The Liverpool Echo has revealed – via #FOI disclosures – that 14 different Liverpool City Council elected members had parking tickets cancelled outside normal procedures. Whatever you think of FOI, it’s a smart use of it.
When I read it, I didn’t know which angle was the best. I nearly went for records management, but I suspect that the records for these transactions were insubstantial by design. I wondered if I should make a point about public interest journalism but the story speaks for itself.
The crucial thing about the FOI aspect is that ‘nothing held’ can be as revealing and compelling an answer as incriminating emails. If there was a rigorous process for dealing with councillors’ parking tickets with an audit trail, it would be a very different situation.
Liam Thorp reports that this has been a 16 month investigation – if there’s one piece of advice I can give to organisations (advice I know many will absolutely not follow), it’s that once a journalist has caught wind of a story, they’ll track it down in the end.
There are multiple examples of public authorities increasing the temperature of a story with obfuscation and denials. The FOI process is slow and stonewalling is a temptation, but in the end, stories of special treatment and expenses will only go one way in public interest terms.
My advice is to rip off the plaster and disclose the embarrassing data at the first opportunity. It’ll come out in the end. “Organisation refuses to confirm what we suspect” is a bonus story on top of “Organisation did a thing”.
Hats off to Thorp and the Echo – this is a great story, well reported and it’s exactly what FOI was designed for. liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
