In for a penny in for a pound or at least 50 pence. That’s how much you’ll pay to visit the so-called public toilets around Parliament.

Local councils say the reason for leasing out the loos to private companies is purely economic. In a Westminster cabinet member report, officials say that the £2.7 million the council spends on public toilets is “a high level of expenditure for an entirely discretionary service.”

What? Pissing is discretionary? Tell that to your bladder the next time you get a call from nature. I suppose they mean peeing in public. We could go home or buy something in Starbucks or a pub and use their toilet. But should we have to? And what about those who have nowhere to go or the money for a purchase? And really, what else are taxes for but to provide common public services for which there is no commercial incentive?

Surely it’s basic human dignity (and hygiene) to have access to a clean toilet. Yet the number of public loos has diminished by 50 per cent according to Mike Bone, Director of the British Toilet Association, a finding backed up by other government investigations. London has seen the worst decline with just 400 public toilets left in a city with nearly 7.5 million people. That’s one for nearly 18,000 Londoners. Quite a queue!

It gets worse. There are 28 million visitors to London, of whom 12 million are from overseas and there is just one public toilet for every 67,000. That’s even before we consider the 2012 Olympics. Public transport is no better: of data supplied by 255 Tube stations, only 88 (35 per cent) have public toilet provision.

Beijing spent $48million (£27million) to provide 4,700 public toilets for the 2008 Games, one for every 500 metres. In addition all restaurants, shops and hotels have to offer their toilets for the use of non-customers for free.

I’m a healthy young woman and I find the lack of public loos in London extremely inconvenient so how much worse it must be for older people, pregnant women, parents with young children and those with urinary health issues. These people suffer while the young men who piss publicly on the street are given extra street urinals. Will it take a cadre of women urinating in public before we are given adequate resources?

When I think of all the nonsense my taxes pay for such as social engineering projects, public relations (which is little more than political propaganda) and top officials’ salaries, I am livid. According to the Town Hall Rich List (http://tinyurl.com/3xnw6v), 818 council managers earned more than £100,000 in 2006-07, up from 645 the previous year and in 2007 Tower Hamlets, England’s most deprived borough, paid 27 staffers more than £100,000!

That a basic necessity such as a public toilet is sidelined to make way for nannyish vanity projects of dubious merit and inflated bureaucratic salaries is outrageous.

It happens because in our current political system local people have no power or influence over how local councils spend our money. Central government politicians make all the important decisions. Therefore it is to these politicians rather than local people that a council listens.

If we did have any real power over our councils then public toilets might not be flushed down the pan. In New York, the Women’s Restroom Equity Bill signed into local law June 2005 ensures that all new and renovated buildings must have twice as many toilets for women as men. The measure was passed by the city council unanimously.

Some may argue that councils should be under a statutory duty to provide public toilets. But there are other less intrusive solutions. As in New York City, local councils could use planning laws to ensure any business serving food or drink open its bathrooms to the public. London Mayor Boris Johnson is encouraging all boroughs to sign up to the Community Toilet Scheme which provides grants for those businesses which open their toilets for free use.

“In Victorian times people were proud to provide pubic toilets,” says Mike Bone. Hopefully we won’t have to get back to pre-Victorian scenes of squalor before the importance of public toilets is re-discovered.

Government bureaucrats spend a lot of money telling us what they wants us to know but very little on what we actually want to know, namely how they spend our money.

I discovered this first hand after putting MPs’ rhetoric to the test in relation to their claims of supporting open government and grassroots activism. I asked to see all the receipts for expenses they claim from the public purse. They fought for nearly four years before they were forced to concede this basic tenet of democracy.

Recently I discovered that for every person employed by police forces to answer freedom of information requests (what we want to know) there are on average 8.4 press/PR staff (telling us what they want us to know). In Thames Valley Police that ratio is 27 to one.

The same muddled thinking is operating in our local councils. Here we find numerous officials signing up to the mantra of ‘citizen activism’ and yet when it comes to the one real power citizens have to scrutinise council spending they are suddenly mute.

I’m betting few of you realise that August is the month when most councils and police authorities must by law throw open their account books for 20 days so the public can inspect them. This right is granted under Section 15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998. This law allows any elector or taxpayer in the area to inspect and make their own copies of all the detailed contracts, invoices, receipts, books and bills that are related to the accounts of the recent financial year for the council or police authority.

It’s a powerful right and one of the only ways for the common man (or woman) to see the nitty gritty detail of council spending. It is the only way to find out, for instance, how much police spend on informants (the Metropolitan Police in London paid out more than £2.2m to informants in 2006/07).

The end of the financial year is 31st March but the accounts aren’t usually completed until the end of July so the inspection time starts from then and can go until September. For a guide to see when your local area opens its books see the website http://www.orchardnews.com/audcomact.htm or call your local council.

This tiny window is the only opportunity local people get in this country to see the full detail of the millions spent by councils. By law, notice of this time must be placed in the local newspaper but who of us regularly reads the legal smalls of our local newspaper? And even if you do and read, as Julian Todd did last month, that the City of Liverpool’s accounts would be available every day between 8:30am and 4:45pm from 2 July to 29 July, it doesn’t necessarily mean the council is prepared for the public to take it up on the offer.

As Julian says: “Now, this ad was not meant to be followed up, because when I presented myself between 8.30am and 4.45pm at said offices, nothing was prepared.”
He then battled with the council’s accountants before finally getting to see the contracts and details that were supposedly open for public inspection.

Where are the glossy ads or pamphlets telling people about this powerful right to hold their local representatives to account? Where will you find it on the website? Most councils keep very, very quiet about this public obligation, preferring instead to spend taxpayer money on propaganda. I recently received one of these ‘spin sheets’ from Kensington & Chelsea council and the Met Police telling me about ‘Anti-Social Behaviour and what your council is doing about it.’ This 8-page glossy is thick with photos of councillors buddying up with police, removing graffiti and working with youth.

What a waste of money. Give me the name and direct telephone number of my local community officers. Better yet, tell me the date and times when I can go and inspect the police authority and council’s accounts and see exactly what these people are actually doing about youth crime.

David Farrer, deputy chairman of the tribunal, said in the ruling that publishing the identity of ASBO recipients, even when the order was still in effect, could cause “unjustified humiliation” and may violate the Data Protection Act.

The Tribunal’s main concern was not about the rights of the law abiding public to live free from fear of vandals or open justice but that disclosure might be “unwarranted by reason of prejudice to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of the ASBO subjects.”

I’m all for protecting the privacy of individuals but when we’re dealing with sentences given out in a so-called open court that is funded entirely by the taxpayer, it cannot be right to keep secret the results of the criminal justice system from the people who pay for it and in whose name it operates.

Another surprising circumstance of this case is that the original requester of the information – David Leigh of the Guardian – was not even informed of the Tribunal hearing despite much of the argument being about the reason for his request and what he planned to do in his investigation.

The fact is that every ASBO is made in public in the sense that any adult can supposedly attend court proceedings. But of course no one does anymore and as a citizen has no rights to use the information he witnesses in court, effectively courts are now becoming the secret cloisters of legal professionals. If councils can now also keep secret their use of ASBOs then we really are moving toward a system of secret justice.

On page 12 you can read the specifications for Ken’s ads:

On all advertising and public service information, the Mayoral endorsement should be displayed in a fixed proportion to the roundel as shown.

Size
The capital-letter height of the ‘MAYOR OF LONDON’ logotype should measure the same as the depth of the roundel bar. It is to be displayed in New Johnston Bold, all upper case.

Position
The capital letter height of the Mayor’s endorsement should be aligned vertically with the roundel. Horizontally, the minimum distance between the Mayor’s endorsement and the roundel is equal to half the width of the roundel, measured across its bar. Ideally it should be greater than this and the Mayor’s endorsement should be ranged left with the left hand margin of any layout.

Colour
The Mayor’s endorsement should appear in Corporate blue except for the last two letters ‘ON’. These use either Corporate red (TfL and its direct subsidiaries) or the roundel ring colour of the individual business units. With single colour professional outputs the ‘ON’ is to be reproduced at a 50% tint. When reversed out of a dark background the ‘ON’ is to be in an appropriate second colour.

Councils bypass Ordnance Survey for Google Maps
The Guardian, Thursday May 31, 2007
Local authorities are increasingly using the free application from the search giant on their websites

Navigating your way around a local authority’s websites can be a painful experience, especially if it involves maps. Perhaps, for example, you are looking for a school on an online map that is generated by survey data from Ordnance Survey. This can be particularly frustrating, with data fields going missing as you zoom in, maps updating slowly and overly complicated interfaces.

If that’s your impression, it’s backed up by a survey carried out for the Society of Information Technology Management. The society tested local authority websites against four key indicators: only 56% of councils had clickable maps; just 35% offered a way to find schools on a map. And only 13% offered a help facility.

But while maps and geographical information are vital to local authorities and their websites, the prices and licensing policies of Ordnance Survey, the government’s mapping agency, mean that some councils have decided to bypass OS and use free maps from Google to create mashups of information for their websites.

Traditional geographical information systems provide “complex data, complex systems”, said Dane Wright, IT service manager at Brent council in north London, at the annual conference of GIS in the Public Sector earlier this month. Google Maps, by contrast, provides “complex data, simple systems”.

Primary interface

Wright told the conference: “What we are doing is moving to Google Maps as the primary interface for casual use by public users. This will leave the GIS system for more specialist users. The reason for doing this is to provide a better user experience – familiar interface, easy to use, integrated aerial imagery, attractive, no need for training or large manuals.”

So far, a number of councils are considering the introduction of a full service using Google Maps, but Wright is certain there are many other projects in development. The central Directgov site, for example, uses Google Maps for its nationwide schools finder.

“There are now more opportunities for sharing and collaboration using maps and location data, otherwise known as mashups,” Wright said. For example, a group of citizens has used Brent’s service to create interactive running and cycling routes (brent.gov.uk/running) in cooperation with a commercial site, runstoppable.com. Or they will be able to search for their nearest vacant allotment, get an aerial view using Google Earth and even register for the site – all from within the map.

Switching to Google Maps could save a great deal of public money as Google Maps is free, whereas using OS data can cost thousands of pounds. Furthermore, says Wright, development of a Google interface costs less than development of an equivalent GIS web-mapping interface.

It is not yet clear what the total savings might be because Google could begin charging for advertising-free services. But it’s unlikely to be as high as the rates OS charges public bodies. Greater London authority alone paid £812,454 to the OS in the financial year 2005-06 – although that includes charges for detailed maps at finer detail than Google Maps affords, which councils still need for some administrative functions. As Wright said at the conference: “We still need OS for internal use with our GIS and we also need it for external use where maps showing the outlines of buildings are required.”

And isn’t the use of Google Maps just the re-use of OS data? After all, OS is listed as a source by Google. So is using Google Maps simply adding a middleman?

Not necessarily. OS isn’t the only organisation mapping the UK for commercial ends. In future, if Google decides that some other company – such as, for example, Tele Atlas, the Dutch mapping company which already provides some of its maps and satellite photography (while again buying in some data from OS) – would be be a sufficient provider, it could reduce its reliance on OS.

Losing revenues from Google – and from local authorities – would increase the pressure on OS to find alternative revenue streams. OS, as a trading fund, receives no direct tax funding, but must cover its costs by charging for its products. This in turn could mean that there are fewer organisations prepared to pay its prices, which could be disastrous for an organisation whose quality of mapping is rightly applauded internationally.

OS’s commercial policies are already under pressure from two European directives which are trying to bring the EU more into line with the American model of public information sharing. The Regulations on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information, which became UK law in July 2006, seek to eliminate obstacles that hinder the re-use of data. And earlier this month, the Inspire Directive came into force, requiring greater public access to geospatial data, particularly environmental data collected by public bodies such as postcodes, land and buildings. The UK has two years to incorporate the directive into law.

Simplify licensing

Dr Niall Watson, senior geographical information adviser at the Department of the Environment and Rural Affairs, says that Inspire “doesn’t preclude trading funds, but there is an emphasis on making the data accessible and easier for the public to access. It’s certainly not a mandate to charge for the data, but it is a mandate to improve access to data.”

The law aims to cut duplication of data, simplify licensing , reduce the cost of data, shift the focus to using the data and encourage greater collaboration.

The OS acknowledges these problems. Graham Vowles, principal consultant for OS, says: “There is only one door at the moment to access our data and that is commercial. There is an opportunity here to expand this model by offering the data to local authorities at reduced cost.”

Guardian Technology’s Free Our Data campaign has a simple suggestion which would preserve both the OS’s client base and the quality of its mapping by removing financial squeezes from both. Make the data gathered by the OS free for re-use; fund the organisation from direct taxation and allow companies to build businesses on the data without constraint. Then it would not just be giants like Google that could afford to make their maps and location services free.

I made a Freedom of Information request for the Mayor’s appointment diary for the past financial year (March 2004-April 2005) and to Ken Livingstone’s credit, I received 78 pages detailing the mayor’s meetings, lunches, celebrity networking, trips abroad and even a haircut and dentist appointment. I discovered the mayor’s favourite restaurant for meetings is Le Pont de la Tour. That may be trivial, but his favourite guest was Manny Lewis, the chief executive of the London Development Agency, which often gives some of its �400million budget towards funding Ken’s pet projects.

On the celebrity front, Ken attended a photo shoot with supermodel Caprice on 27 October, a fundraising dinner with Emma Thompson at English National Opera, had a phone chat with Bob Geldof and met with food guru Jamie Oliver and racing champion Sir Stirling Moss.

I also discovered that Ken met twice with Philip Anschutz, the American billionaire who wants to open a super casino in the Millennium Dome. Nine months later, what do we see but Ken giving his whole-hearted support for the Casino Advisory Panel to select the Dome as the nation’s first super casino.

Unfortunately, the Evening Standard has not placed the article on its electronic website, though you may request a copy from their office. Also, the Mayor’s Office has only provided a hard copy of the diary. If you are curious to see it for yourself then please contact the Mayor’s Office and ask for your own copy. Now that it is released it should be accessible to anyone, not just me.

Politicians’ appointment diaries are important because they show who they are meeting and also who they are NOT meeting. Who has influence and who doesn’t. This is useful to give an indication of the informal lobbying that goes on in public bodies.

One thing the Evening Standard article did not point out was the large number of meetings the Mayor had with Muslim ‘leaders’ and organisations – far exceeding the proportion of Muslims to the London population and more than any other religious or special interest group.

In conclusion, although I’ve not always been Ken’s biggest fan, I have to give him praise where it’s due and apart from not providing the informaton in electronic form as I had asked, his office handled my FOI request in a professional and diligent manner. Indeed, my opinion of the Mayor did actually improve after receiving his diary. Let other politicians take note.

London Fire and Emergency Authority are now re-processing my request and they seem willing to release the data. Their main concern is whether the law provides retrospective acccess to data held before 1 October. Obviously I argue that it does, but they are currenty consulting their lawyers. Any lawyers out there who would care to comment on this please do so!

Background on my request can be read at:

http://www.yrtk.org/secret-squirrel/fire-safety-reports/

Local authorities are required by section 8 of the Local Land Charges Act 1975 to allow any person to search in the Local Land Charges Register on payment of the prescribed fee, currently �11.00 per parcel of land.

In addition, any person is entitled by law to inspect free of charge any records open for public inspection held by local authorities. Such records include the planning register and the register of enforcement notices, stop notices and breach of condition notices (sections 69 and 188 of Town and Country Planning Act 1990).

Some other open public records that may be of interest:

• maps of public sewers (sections 199 and 200 of Water Industry Act 1991);
• publicly adopted highways (section 36(7) of the Highways Act 1980);
• conservation areas (Town and Country Amenities Act 1974);
• local common land and town and village greens (section 3(1) and (2) of Commons
  Registration Act 1965);
• hazardous substances consents (section 28 of Planning (Hazardous Substances)
  Act 1990);
• litter control areas and street litter control notices (section 95 of Environmental
  Protection Act 1990);
• noise abatement zones (Control of Pollution Act 1974; The Control of Noise (Measurement and Registers) Regulations 1976, SI No 37);
• public rights of way (section 57(5) of Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981);
• tree preservation orders (Article 4(2) of the Model Order in the Town and Country
  Planning (Tree Preservation Order) Regulations 1969; section 214 of Town and
  Country Planning Act 1990;
• DOE Circular 36/78 “Trees and Forestry” and Welsh Office Circular 64/78); and
• contaminated land (section 78 of Environmental Protection Act 1990).

The Department of Communities and Local Government has produced a booklet explaining people’s rights and promoting�good practice and working relations between local authority staff and personal searchers of the Local Land Charges Register and other local authority records open to public inspection. It is worth having a look so you know what sort of reception you should expect.

Scandal of children’s homes abuse payouts

Oct 2 2006

Moira Sharkey And Phillip Nifield, South Wales Echo

More than 160 adults who claim they were abused in a sex scandal that rocked children’s homes in South Wales have been paid a total of £3m in compensation.

Around £1m of this has been paid to former residents of homes or approved schools in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, an Echo investigation has revealed.

…In a separate Freedom of Information request it was found that around £1m had been paid out to claims of abuse in council homes in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. These included Penhill, Taff Vale, John Kane, Suffolk House and Crosslands, Cardiff and Sully and Bryn y Don, Dinas Powys.

Coun Cowan added: ‘These figures, which it took the council more than six months to produce, to my knowledge have never been made public before. As far as I am aware, they were not even seen in confidential council reports. I believe this should be a matter brought before the full council. The scale of the bill being paid out is alarming. Something of this importance should not be kept secret. The public have a right to know the impact of this scandal which should never happen again.’

Newport City Council confirmed it had paid out £717,000 to 44 claimants. Swansea paid out more than £340,000 to 35 claimants. Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council has paid out almost £250,000 to 16 claimants.

What sort of nonsense is it when the public are not even allowed access to maps of their own electoral boundaries?! Our taxes paid for the creation of the Ordnance Survey and through our council tax we pay again so that councils can access this public data. As if that’s not silly enough, we are then told we have to pay for a license if we want to publish maps of our voting wards.

Read the full response from Cambridge City Council.

The silliness is best summed up in this paragraph:

we are allowed to provide you with a single copy of a map containing the information you request. This has to be supplied to you in either a hard copy paper form or in the form of an electronic image in raster format only. In addition we are required to draw your attention to the fact that the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988 will continue to apply to the Ordnance Survey map which will be subject to Crown Copyright protection. The Ordnance Survey map is supplied for the sole purpose of assisting you to understand the information overlaid on it. Should you wish to use the information in any other way, for example by making multiple copies or issuing copies to the public, then please contact Ordnance Survey and they will advise you as to whether or not you will require a licence.

By the end of June each year, most larger councils finish preparing their accounts for the financial year ending on 31 March. Local councils have until 30 September to approve their accounts, so look out for an advertisement in your local paper around this time or call the Treasurer’s department for the exact dates. This is one of the best ways to get information and certainly sheds light on dodgy dealings, though often too late to stop bad projects going through.

Few members of the public know about this powerful right of access and councils do little to promote it beyond the minimum required by law. When the investigative journalist Michael Crick went to view his the accounts of Wandsworth council, he found he was the first person to do so in 14 years!

The Audit Commission Act allows for no exemptions for commercial confidentiality, and is therefore one of the only ways the press and public can find out about a council’s full dealings with private companies.

The Audit Commission has published an online guide: Your Rights to Council Finances. This booklet summarises people’s rights to inspect, question and challenge councils’ accounts. Councils exist to serve the public. Most have helplines and helpdesks to help local people sort out problems they may have with services, benefits and local taxes and charges.

This is one of the few laws that gives people real power to hold their public servants to account, so why not use it.

So farewell then, public conveniences. It seems you are no longer convenient either to the general public in need of relief or local councils charged with your erection and maintenance. The Victorians made Britain the envy of the world for public toilets. Ever since, we’ve been sitting on our laurels.

This New Year I’ve become acutely aware of the lack of public toilets as I trawl department stores, supermarkets and high streets. It’s bad enough in London, but nationwide the situation is even worse. When John Prescott threatened councils with council tax cuts, Torbay and Shepway responded by shutting all their public toilets, to the outrage of their citizens.

A night out in London, and the abiding memory is of streets paved with golden showers. Yet even this is tame to what I’ve seen in some public parks and East London side streets. It can’t be long before this slide back to medieval hygiene culminates with us all throwing our waste out the window. Is this really acceptable in 21st century Britain?

The Greater London Authority has received so many complaints about the state of the capital’s public toilets it launched a study in October to assess the situation and makes its first report at a public meeting January 16th. The public is invited to submit comments, suggestions and complaints until January 31st. Comments on London’s public toilets can be sent to: Anna Malos, PP10, London Assembly, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA or email: anna.malos@london.gov.uk

This consultation comes not before time, yet there is no such initiative coming from central government. While the Chinese are busy spending £25 million installing 5-star toilets in Beijing, Britain’s interest in crap is confined solely to the scatological titles available in bookshops. Discussion of the real thing is strangely muted.

The last survey of public toilets done by the Audit Commission for 1999/2000 showed a dramatic decline in the nation’s public toilets. Instead of taking action on the Commission’s results, the government ended the official audits. Since then, the number of public loos has dropped a further 40 per cent, according to Richard Chisnell, director of the British Toilet Association and Loo of the Year award.

This decline is a direct result of the current trend for viewing public services as money-making ventures. True, in the short-term, toilets don’t make money and the costs (such as attendants and cleaners) can only be recovered by charging. Some councils are doing just that. Westminster now leases three of its public loos to private company Carlisile Cleansing who charge 50p to use their ‘superloos’.

But to view the usefulness of public services only in terms of cash flow is wrong. We pay taxes for communal services such as loos, libraries and schools because we understand that while they may not be profitable they are good for society. Why then does the government persist in forcing such public services to act like a business? We have already paid for such services once through our taxes – it is wrong to force us to pay twice.

Even the United States ditches its free-market capitalism when it comes to such services. Libraries and loos are popular with the public and as it is the local community who funds local services in the US, any councillor who cost-cuts in this area is likely to be kicked out of office. In the UK, where taxes are funnelled through central government, councils are free to ignore and antagonise their citizens.

Then there are the long-term costs of failing to provide such services. Westminster Council spends £2 million on public toilets, yet their budget for street-cleansing is a whopping £32 million. The council’s 40+ public toilets serve more than 10 million people annually. Leith Penny, Westminster’s director of environment and leisure, says new temporary urinals are preventing thousands of gallons of urine going down the street. This saves money and also makes life pleasanter for the street cleaners as there is less human excrement to pick up.

Coach companies bypass towns without public toilets. Torbay may soon suffer the same fate for shutting its loos. Other costs are harder to quantify yet clearly visible to anyone with common sense. A clean environment deters vandals and criminals and leads to happier residents.

I came across a scene at the once-manned public toilet in Bethnal Green’s Museum Gardens that is doubtless repeated across the country. The public toilets were shut to save money. Now the derelict hulk serves as a magnet and meeting point for druggies, alcoholics, and gangs. Meanwhile, the graffitied walls still provide a make-shift male urinal.

And that’s the other thing about public toilets – it’s women who suffer most by their absence. While it’s almost socially acceptable for men to piss publicly, women still maintain some degree of propriety even though their need for loos is greater due to pregnancy and menstruation. Yet in Westminster the new loos cater only for men. I ask Mr Penny what provision there are for women. “Well some women do use the urinals and there are a few with funnel attachments.”

This conjures up a vision that would doubtless make the front pages of the tabloid press. Must we really resort to funnels? Surely a better solution is to make public toilets a number one priority.

In some situations, local authorities can close a meeting because of a particular document that they would have to release under the FOIA. A government advisory group was set up a couple of years ago to try and resolve these anomalies and the initial deadline for making existing local authority legislation compatible with the FOIA was set for 1 January 2005.

That deadline came and went. A new deadline was set for March, according to Luke Scofield in the Democracy and Local Governance Division, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The General Election announcement put a stop to that. Now a new (slightly vague) date has been set:

‘We’ll be laying it as soon as possible, and it should be in force mid-June,’ Scofield told me.

The amendments to Schedule 12 (a) of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1972 will come in the form of a draft Order that Parliament must approve. As far as I know, the public have not been allowed to see the draft order and our first look will be when it goes for a vote – too late to make any major changes if the Order is badly drafted. The draft order should add a public interest test to the older exemptions and a harm test for some exemptions such as commercial confidence.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has been in the situation where they are excluded from meetings based on documents that must be disclosed under the FOIA.

Local Government (Access to Information)(Variation)(Wales)

The situation is more advanced in Wales, however. The draft order which will amend Schedule 12A for councils in Wales is now on the Welsh Assembly website.

Tesco misleads shoppers on salt and sugar labels
Richard Fletcher

Tesco, Britain�s biggest supermarket chain, is being accused of misleading customers over the nutritional and health benefits of a series of products in stores throughout the country.

Trading standards officers have found more than 20 alleged failings in an eight-week period after testing Tesco products. Some that boasted specific health benefits were found to contain excessive amounts of sugar or salt or significantly less vitamins than claimed.

Food labels of confusion at Tesco
Richard Fletcher and Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas

…The misleading Boulders [a brand of cereal] blurb is one of more than 20 incidents of suspected mislabelling that trading standards officers have found in an eight-week period after testing Tesco products. All were recorded in December and January by Hertfordshire trading standards, which collects reports from other trading standards offices around the country. The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; similar reports for other supermarket chains have yet to be released.

Two of my requests came to fruition Tuesday. One positively; one positively Kafka-esque in the level of bureaucratic unhelpfulness.

First, praise for the handling of my FOI request for the borough’s waste management contract with private contractor SITA. I met with Peter Ramage, Head of Waste Management to view both the current contract and the working copy of the new contract, which will take effect 1 April 2005. By all accounts, I am the first member of the public to view the contract. But Mr Ramage said he would not have a problem making the contract available to all members of the public in its electronic form once it is finalised in the next few weeks. I hope this will be the case.

So why would you want to look at a waste management contract? Firstly, these contracts are paid for with your taxes. Kensington & Chelsea’s contract costs £12.2 million annually, not including the cost of running the waste management building, collecting abandoned vehicles, etc. Here’s a brief rundown of the contract:

• Street cleansing specifications – this section lists the number of employees that clean streets plus a listing of every street and minimum cleansing frequencies. You’ll also find in this section which streets must be cleaned of chewing gum and how often they should be cleansed. Clearing away abandoned vehicles can sometimes be found in this part of the contract, but in RBKC clearing away abandoned vehicles is covered by another contract.
• Location of all litter bins. As of 31 March 2004, the borough had 700 litter bins across the borough.
• Listing of all the manned public conveniences in the borough (just three!). Unmanned public toilets are managed by the outdoor advertising firm JCDeceaux under another contract.
• Number and location of winter vehicles (snow removers, salt bins, etc)
• Notting Hill Carnival & special events – 200 tonnes of waste was generated at the last Carnival, much of it was unsold food abandoned on the streets. This section of the contract outlines the cleansing schedule for the Carnival i.e. when residents should expect the area to be back to normal. The contractor also cleans the area outside basement flats after Carnival.

Now onto food safety inspections.

Before I went on holiday, I telephoned the Borough’s FOI officer to see how my request for environmental health reports was progressing as it was the last of the 20-working days. I was pleasantly surprised. The officer said he would be able to answer my FOI/EIR request after I narrowed it down for him by stating I was interested specifically in just the food safety inspection reports.

However, when I turned up at the council offices Tuesday, I was told that, in fact, they would not release these reports. Some of the difficulties are technical – it appears the council operates on an antiquated system where each report is scanned in without any key field recognition or identification. It is simply an electronic version of the actual document. But these could simply be put on disc. No – “We need to go through every inspection report on an individual basis looking for exemptions”, said Janet McCrae, the council’s food and training manager.

All exemptions in the FOI and EIR are discretionary so it is within a public authority’s power to disclose these documents and a public authority should not be hunting around for exemptions to restrict access. I have written articles about how such reports are made public in other countries and it is outrageous that citizens of the UK are routinely being denied information about the safety of the food they eat. How are we to make informed and educated choices about the food we buy and consume if this information is kept hidden?

Amazingly, Janet McCrae refused to even disclose the Harrods food hall inspection report – a document already in the public domain after it was FOI’d by the Sunday Times. It was actually on the table right in front of us and I’d already looked through its contents. Nothing amazing! But she demanded it back and refused to make a photocopy. I was stunned by this willful obstruction. McCrae said I would have to file a written request for the report (which I have since done).

I will be writing a longer article about this shortly. In the meantime, if you would like to add your support to my campaign to get these food safety reports made public, please write to:

FOI Support Team
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Room N111
The Town Hall, Hornton Street
London W8 7NX
Or email foi@rbkc.gov.uk

Check it out and use it often!

They also sponsor the London FOI Forum and this page is the publicly available section of the London FoI Forum extranet. The group has worked on a number of items including the text of an FoIA leaflet for staff. A couple of documents are available on the webpage including a suggested guidelines document that is intended to supplement the DCA’s Code of Practice Section IV: �Consultation with Third Parties�.

Comments can be sent to nick.tjaardstra@londonconnects.gov.uk. Nick says the forum is predominantly for local government, but members of the public can comment as well.

A list of London FOI email contact addresses:-

• London Borough of Barking & Dagenham – enquires@lbbd.gov.uk
• London Borough of Barnet – foi@barnet.gov.uk
• London Borough of Bexley – foi@bexley.gov.uk
• London Borough of Brent – foi@brent.gov.uk
• London Borough of Bromley – foi@bromley.gov.uk
• London Borough of Camden – sandie.dunne@camden.gov.uk
• London Borough of Croydon – angela.buckler@croydon.gov.uk
• London Borough of Ealing – foirequest@ealing.gov.uk
• London borough of Greenwich – foi@greenwich.gov.uk
• London borough of Hackney – bambos.charalambous@hackney.gov.uk
• London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham – foirequests@lbhf.gov.uk
• London Borough of Haringey – foi@haringey.gov.uk
• London Borough of Havering – foi@havering.gov.uk
• London Borough of Hillingdon – foi@hillingdon.gov.uk
• London Borough of Islington – foia@islington.gov.uk
• Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea – foi@rbkc.gov.uk
• Royal borough of Kingston – foi@rbk.kingston.gov.uk
• London Borough of Lambeth – foi@lambeth.gov.uk
• London Borough of Lewisham – foia@lewisham.gov.uk
• London Borough of Merton – data.protection@merton.gov.uk
• London Borough of Newham – information.governance@newham.gov.uk
• London Borough of Redbridge – foi@redbridge.gov.uk
• London Borough of Richmond upon Thames – foi@richmond.gov.uk
• London Borough of Southwark – AccessInfo@Southwark.gov.uk
• London Borough of Sutton – foi@sutton.gov.uk
• London Borough of Tower Hamlets – foi@towerhamlets.gov.uk
• London Borough of Waltham Forest – foi@lbwf.gov.uk
• London Borough of Wandsworth – foi@wandsworth.gov.uk
• City of Westminster – FOI@westminster.gov.uk
• London Fire & Emergency Planning Authority – infoaccess@london-fire.gov.uk
• Metropolitan Police Service – PublicAccessOffice@met.police.uk
• Transport for London – enquire@tfl.gov.uk

Just what do councils plan to publish online to comply with the Freedom of Information Act?

Imagine being able to look up the latest inspection of your local restaurant, or the fire safety report of a nearby cinema or theatre. Would you like to know if the council tax you pay is substantially higher than your neighbours in similar properties?

If you lived in the US, all this information would be available online. America’s culture of openness was set in law with its Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, passed in 1966. Each state also has its own, often stronger, public access laws that citizens can draw on.

The UK has finally implemented its own FoI law. So will we see similar material available online here? The picture so far is patchy.

The London borough of Greenwich says it will issue food hygiene certificates to restaurants that will be searchable online. Its website www.greenwich.gov.uk already lists every catering outlet in the borough and the results of inspections since last July. Surrey council is publishing the names of unscrupulous traders. But few other councils are following their lead.

“We are not going to be publishing anything other than normal,” said Mizra Ahmed, legal officer for Birmingham city council.

Tim Turner, FoI officer for Wigan council, says his authority, like others, is waiting to see what kind of requests they get before deciding on what additional information they will put online. “We’re still at the stage of asking what the public will want rather than providing any specific information,” he says.

Innovations in openness appear more likely in bigger organisations. The Health and Safety Executive has an online database that names and shames those businesses violating regulations prosecutions (www.hse-databases.co.uk). Healthcare regulators such as the General Medical Council (GMC) and Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (www.rpsgb.org.uk) have searchable online registers.

The GMC (www.gmc-uk.org) also makes minutes from its disciplinary hearings available online. And the Food Standards Agency (www.food.gov.uk) publishes minutes from all its board meetings online.

But these are the exceptions; the rule is foot-dragging and a stubborn adherence to the secrecy status quo. It’s an opportunity lost, according to Stephen Coleman, professor of e-democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute.

“The existing e-government agenda and the freedom of information agenda go together naturally. Civil servants should be working with e-government to make more information that the public wants to see more easily available online.”

Instead, defensive and suspicious public authorities are unwilling to disclose new types of information. Even fewer are willing to listen to what the public wants or provide ways for the public to engage directly with decision-makers.

“Providing information is not just about making it available in principal. It’s got to be accessible, meaningful and, if online, there should be intuitive navigation in operation,” says Coleman.

So what could authorities be putting online? Detailed budgets, allowances and expenses for a start. Contracts for all publicly funded services such as rubbish collection and parking enforcement could also be easy for the public to find. How much of this information comes during the next year will be a good indication of how well our FoI law is working.

The survey revealed that more than a third of staff (39%) are neglecting to wash their hands after visits to the lavatory while at work.

The research also demonstrated that half of all those interviewed (53%) did not appear to wash their hands before preparing food.

Just over half (55%) of the businesses in the survey had been in operation for under two years and two thirds (70%) employed up to four full time employees.

Less than two thirds (59%) of the catering workers questioned had a certificate in basic food hygiene.

Only 3% of catering managers interviewed said retaining skilled, trained staff was important to their business.

Only 32% believed good food hygiene practices were important to their business compared with 64% who saw good food as the key to keeping their customers.

It’s time local councils started protecting the public by publishing all inspection reports for restaurants, food businesses and market stalls. You can read my New Statesman article about restaurant inspections here.