PARKING tickets, noise pollution, attacks on teachers and crime in your area - 2006 has been a year of investigations for The Press.

We have made frequent use of the Freedom Of Information Act to obtain data and documents previously hidden from public view, to break the exclusive stories that matter in our area. We began the year by uncovering the litany of confusion and concern that preceded York's chaotic fireworks display, on Bonfire Night 2005.

We obtained documents revealing that police had repeatedly raised fears over the ill-fated event in the days and weeks before.

They claimed the impact on the city's highways had not been properly assessed, while ambulance and fire chiefs warned there was the "potential for chaos".

In February, we used the act to lift the lid on York's football hooligan element, with the revelation that 24 fans in North Yorkshire had been banned from travelling to the World Cup in Germany.

March saw us reveal how much York Hospital was raising in parking charges - £380,000 - while in April we revealed a shocking 25 per cent rise in the number of assaults on police officers.

In May, we reported a rise in the number of pupils being expelled from York schools. We also investigated bed-blocking at York Hospital, and found that in 12 months, the equivalent of 14 years' worth of bed-days and £1.8 million was lost.

In June, we investigated how many youngsters in the region were using contraception, revealing hundreds of under-16s could be on the pill without their parents knowing.

In August, we discovered City of York Council had spent £38,000 on corporate hospitality over the course of a year, and revealed figures that suggested one teacher a day was being attacked in their own school by pupils.

September saw us reveal that children as young as 12 had been caught selling drugs, and that York Hospital had been forced to pay out more than £5 million compensation in the past three years.

October saw us uncover the rising tide of car-crime across York and Selby, and then at the end of November we launched a three-day investigation into crime in your area, after obtaining details of every offence recorded by North Yorkshire Police in the past two years.

A year of investigation was wrapped up with exclusives on the number of cases of alcohol poisoning in York; the massive rise in noise pollution in the past 12 months; and a street-by-street breakdown of parking tickets issued in York.

Freedom Of Information Act 'faces threat'

THE Freedom Of Information (FOI) Act has increased greatly the right to access data from public bodies.

But that openness and accountability is under threat from proposed changes to the legislation, a leading campaigner has warned.

At present, an FOI request can be refused if the cost of dealing with it exceeds £450. Authorities can include the time spent locating, retrieving and extracting the requested information.

But the Government wants to change the act, to let authorities include the time spent by staff reading the material, consulting others, and reaching its decision.

It also wants to allow authorities to refuse all requests made by an individual to one organisation, if the combined cost exceeds £450. This would particularly hit the media.

Maurice Frankel, of the Campaign For Freedom Of Information, said: "The changes would be very damaging. They would mean that complex requests, and requests that raise public interest in information that would otherwise be exempt, would all be at risk of being refused."

He said: "It's wrong in principle, and it would undermine the whole accountability of the act."

Mr Frankel said he had been impressed by how widely the act had been used, and by how much information had been brought into the public domain.

He said the proposed changes would hinder that, and "go to the heart" of the act.