In October 2025, we reported how a national policing unit that had been criticised for telling local forces to block the release of information under transparency laws had U-turned on a pledge to reform the way it worked.
The central referral unit within the National Police Chiefs' Council had said it would stop recording the original requester's identity when advising forces on how to answer Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from the public.
It followed a previous Shared Data Unit investigation, which suggested the unit was not adhering to the spirit of transparency laws. The laws included an applicant-blind principle, under which everyone should receive the same level and quality of response, whether it is their first request or they use the act regularly.
The promised reforms had been abandoned after further consultation, prompting campaigners to call for an external investigation.
- The unit had previously said it would stop recording requester names shared by forces from March 2025, in a bid to "uphold the highest standards of FOI practice". The BBC, however, reported the unit recorded the names of requesters in 97% of cases where the unit was consulted by local forces from March-June 2025.
- A breakdown by police force of Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests where the force either referred them to the CRU, or received advice because they confirmed they had also received the same request. Some were logged as “National” requests, i.e. round-robin requests to all forces.
- The average number of FOI and EIR requests received each month, broken down by each police force, according to the NPCC’s performance monitoring statistics
- Examples of regulatory action over poor FOI performance relating to each police force since 2020 from the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for context.
We produced this story pack and this dataset.
- Louise Crow (she/her), chief executive of the not-for-profit organisation mySociety which built the website WhatDoTheyKnow helping people submit FOI requests
- Oliver Feeley-Sprague (he/him), Amnesty International UK’s Military, Security and Police Director
- Jake Hurfurt (he/him), Head of Research and Investigations at campaign group Big Brother Watch
- Phil Brickell (he/him), Labour MP for Bolton West
- Ashleigh Beney (she/her), Head of National Police Freedom of Information and Data Protection Unit (which includes the CRU)
- A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the BBC Local News Partnership. Stories written by partners based on this research included:
- AOL: Police unit blocking FOI requests U-turns on promised reforms 1 October 2025