Councils, police and the intelligence services asked more than 500,000 times for approval to access private email and phone data, official figures revealed.

The total number of requests - including 1,500 from local councils - were approved. Each one allows public authorities access to communications data - which includes records of phone, email and text messages - but not their content.

The figures were published in the annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy. It showed 504,073 requests for communication data were made last year, or nearly 10,000 every week.

Although slightly down on last year, the total is up more than 40% on two years ago. Over the last three years, 1.2million requests were made - the equivalent of one for every 31 adults in the UK. Last year details handed over contained nearly 600 errors.

Of course, the information is not released in an easily accessible form - so we've gone through each annual report and extracted the key data. That makes this the only place in Britain you can get these numbers.

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