9. M5 bus gate fines

Traffic avoiding M5 following fatal crash results in bus gate earning nearly £16,000 in fines
Looking for breaking news follow-ups in all the right places

Originally published: November 6, 2018

Nearly £16,000 was earned from fining drivers in a single day following a crash on the M5.
Two people died and four others were injured in a multi-vehicle crash between Junction 24 (Bridgwater) and Junction 25 (Taunton) on September 13, 2018.

Hundreds of motorists opted to use the A38 to avoid queues up to 11 miles long, passing near the recently-installed bus gate on the eastern edge of Taunton.

A freedom of information request has revealed that more than 550 drivers were caught using the bus gate during the delays - netting Somerset County Council earned thousands of pounds in fines.
Read the full story here.

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When a major piece of breaking news occurs, one is always on the lookout for potential follow-ups to add colour and detail to our coverage, ensuring the public has a more complete picture. My fellow Somerset Live reporters did a fantastic job of covering a multi-vehicle crash on the M5 in September 2018, bringing our readers regular updates on both the movement of traffic and the fates of those involved.

This story came from a routine trawl through the county council's Freedom of Information disclosure log, which I pour through once a week when preparing my plans for the following week. This request had been submitted shortly after the day of the crash, and the request contained a large amount of detail about the number of drivers who had been caught using the A38 bus gate to avoid the traffic. From there it was merely a case of obtaining a statement from the council, asking them to defend their position and provide detail about the legal process.

Freedom of information stories can be difficult to make exciting without a human face to put on them, but this one resonated with our readers because of the emotional subject matter, as well as how little time had passed between the crash and the story being published. Our readers like having their little rants about the incompetence of local government, but we presented this with a relatively straight and it paid off, being shared more than 200 times.