- There are 19, increasing to 21 lollipop people (officially known as crossing patrol staff). (request is here)
- The highest claim for housing benefit is £709 a week for an individual with three dependents (request is here)
- In 2011/12 10,784 households owed £2.8m in Council Tax to LBTH (request is here)
- Allowances paid to LBTH Councillors were £512k, with another £312k of special responsibility allowances including the Mayor's salary (request is here)
- LBTH does not own any property in Colchester (request is here)
- In 2011-12 the council prosecuted Council Tax and Housing Benefit fraudsters for the value of £617k (request is here)
- The number of prosecutions by Tower Hamlets trading standards has fallen by 90 per cent from 186 to 19 from 2008 to 2012 (request is here)
- Lutfur Rahman made no expense claims between 2010 and 2012 (request is here)
- The average weekly rent for a 2 bed council property is £100 (request is here)
- The Council made appointments to deal with 4,501 pest infestations (request is here)
- 3,000 families were expected to be affected by the 'bedroom tax' (request is here)
Things you can learn from Freedom of Information
Reading the Tower Hamlets FOI database one suddenly realises the massive range of issues that concern people. Having a look through the requests, I discovered the following random facts:
