Selected work

Ticket prices for 18 festivals were compared with their closest equivalents in 2016, then adjusted for inflation and converted into hours of work at the median full-time wage.

ArcTanGent's ticket price had risen from £75 to £250, a 233% cash increase. It had also become much harder to afford, rising from about 5.5 hours of work to 12.7 hours.

Published by Financial Interest in July 2026 as a festival-by-festival comparison of headline prices, real-terms increases and affordability.

Official Band D council tax figures for 2020–21 and 2026–27 were compared across English billing authorities, using the full bill rather than only the district council's share.

The average Band D bill had risen by 30.8%, adding about £565. Croydon's increase was close to £816, while several of the sharpest rises were concentrated in councils under severe financial pressure.

Published by Financial Interest in June 2026 with a searchable local breakdown and reporting on the finances behind the largest rises.

Official 2026 replica-shirt prices were compared with minimum wages, converting daily and monthly pay into hourly rates. Where necessary, official international prices and regional or sectoral wage benchmarks were used.

Ghana's shirt cost the equivalent of around 432 hours of minimum-wage work, or 54 eight-hour days, compared with around seven hours for England's shirt.

Published by Financial Interest in June 2026 as a country-by-country ranking with visual comparisons and a transparent methodology.

Student Loans Company figures on PAYE over-repayments and pending refunds were analysed alongside official guidance on repayment errors and refund eligibility.

The figures showed £23.3 million over-repaid in 2023–24, with about £21.7 million already refunded at the published snapshot. Recent-year pending balances partly reflected processing time, rather than permanent losses.

Published by Financial Interest in June 2026, combining data analysis with a practical guide to checking and reclaiming overpayments.

An original analysis combined records for 92 crop circles with their estimated dimensions, affected crops and contemporary commodity prices.

More than 40 football pitches' worth of arable land had been affected since 2018, with an estimated £30,000 in lost farm income.

The dataset became a reported feature in The Guardian in September 2022.

The legislation was checked against official import records for non-ivory elephant parts over the preceding decade.

The UK had imported 325 non-ivory elephant parts, including skins, feet, ears and tails. The new law did not cover those products.

Published in The Guardian ahead of the Ivory Act coming into force in June 2022.

Home Office visa data was analysed by nationality across the two schemes.

Nearly 3,500 visas were granted to people from 112 countries. The schemes included eligible non-Ukrainian family members of Ukrainians.

Co-authored with Charles Hymas and Ben Butcher and published in The Telegraph on 11 April 2026.

Freedom of Information responses from police forces across England and Wales were combined, using searches for terms including ‘AI-generated’, ‘deepfake’ and ‘synthetic’.

Twenty forces recorded 163 crimes, with the annual total rising sixteenfold over three years.

Published in The Telegraph on 12 September 2026 as an original investigation into the emerging misuse of generative AI against children.

Freedom of Information responses from NHS organisations were brought together to count disciplinary cases and examine the conduct behind them.

The figures showed that an average of two members of staff a day were disciplined over offences including losing sensitive files and snooping on patient records.

Published by MailOnline in February 2022 as a national investigation into the handling of confidential patient information.

Freedom of Information responses from ambulance trusts were combined to measure complaints and identify the kinds of cases reported by patients and their families.

Trusts received around 50 complaints a year alleging that vulnerable patients had been abandoned or left at the wrong address or location.

Published by MailOnline in February 2022 as a national story about what happened after patients were handed over or dropped off.

A Freedom of Information response from the Forestry Commission covering reported cases from 2012–13 to 2021–22, with fines and enforcement records checked for context.

Of 4,002 reports across the decade, 15 ended in a successful prosecution, a rate of 0.4%. The average fine among those convictions was £1,847.

Published as an original environment investigation in The Guardian in November 2022.

Freedom of Information data on allotment waiting times was compared across UK councils, examining average waits alongside the longest individual delays.

One gardener in Camden waited 6,690 days, more than 18 years, for a plot. The reported UK average was two years and eight months, with more than 100,000 people waiting.

Published by MailOnline on 29 September 2021, turning council records into a national story about access to allotments.

Council licensing data obtained through Freedom of Information requests was assembled into a national picture under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, then examined by place and species.

The survey identified nearly 2,500 licensed animals, including big cats, primates, crocodilians, venomous snakes and other exotic species.

Published as a national data story in The Guardian in August 2022.

Police records from England and Wales were obtained under Freedom of Information laws and combined, with individual incident descriptions used to show what sat behind the total.

Police recorded 62 crimes from 2020 to 2022, with the annual count rising 59% across the period. The records included shootings, mutilations and deliberate drownings.

Published as an original national investigation in The Guardian in June 2023.

A coordinated Freedom of Information study gathered policy data from NHS trusts in England, then compared acute and mental-health trusts and regional patterns.

The published study mapped policies across 170 responding trusts, including smoking bans, vaping rules, planned changes and methods of enforcement.

Produced as a 67-page research report with methodology, findings, trust-level appendices and references.

The report constructed a counterfactual combining healthcare and welfare costs with taxes, pensions and other government payments associated with premature mortality.

It estimated a net annual fiscal cost of £2.47 billion in 2016 prices after accounting for £3.6 billion in avoided expenditure.

Published as a full discussion paper. The publisher records subsequent coverage in the Daily Express and Metro.

The research combined international physician comparisons, NHS vacancy and specialty data, demographic pressures and a review of workforce rules.

It identified the UK's relatively low physician density, reliance on overseas-trained doctors and pronounced gaps in specialties including emergency and respiratory medicine.

Published as a long-form report and reported by The Independent at launch.

Co-authored analysis compared Scottish off-trade alcohol sales after implementation with a counterfactual based on England and Wales, using Public Health Scotland data.

The report estimated a net consumer cost of £270 million over four years, or £59.39 per adult.

Published as a co-authored quantitative research paper in May 2022.

The work searched the government's Development Tracker and UK Research and Innovation records, then compared recipient regions with UK local economic data.

It identified aid-funded projects in relatively affluent regions of upper-middle-income countries and examined how the allocation rules treated regional inequality.

Published as a research paper in August 2024 and covered by The Telegraph.