociety, we’re very grateful for the work the volunteers do; for their part, they tell us that they find the work rewarding and interesting — but we’re always aware that we can’t, and shouldn’t, demand too much from them. The more volunteers we can recruit, of course, the less the workload will be for everyone.

We’ve identified three general areas in which volunteer help would be very welcome, and if you think you’d fit in to any of these, we’d love to hear from you.

General volunteers

Are you:

• interested in FOI and transparency
• happy to work remotely but as part of a team, communicating mainly via email
• able to dedicate a minimum of a few hours per week to helping run the site

Each of our volunteer administrators give their time freely and are the only reason we can run the service day to day at all.

Being a volunteer is both rewarding but also challenging, as each juggles their day jobs and home lives. So the more volunteers we have, the more we can spread the workload between them.

If you have a specific interest in FOI or transparency, or indeed you’d just like to help support a well used civic tech service then we’d love to hear from you. There is always a diverse range of jobs and tasks needing to be done, even if you can only help a couple of hours a week. We all work from home and communicate via email and other online tools.

If you can help us a volunteer the first thing to do is to write to the team introducing yourself and letting us know about your relevant skills, experience and interests.

Legal support

Are you:

• a law student or professional who can offer expertise in the day-to-day running of the site; or
• a legal firm or chambers who could offer legal advice on an ad hoc, pro bono basis

Volunteers with legal backgrounds We take our legal and moral responsibilities in running WhatDoTheyKnow very seriously and we always welcome volunteers with experience of legal matters. Some of the legal aspects of running the site are handled routinely on a day to day basis by the admin team.

They may, for example, remove correspondence which could give rise to claims of defamation, or where personal data is disclosed by an authority mistakenly and they consider continued publication to be unwarranted.

The legal challenges thrown up by operating our service are varied and interesting. Joining us could be an opportunity for someone to get some hands on experience of modern media law, or for a more experienced individual, to provide some occasional advice and guidance on more challenging matters.

We often find ourselves balancing claims that material published on our site could aid criminals or terrorists, or could cause harm in other ways, and we do our best to weigh, and balance, such claims against the public interest in making the material available.

As material published on our website may have been used to support news articles, academic research, questions from elected representatives, and actions by campaign groups or individuals it’s important we don’t remove correspondence lightly and that we’re in a position to stand up, where necessary, to powerful people and institutions.

Legal firms that can offer advice As from time to time there are cases which are more complicated, we would like to build a relationship with a legal firm or chambers that can advise us on an ad hoc basis on defamation, privacy (misuse of private information) and data protection.

The ability to advise on copyright law and harassment law would also be an advantage. And we also on very rare occasions may need help as to how to respond to the threat of litigation.

Could you offer help in this area? Please do get in touch to discuss getting involved.

Administrative support

Are you:

• a committed, organised, empathetic person who could volunteer a few hours (working from home) a week

In our previous post we mentioned that we’d ideally secure funding for an administrator who could handle our user support mail and deal with routine but potentially complex and time-sensitive tasks such as GDPR-based requests.

While we seek funding for this role, would you be willing to fill it on a voluntary basis? Please get in touch.

Lots to help with

So in summary, what we need to keep WhatDoTheyKnow running is money, volunteer help, and legal support. If you can help with any of these, or have some ideas of leads we might be able to follow, please do get in touch. It also helps to share this post with your networks!

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Image: CC0 Public Domain