What Do (they agree to admit that) They Know?

In the second of an occasional series of public service announcements about useful things, can I present to you the "What Do They Know" website.

Its another one provided by the 'My Society' lot who do lots of other democracy and public service sites, as you can see I link to their blog over there -->. They really are a very useful bunch of chaps and chapesses.

What this one does is enable you to make Freedom of Information requests to public bodies. It also helps you track your request and, amusingly publishes any response. This builds up into a handy database of FoIA statements for your favourite public bodies.

That being the case I would heartily recommend that you all use this site for all your FoIA requests so we can all share the info.

You can see where this is going can't you? Yeeeeeesssss, here's the Nottingham City Council page for your delectation.

Am gonna have a bit of a trawl through to see if there's anything interesting, post may be updated later.

Update; NCC have one request outstanding which is currently 45 days late, as well as one which is 222 days late!!!

They also claim to have lost all email correspondence regarding the Icelandic Banks crisis, and also not to have any information on MIPIM expenses for 2009 (ah we all forgot about that didn't we?). Yet. We DO get an indication of the expenses costs when NCC wallahs get to visit our twin city of Ningbo in China though.

We also learn that Jane Todd was earning over £184k pa when she was in her temporary secondment to NCC, prior to getting the permanent post and that NCC is not aware of any 'concerted or co-ordinated' attempts at Housing Benefit fraud. Maybe thats because they're 'closing in' and the fraudsters all got scared and ran away.

I like this site. It will be used for all future NCCLols FoIA requests.