What we find in the field
Real observations from live Freedom of Information campaigns: how public authorities actually respond, where requests get deflected, and how to get the answer anyway.
A council said it didn't hold the data. On review, it sent it.
Same organisation, same question, two opposite answers about what it holds. Nothing changed between the refusal and the disclosure except that somebody pushed back.
The ICO flagged a real problem with AI-generated FOI requests. We're built to avoid it.
The ICO's May 2026 guidance describes AI-generated requests that are broader, less focused and sometimes cite case law that doesn’t exist. We’ve been on both sides of that problem, and disciplined, insider-written requests are built to avoid it.
We wrote about the two-tier deflection. Then we watched it happen.
A live case from one of our campaigns: a council said it doesn’t hold abandoned-vehicle data because it’s a county function, while its own website describes exactly that service. Here’s what we did next.
“It’s not us, it’s the county”: the two-tier deflection, and how to get past it
In two-tier England, an abandoned-vehicle question can bounce between district and county forever, each saying the other holds it. Here’s why it happens, and how knowing the split ends the ping-pong.