I’ve made eight Freedom of Information requests to Leeds City Council. All relate to the recent consultation advocating cycle lanes and infrastructure changes along the A660. The council answered the first three. One of these responses provided me with a report which showed that in late 2020, the council renewed a contract with Commonplace instead of putting it out to tender, as required by competition law. The report claimed that if the contract was put out to tender, then Commonplace risked losing it, and the council would then lose all the data obtained via the Commonplace platform, as the report wrongly claimed that Commonplace owned all the data. Recently though, the council has admitted that what it said in the report was wrong. It’s the council which owns all the data. Could it be because of the embarrassment caused by this episode, that the council has refused to answer my remaining five Freedom of Information requests, claiming them to be vexatious? Who knows.