Among yesterday’s front pages was a data visualisation which, at first glance, was one of the most effective I’ve ever seen: the Independent had made an infographic showing yesterday’s £6bn budget cuts in context - as a fraction of a debt mountain.
Then I looked closer - and something’s very, very wrong.
Can you tell what it […]
Earlier today a long-overdue FOI response from Strathclyde police landed in my inbox - a mere 33 days past the legal time limit for response. This was, I’m told, “due to the way the relevant information is recorded on our [Strathclyde’s] various systems”.
Excellent - when I hand over my tax return late, I’m sure the authorities will be more than happy to hear I missed the legal deadline due to my shoddy “big pile of stuff” filing system.
Anyway, moving on to the results, Strathclyde are Scotland’s largest police force, and their spending reflect this. The force has spent just under £4m on PR in the last three years, spending £1,399,760 in 2007.
Their spending per 100,000 people, at £60,351, was the second highest in Scotland and 12th highest in the UK. Unlike many big spenders, their PR spend has increased significantly above inflation since 2005.
Spending on PR in 2007 was 15.9 per cent higher than 2005 - the second highest increase in Scotland.
The force employs a whopping 46 press and PR staff (only the met employ more), and 5 FOI officers.
Police forces across the UK are spending £39m each year on press and PR officers - enough to fund an extra 1,400 full time officers. The highest spending forces spend more than eight times more per person than the lowest, and FOI spending is suffering by comparison: the police spend nearly ten times more on PR - what they want us to know - than on Freedom of Information - what we actually ask to find out.
That’s three of the main findings of a big FOI research piece by Heather Brooke and me, published today in the Times. It’s worth noting the spend is more than enough to pay for the police’s full backdated pay rise, which they were denied by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
Spending is also on the up, much higher than inflation: overall PR spending has increased 13.3% in two years, when police forces are under significant budgetary pressure. In some forces this increase is significantly higher: some forces have doubled their spending in two years.
Finally, it’s worth noting the blatant disrespect for the law shown by many police forces.The FOI Act requires public authorities to respond to Freedom of Information requests within 20 working days. Only 19 of the UK’s 52 police forces managed this, and after 50 working days four forces have still managed to offer no meaningful data.
In the spirit of offering bonus content over here, if you want to see how much your local police force spent, there’s a link to a simple summary table for all of the UK’s forces below, or if you’d like to see the full database, it’s online too. Freedom of information - good, innit?
…and we’re back. Blame exam-time. Normal service resumes today.
