Council documents tell stories, not just Freedom of Information requests

Posted: July 11th, 2010 | Author: Ed Walker | Filed under: Journalism | Tags: council documents, council meetings, council reporting, councillors questions, foi, foi friday, freedom of information, reporting, reporting tips, scrutiny committees | 5 Comments »

The Freedom of Information Act was great for journalism, opening up a world of information on public authorities and definitely very useful when it comes to squirreling away stories (getting stories ready ahead of a holiday period such as Christmas).

While I don’t dispute the great stories that come from FOI requests, just see David Higgerson’s weekly round-up ‘FOI Friday’ for some superb stories across the UK media, it’s worth remembering what can come from sifting through council documents that often contain data as controversial as that in FOI requests – it’s just not as straight forward to find.

There’s a few ways you can find stories from council documents:

- Scrutiny committee papers

- Executive business meetings

- Councillor’s questions

Scrutiny committee papers

Most councils have specific committees for certain topics, these range in bigger local authorities to extensive meetings delivering in-depth reports on subjects such as transport, education and social services. The smaller the council, the less the number of scrutiny committees but they produce a phenomenal amount of paperwork. However, in amongst all the long-windedness and acronyms you’ll find things like the number of rough sleepers increasing on the streets or how many restaurants in the city will have ‘no stars’ in a new hygiene rating system.

You’ll also find at the scrutiny committee meetings themselves senior council staff will give presentations to councillors, these normally include Powerpoint presentations and sometimes contain extra data and information that’s not in the report.

You may find special scrutiny committees setup for certain projects, e.g. city centre redevelopment, so it’s worth keeping an eye on these. Each committee will have a councillor who acts as chairperson, it’s worth getting to know them as they can often provide clarity or explanation on certain points, plus give quotes about the work of the committee.

Plus, don’t forget that councillors themselves may ask questions and from this extra information may come to light (Note: some councillors ask insightful questions, or challenging questions, others are downright useless. But that’s democracy, we elect not appoint)

To get hold of scrutiny papers you can check the council website or a lot of local authorities have a scrutiny officer (sometimes there will be separate officers for each committee) and they will be able to provide papers. Don’t be afraid to call council staff to ask for a copy of Powerpoint presentations or to ask for explanation of acronyms in reports.

Just a note, journalists can’t ask questions at scrutiny committee meetings – but there’s usually some comfort breaks  so you can nip in and ask questions of individuals then.

Executive business meetings

A small body of councillors will sit on the executive, they are the leader, deputy leader and portfolio leaders in the council (people in charge of transport, environment and other large areas that the council operates in). You’ll find lots of reports going to the executive and these normally involve more forward-thinking projects and changes, rather than reflective reports. The meetings themselves won’t normally be that insightful as the executive are normally all wearing the same political colours, but giving community and pressure groups a heads up on the content of some executive reports will give you a good story.

Executive business reports are normally published on the Council website in advance of the meeting, and the clerk of the council should be able to provide hard copies. A lot of executive council members have PAs who will be able to provide copies of portfolio specific documents.

Councillor’s questions

At full council meetings (held monthly), councillors have the opportunity to ask questions of the executive. These are usually quicker than Freedom of Information requests and the executive are hard placed to refuse a question from a fellow councillor. It’s worth making contact with those councillors who ask the most questions and get them to let you know what they will be asking in advance so you can prepare for the answer. The responses to the questions are always published, split by portfolio area (e.g. transport, education), normally at the council meeting and sometimes a few hours before – so it’s always worth having a copy.

The clerk of the council will be the person to see about getting a copy of the council questions.

Keeping abreast of it all

Setup folders on your computer, save the PDFs of reports into scrutiny specific folders and label them by year/month so you can quickly go back and find archive copies. Don’t rely on the Council website archive. Also pick up hard copies at the meetings, as sometimes there are additional reports, charts or pages. You can never have too much information.

Subscribe to Openly Local RSS updates or if the Council website allows it, their RSS updates, to alert you to new documents or meetings.

Pick up the phone and keep in touch with the chairs of scrutiny committees, they’ll learn that you’re interested and let you know when interesting information is coming up. By making contact with scrutiny officers and staff members, you’ll find they might flag up documents for you as well. Opposition and independent councillors might also alert you to questions they are asking of full council or in scrutiny committees.

There’s a great resource over on WikiSplash for budding journalists and hyperlocal sites about covering local authorities, including explanations of structures and committees etc.

Where Freedom of Information comes in…

Sometimes figures in executive reports or scrutiny committee summaries might give you a sniff of a story that an FOI request can help build into something bigger. You might find parts of reports withheld, or numbers blanked out. This is where FOI comes in, go for those numbers and your story based on the scrutiny report can then have a follow-up.

So, while the 78-page report on the future of adult care in your city might not look like the most enthralling read – you can be guaranteed there will be figures, comments and questions in there that your readers will want to know about. The meeting itself might spark debate, pressure groups may become involved and then follow-up questions at council meetings will provide extra insight. When the report comes to the executive for a decision, you will have depth, arguments on both sides and a good, solid, story.

How do you go about covering Council information? Any tips? What’s the best information you’ve dug out of a council report? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit to sonrisa electrica on Flickr

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