Freedom of Information doesn't always need to take a month

We've been following up on our recent factcheck of claims that hundreds of hospital patients are being "kicked out" of their beds overnight.

It's suspected that many of these patients actually died or discharged themselves rather than having been kicked out, but so far we've seen no attempt to quantify exactly how many patients this applies to.

We recently sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to 160 NHS acute trusts in England to find out more. One trust: Northampton General Hospital, has already responded to us with full details, just two working days after we sent off our request.

Public authorities have to respond to FOI requests within 20 working days and, in our experience, most use the full period before responding. To get a substantive response this quickly is rare and welcome.

Some bodies obviously have to deal with more requests than others and at times waiting is inevitable. Still, three cheers to Northampton on this occasion for leading the pack.

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