Sometimes an investigation involves searching for something on a particular council website. Quite often the search facility on a council website is not very effective – so here's how to search a council website using Google:

On Google, click on Advanced Search (to the right of the search button)

1. Type in your search query, e.g. 'Environmental Information Regulations' in the first box
2. In the last box – 'Search within a site or domain' type the web address of the site you're searching, e.g. bolton.gov.uk (if you want to search all council websites you can just put .gov.uk)
3. Click the 'Advanced Search' button to conduct the search.

A quicker way to do the same search without going into Advanced search is to just type Environmental Information Regulations site:bolton.gov.uk

If you liked this how-to, why not use it to help with the current investigation into what information councils are putting on their sites related to Environmental Information Regulations!

The investigation into payments of bonuses at Birmingham City Council has revealed that the council saved ?5.5million in bonus payments between 2008 and 2009 – while a handful of employees were still being awarded annual bonuses of over ?20,000

A Freedom of Information request to the council found:

• The council paid out almost ?9.4million in bonuses in 2007/08 – but ?3.8m in 2008/09 – a reduction of almost 60%
• The top 5 bonuses paid in each year are relatively unchanged. In 07/08 they ranged from ?22,000-?26,000 – the following year the range was ?20,000-?26,000
• Over 1,000 council employees received bonuses – although this dropped by around 9%, from 1,106 to 1,008
• The average bonus received dropped from ?8,485 to ?3,772

Following an internal review, the council have decided not to say which employees received the highest bonuses, as "its disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles in the Data Protection Act 1998 and various Health and Safety Acts as this would infringe on the private lives of individuals"

Notably, the same decision indicates that the top bonuses were not paid to "senior officers/directors".

The council say of the current financial year:

"Following the implementation of the new contracts of employment and the pay and grading review, Birmingham City Council have now removed all bonus schemes from the current financial year. Accordingly, whilst bonuses were paid for the previous years, there are now no bonus schemes in place and thus, no requirement for measures to be implemented to regulated bonuses."

Meanwhile, Dudley have refused to release any information following a similar FOI request, claiming:

• "The totals relating to bonus payments made to employees will be published in the public domain in the very near future"
• "Information requested, at this time, constitutes substantive information fundamental to the progress and final outcome of the Equal Pay Claim cases that the Council is currently engaged with. The information is a key part of the discussion and that its disclosure at this stage of the proceedings would inhibit the free and frank provision of advice and the free and frank exchange of views for the purpose of deliberation.
• "During the course of legal proceedings, the qualified person believes that, the release of any information relating to this matter at this stage would prejudice the ability of officers and others (including the court) to provide/obtain advice and to openly discuss the Equal Pay Claims. This is particularly relevant as litigation is ongoing."
• "Disclosure of the information at this stage of proceedings may lead to more time having to be used to defend or re-examine cases that are already before the court.
• "The Council maintains that at this time, disclosure of the requested information would undermine the lawyer-client relationship in addition to prejudicing its legal position regarding the subject of bonus payments and Equal Pay Claims."

The legal objection appears counter-intuitive. Any advice on this front most welcome.

Why is The London Weekly claiming a circulation in "the central belt" when the central belt is in Scotland? The answer appears to be found in the media pack of the Metro newspaper in Scotland, which was making the same circulation claims as The London Weekly is – in 2007.

This detail of the investigation into The London Weekly was first mentioned by chrisunlimited in the comments to a Guardian article, but I thought it worth blogging here as we've now cached the Metro's media pack and screengrabs of the salient passages in that and on The London Weekly's website. They're included in this post for your perusal…

Hello there.

Well, I thought I’d send out an update on the latest happenings on Help Me Investigate. So here it is:

We’re looking at doing some mobile things with Help Me Investigate. As part of that we need to know what networks people are currently on – so please answer a simple question at http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2750023/ to help.

On the site there’s been a huge amount of activity around the investigation into The London Weekly. Some of the details unearthed were mentioned on this week’s Guardian Media Talk podcast (around the 18:30 mark), and there’s more detail on the investigation on this post by James Ball, as well as two earlier posts he wrote: an open letter to The London Weekly and this one. Judith Townend at Journalism.co.uk published this overview of some of the findings. And I also blogged a roundup on the Online Journalism Blog.

The key challenge now is finding documentary evidence and witnesses to back up what’s going on. All help welcome.

Another investigation that’s unearthing some useful results is Hannah Flynn’s investigation into the availability of hormonal contraception on the NHS – Hannah has put together a map indicating the differing availability on her blog.

If you’re looking for something to get your teeth into, challenges that need taking on on other investigations include:

• Writing up a summary of an FOI response on this investigation into a car share scheme
• Creating a tipsheet for researching the funding of an organisation on this investigation into the Global Warming Policy Foundation
• And finding out why the University of Liverpool is seeking to silence blogs critical of its Vice Chancellor?

That’s it. Don’t forget to answer the anonymous poll!

Paul Bradshaw
Founder, Help Me Investigate http://helpmeinvestigate.com
Follow HMI on Twitter http://twitter.com/helpmeinvestig8
Help Me Investigate fan page on Facebook 
Help Me Investigate Facebook group

The investigation into The London Weekly was mentioned on this week's Guardian Media Talk podcast (around the 18:30 mark).

Hannah Flynn's investigation into the availability of hormonal contraception on the NHS is gathering pace, with results from a number of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).

Read Hannah's report and view a map indicating the differing availability on her blog.

And here's the link where you can do it…

http://www.power2010.org.uk/votes/entry/expand-the-scope-of-the-freedom-of-information-act

Here's a brief video tutorial on how and why to edit your profile on Help Me Investigate to add links, a photo and tags.

Three more local newspapers have been covered as part of the investigation into local council coverage.

“Perhaps what the Cotswold Journal shows best is that it must be pretty much impossible to get adequate council coverage in the newspaper given the limited staffing and the large area the paper covers. Attending county, district and parish or town council meetings in four different counties can’t be feasible – one person can only be in one place at one time.

“Hence a reliance on press releases or short, less detailed, stories. Where there are longer stories, human interest seems to be a factor – profiles are popular. Often, the council perspective seems to be a last minute insertion or an extra quote, rather than being the nub of the story.”

Ed Walker has been looking at council coverage in the Lancashire Evening Post?as part of?the investigation into 'How much local council coverage is there in your local paper?' He writes:

"I found that there were 35 pages devoted to news on 23/11, 25/11 and 27/11 and of these 6.25 pages were given over to ?council reporting?.

"Like others I?ve been finding there is little reporting of council meetings, more stories are created from council press releases and then a few quotes from councillors. It?s also not clear when these councillors were saying these quotes, although the councillors title and ward are always attached."