Three public bodies monitored over response times to FOI requests

The Cabinet Office, the London Borough of Hackney and the Crown Prosecution Service are to be monitored by the Information Commissioner over the timeliness of their responses to freedom of information requests.

The ICO said it had received “a significant number of complaints” about the three organisations. The monitoring will cover a three-month period up to 31 March 2014.

A failure to show signs of improvement could result in enforcement action, the watchdog warned.

This is not the first time the Cabinet Office has been subjected to monitoring over the timeliness of its monitoring.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said it was “particularly disappointing” to see that the department had failed to maintain the improvements recorded three years ago, when it was last put under the spotlight.

“Their inclusion on the latest monitoring list should act as a warning to others that lessons learnt from monitoring have to be sustained,” he suggested.

The Information Commissioner said: “Responding to FOI requests within the statutory time limit of 20 working days is basic to delivering transparent and open government.

“While extensions may sometimes be justifiable for particularly complex requests, these three authorities have been selected for monitoring after serious shortcomings were identified in the time each of them has been taking to respond to FOI requests."

The ICO also said that it would monitor the Home Office for an additional three-month period after reviewing the results from July to September 2013. South Tyneside Council and Sussex Police were deemed to have sufficiently improved their performance over this time.

The watchdog has also been monitoring the Metropolitan Police Service for an additional three-month period and, once an analysis of the results has been completed, will decide whether to continue to do so.