Scottish council's transparency on FOI requests

A local authority in the north-east of Scotland has become the first local authority in Scotland to publicise details of who is making Freedom of Information requests from it - with an estimated 40 per cent coming from the media.reports Allmedia Scotland

The authority,Moray Council has put the information for requests on its website along with its responses and performance rate which it says is currently 97 per cent.

The Council currently receives more than 500 FOI requests each year.

Obstacles for hyperlocal in Ventnor and Leeds.

As the growing move towards hyperlocal continues,two rather worrying stories emerged yesterday seemingly putting up barriers to journalistic independence.

Down in the Isle of Wight,the husband and wife team of dedicated reporters at the Ventnor blog were prevented from entering a coroners court.

We were told by the coroner’s officer, Richard Leedham, that the coroner, John Matthews, didn’t recognise us as a member of the press (despite VB publishing articles for four and a half years and NUJ membership for longer) and he didn’t want us in “his court.”

Judging from the comments on the blog, 56 so far,this issue is going to run and run.It seems that this dispute centred around controversy around a previous report back in 2008 as the coroner made it clear that they would not be admitted even into the public gallery as public members.

Meanwhile in Leeds,it seems that local councillors no longer want their meetings tweeted.As the council agreed a 2.5 per cent increase in council tax,Guardian Leeds reports that

Lord Mayor Judith Elliott told everyone at the start of the meeting to 'switch off all electrical equipment' and said there should be 'no Tweeting' on social networking site Twitter.