SIX years after it was unleashed, the Freedom of Information request is a powerful weapon in holding public bodies to account.

But it is not just newspapers and high profile pressure groups that have used FOIs to highlight issues and uncover injustice.

Individuals and residents’ groups have turned detective to campaign on the issues affecting their communities.

In Oxford, the Divinity Road Residents’ Association have used FOIs to campaign over student parking. They discovered the universities could no longer rely on the DVLA to help enforce the city council’s ‘no cars’ policy at purpose-built halls of residence.

That, coupled with admissions from both the city council and Oxford Brookes University that the policy was now almost impossible to enforce (revealed in emails obtained through FOI requests), has led to a major development in the Bartlemas conservation area being turned down by a planning inspector. And it may yet have lasting ramifications for student development across the city.

East Oxford resident Sietske Boeles was instrumental in the campaign. Ms Boeles honed her FOI skills working on the campaign to save Warneford Meadow from development.

In respect of the student parking ban, she said: “The key piece of information was from the DVLA.

“It was correspondence between the DVLA and the city council about the enforcement of student parking.”

But Ms Boeles’ advice to others was to research their issue and be as specific as possible in the questions asked when submitting an FOI. She said: “I knew from other correspondence, the MP Andrew Smith had been asked to make representations on car parking.

“That had come from an off-hand comment, but I could specifically ask for the correspondence on this issue in a particular period.

“You have to be specific or you get sent up the garden path.”

Last year, campaigners fighting to save Temple Cowley swimming pool from closure obtained a breakdown of the £2.6m maintenance backlog from Oxford City Council under an FOI request.

Campaign leader Nigel Gibson said it showed the work was not insurmountable and that many items were not essential.

The costs included £3,000 to paint new lines on the car park and £5,000 on external landscaping.

FOI requests made by the public have also discovered the costs of an Oxfordshire County Council transport meeting and overnight stay at Heythrop Park resort.

And take a look at yesterday’s Oxford Mail. Some of the questions surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly came from FoI requests, while there was also the story that Oxford City Council has spent £350,000 with credit cards in the past three years.

Ms Boeles said: “It is a critical tool for citizens to keep track of, and scrutinise, decisions and to see whether public money is being spent properly.”