School buses: transport information from Better Transport

We’ve been digging a bit into the recent story generated by The Campaign for Better Transport’s use of FOI requests to investigate cuts to school bus services to see if the data behind it was available for others to build on.

It turns out it is – although it’s not particularly easy to find and it’s scattered across a number of documents.

The investigation is part of the organisation’s wider Save Our Buses campaign, which includes an ongoing map of cuts.

The site’s bus campaigner Sophie Allain writes:

“Although in most areas we have not included the school bus cuts information in the written summary [which appears when you click on map placemarkers], if you click on your area, then go to the sources, each area has three FOI requests (on the What Do They Know site)  that you can click through to so that you can see how your council responded to our questions. Some of our questions related to school transport. So all the info is already in the public domain and local campaigners, students and journalist are welcome to use this as a resource.”

If you want to compile the data so others can use it in their own investigations – or if you know a place where any data on school bus cuts is also held, let us know.

About Paul Bradshaw

Founder of Help Me Investigate. I'm a visiting professor at City University London's School of Journalism, and run an MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University. I publish the Online Journalism Blog, and am the co-author of the Online Journalism Handbook and Magazine Editing (3rd edition). I have a particular interest in Freedom of Information and data journalism.
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