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Post blasts council's £9,000 FOI request demand

The Birmingham Post has blasted its city council for demanding a £9,000 administration fee to comply with a Freedom of Information request made by the paper.

The Post asked the council to disclose how much it spent on first class rail fares and taxi journeys for its employees in 2005.

But even though the council said the charge would be required to cover the cost of collating the information, the next day The Post obtained a memo which revealed the council spends £6,000 on rail fares each week.

Acting editor Tony Lennox said: “Having rejected our request under FOI they have now given details that they spend £6,000 a week on train fares. It’s now clear that the city council knows exactly how much it’s spending.”

Tony said the paper would be appealing the decision in the hope that the paper will find out exactly how much the council spends on first class fares.

Tony told The Post’s readers: “The idea that a newspaper should pay more than £9,000 to obtain information of great public interest is outrageous.

“We specifically limited our request to details of first class rail fares, on the assumption that the vast majority of tickets purchased by the council would be standard class, or even saver-fares.

“It would appear that Birmingham City Council regularly indulges in expensive first class travel for officials and councillors, so much so that it would cost a small fortune to compile the details.”

Tony said the paper has found FOI requests to be very useful but cited examples such as Data Protection Act compliance, expenses of collating information and commercial confidentiality as reasons used by the council as to why it has not satisfied all of the paper’s inquiries.

He said: “Our chief reporter Paul Dale has been using FOI to get questions answered. This was just an interesting question of how many of the council’s rail journeys were first class.

“As far as local newspapers are concerned the Freedom of Information Act is an extremely useful tool to make local authorities accountable.

“If they are not open in the first instance then it is up to local newspapers to take it upon themselves to use this tool.”

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