Express & Star

From KFC on expenses to nurses earning £1.4k a shift, these are the revelations the Freedom of Information Act gave us

Kentucky Fried Chicken on expenses, nurses earning £1,400 in a single day and a secret report into failings at Stafford Hospital – just some of the stories we have been able to expose through the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

Published

It is 10 years since Tony Blair's government brought in the Act, which forces official bodies to answer questions from the press and members of the public.

As well as making it easier to hold the powers that be to account, it has also given us some slightly more bizarre insights.

From West Midlands Police receiving 71 reports of witches, ghosts and zombies between 2011 and 2013, to exposing a council where employees had 311,700 sick days in a single year – the equivalent of 854 years.

More than 400,000 requests have been made since January 1, 2005, with the number of inquiries now reaching almost 1,000 a week. The Act obliges government, councils, the NHS, schools, armed forces and emergency services to make information available on request. The exposure of the MPs' expenses scandal in 2009 had its roots in FOI requests.

After losing a lengthy legal battle about how much detail they would have to release, the Commons authorities were forced to collate millions of invoices, receipts, letters and other documents going back over several years to prepare them for disclosure. This raw material was then leaked to the Daily Telegraph, which in May 2009 ran story after story about highly embarrassing, greedy, unjustifiable and sometimes criminal behaviour by politicians.

The scandal led to prison terms for five Labour MPs and two Conservative peers. Here we look at the Express & Star's top 10 stories from FOI requests:

1. Taxpayers footed a bill of £7.5 million spent on council credit cards in the West Midlands in a single year – with executives using them for to fund foreign trips, hotel stays and even meals at KFC.

The request, made in 2013, revealed officers in local authorities have used them to pay for visits to Paris and Venice, a tour of Arsenal Football Club and even pay off parking tickets slapped on cars by their own council's wardens.

2. Manor Hospital in Walsall paid out more than £1,400 for one agency nurse to work a single shift.

The 12-and-a-quarter-hour Bank Holiday shift cost the equivalent of almost £120 per hour.

3. Inmates at Featherstone Prison have complained about everything from butter on sandwiches to the Christmas menu.

Almost 2,000 gripes were lodged by prisoners at the jail between 2011 and 2012.

It included 31 moans relating to food which saw prisoners complaining about portion sizes, butter on sandwiches, boiled egg sandwiches, Christmas menus and Halal meat.

4. Hundreds of schools in the Black Country and Staffordshire still had asbestos in buildings – 10 years after use of the substance was stopped.

In 2010, we revealed 128 schools in Sandwell, 106 in Wolverhampton and 375 in Staffordshire contain the fire retardant and insulating substance, now known to cause lung diseases.

Asbestos

Figures released also revealed seven residential care homes in Wolverhampton had asbestos.

5. Teenage criminals and yobs were sent on taxpayer-funded trips to Wales and Alton Towers.

More than £10,000 was spent over 2009 and 2010.

6. A secret report obtained by the E&S shed new light on the scandal at Stafford Hospital and the role of former hospital boss Martin Yeates.

The report into the conduct of Mr Yeates blames him for a series of failures, errors and misjudgements.

But its release by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has also sparked anger after a number of key sections were 'redacted' – blanked out in the style of MPs expense claims.

7. Workers at Staffordshire County Council took a total of 311,700 sick days in a single year – the equivalent to 854 years.

Figures obtained showed sickness rates went up, from 291,500 in 2004/05 to 311,700 at the end of the next financial year. The sick pay was worth in excess of £17 million.

8. A botched murder probe that led to five men being acquitted of a gangland killing cost police almost £500,000.

Amateur footballer Kevin Nunes was shot dead in Pattingham and led to jail sentences totalling 135 years for those accused of his murder. But their convictions were quashed following the release of a report detailing blunders by Staffordshire Police.

9. More than 2,800 fines, totalling more than £171,000, have been handed to parents for taking children out of school in term-time since September 2012.

Figures released under the FOI Act showed there were 1,038 fines handed out in Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Staffordshire in 2012/13. The figure rose to 1,472 the following academic year.

10. More than £30,000 was spent so councillors and bureaucrats at quango Advantage West Midlands (AWM) could travel first class on trains. An E&S investigation revealed AWM spent £352,000 on travel and hotel costs between 2006 and 2009 – more than £31,000 on first-class rail travel.

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