Edward Alfred AlexanderRSS is back

	Friday, 27 January 2012
	Dancing in the street
	by Tav

A new FOI Friday blog courtesy of Mr. King:

Tom King 13 Jan 2012

Can you please provide me with... [1] ...the number of applications received for street parties to be held on Friday 29th April 2011 to coincide with the Royal Wedding. [2] ...the number of applications currently received for street parties to be held to coincide with this year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Wyre Forest District Council 13 Jan 2012

In reply to your above FOI request, I would advise that in 2011 we received a total of 9 applications for temporary Road Closures to facilitate street parties held on Friday 29th April 2011 to coincide with the Royal Wedding. Out of these 9 applications only 6 were actually processed and an Order issued, the remaining 3 were cancelled. To date we have received no applications for street parties to be held to coincide with this year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations but we are collating applications for funding to support community activities including street parties. However communities are free to access parks and open spaces for picnics; Community groups do not need to apply to WFDC for a street party other than if a road closure is necessary.

Sources:
Street Parties : Wyre Forest District Council, What Do They Know
The Royal Wedding

Campaigns:

Comments:

Medussa 27 Jan 2012

What's the story here - can't see anything to get excited about street parties that require a FOI request- what am I missing here? What is the hidden agenda?

Helen Dyke 27 Jan 2012

Was there really any need for a FOI on this one?

Fran Oborski 27 Jan 2012

Given the cost to the public of FOI requests this is a stupid waste of public money. For your information Farfield will go for a street closure I am sure.

Tav 27 Jan 2012

A 'hidden agenda'? I guess you will have to ask Tom King on that. However, I believe, the Wyre Forest Labour group are 'machine-gunning' FOI's hoping something sticks. It worked with 'poverty wages', Tom King blogged about it and the Shuttle ran an article on it. A need for this FOI and a waste of public money? Umm, yes and no. I remember being in a meeting with a council officer and the subject of FOI came up. She said it would be a lot easier and cheaper to call the officer responsible and just ask the question. However, the system is restricted and only the press office on the council (councillors and FOI officers) are allowed to go public, otherwise I'm sure there would be council officers blurfing here on the 'Agenda. The key here that has been missed by the council officer I met, Helen and Fran, is transparency. If there was no FOI and I wanted to know how many street closure requests were made for the Diamond Jubilee, I would just call the officer in charge and get the answer. Now let's say I kept the answer to myself, and then someone else rings up the officer and asks the same question. The ten more people call and ask the same question. That is twelve 15 minute identical conversations by the officer taking up (12 x 15) 3hours of their time. That is 3 hours pay of wasted public money. The problem now is the current system isn't much better _ it is better but not fully transparent. As far as I know WFDC do not publish all questions & answers of FOI requests (unlike the 'What Do They Know' website). So effectively if Tom King hadn't made this FOI request through 'What Do They Know', I may have wondered the same thing (unlikely to be honest) and sent in an identical FOI request – so wasting more public money. I can give an example of this: On twitter I was monitoring a tête-à-tête between John Campion and Dan Watson. It slipped out by John Campion that Dan had been sending in FOI requests, one being public art in John Campion's office. If John hadn't tweeted this I would never have known (or thought to ask). See there is no transparency! So my original answer 'Yes' to 'was this needed' is because, like Medussa, I can't see the relevance of this question (so Medussa and I presume there must be a hidden agenda). Without knowing the hidden agenda it does seem pointless, so in that respect I agree with Helen. Hold on though, who are we to decide what is a pointless question or not? We can pass our opinion but we must not make this a decision. I know a blurfer on the 'Agenda that cc'ed me on a FOI request and (as far as I know) it was ignored by the council. Why was it ignored? Well, perhaps because it was on the Traveller's Site debacle and controversial. Nevertheless if the FOI request was ignored the council have broken the law and are showing themselves to be undemocratic.

Tav 27 Jan 2012

Just for your information and to demonstrate how transparency empowers us all. If you look here on the 'What Do They Know' website, you can see Tom King has asked about street parties to all district councils in Worcestershire and the county council. It is following the trend of FOI requests of collating data and then correlating it (against each local authority in this case).

Stephen Brown 27 Jan 2012

FOI has some advantages and significant weaknesses. The advantage is you can ask for information and can build a case on something of concern to you. The weaknesses? They don't always respond, they send useless or watered down information back, give you the run-around, claim you are being unreasonable in requests to avoid giving answers, subvert the truth. And the ability to hold crap FOI responses to account is the biggest weakness. There is always a process to hide behind and the FOI does not go nearly far enough in its power. If the councils went about their business in a truly open and democratic way there would be little need for FOI in my opinion. Indeed the last few FOI I have felt the need to do are basically because I felt the council were subverting the democratic process and thanks to FOI I found it to be true. Now what I do about that is the tricky thing because the process of accountably in this country is weak too. But we'll see, on my issues I remain optimistic. Is there ever a pointless FOI request, well beauty is in the eye of the beholder isn't it.

Fran Oborski 28 Jan 2012

FOI on really important issues YES but on street parties? On art on the Leader's Office wall? Pathetic!

Helen Dyke 28 Jan 2012

I am not against people using FOI but for questions like how many street parties are taking place or how many road closures have been applied for doesn't seem earth shattering information. I know that political parties at times are obsessed with conspiracy theories but FOI submissions do cost us the public money so surely they should be for something important or meaningful.

Stephen Brown 28 Jan 2012

Careful now ... councillors griping about which are worthy or not worthy FOI is a dangerous path to start treading... you never know where it might lead politically if taken to its logical conclusion.

Helen Dyke 28 Jan 2012

Stephen there is a lot said about councillors on this blog, surely as a Councillor I am allowed to voice an opinion too. Don't forget I am a Member of the Public too who pays their council tax just like everyone else.

Stephen Brown 28 Jan 2012

@Helen: I never said you cannot voice an opinion. I think councillors coming on here and airing a view is a healthy thing because it promotes debate. My point is that once we start to filter who's requests are worthy or not takes us down a dangerous path backwards. A quick look at early 20th century history will demonstrate that, as will some of the human right abuses happening right now across the world. Knowledge is power as they say. It's called the 'Freedom' of Information Act, for a reason. It may be an imperfect act but it allows the public some measure of transparency and a minimal ability to hold politicians to account - something which is sadly lacking in a number of issues the council (or any council) wraps itself up in. There are plenty of organisations who shotgun FOI requests, like the 'Taxpayers Alliance' for example that cost the national public purse a lot of money in their pursuit of 'research' to flesh out Tory policies and attack libertarian groups in some cases. Some of their views and associations I find quite distasteful but I would never want to say that they are making unworthy or frivolous requests because I support their right to pursue issues in a democracy and under the FOI Act. Needing an FOI Act and needing to use it is actually a sad indictment on the state of our democracy and the faith that we place in our elected officials because of the shenanigans we have witnessed over the years.

Tav 30 Jan 2012

I think it a FOI request was used to find out about the MP expenses scandal.

FlipC 30 Jan 2012

I'm going to side with Stephen here. Although filtering of FOI for 'importance' wasn't mentioned it is a small step to that from complaining about the frivolous use of them. As Tav points out it's a question of transparency. It's getting better, but does no-one else find it ironic that in order to discover how many FOI requests the council has received would probably take a FOI

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