Council served enforcement notice over 261 unanswered FOI requests
City of York Council has been hit with an enforcement notice after the Information Commissioner's Office found the local authority had a backlog of more than 250 unanswered freedom of information requests.
The ICO found the local authority to be in breach of its duties under section 1(1) and section 10(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Section 1(1) provides that a person requesting information from a public authority has a right, subject to exemptions, to be informed by the public authority in writing whether it holds the information and to have that communicated to them if the public authority holds it.
Section 10(1) specifies that public authorities must respond to requests within 20 working days.
In correspondence between the ICO and the council, York said it met the time requirements for responding to requests in 85.5% of requests received between January 2023 and June 2023.
The council further revealed that it had yet to respond to 96 requests received between April and December 2021 and 102 requests received during 2022.
It also admitted that it failed to respond to 63 requests received this year up to August, bringing the total number of delayed responses to 261.
"Taking into account the significant volume of unanswered requests, their age profile including many requests subject to severe delay, and the need for significant and sustained improvement in timely responses, the Commissioner considers it a proportionate regulatory step to issue an Enforcement Notice to the Council," the enforcement notice states.
As a result, the ICO told the council to devise and publish an action plan, formalising measures to mitigate delays. This plan should be supported by a 'lessons learned' exercise, the notice adds.
As of September 8, York has responded to 49 of the remaining 261 requests. It intends to clear its entire backlog of unanswered requests by the end of October 2023.
Bryn Roberts, Director of Governance at City of York Council, said: "The Information Commissioners Office have confirmed their findings that as of August 2023, City of York Council has accrued a backlog of 261 un-answered FOI requests which breach the legal requirements upon the council.
“The council fully accepts that we have not met the required standards of responding to FOI requests. Whilst there are numerous reasons for our current situation, this is still an unacceptable failure and we apologise whole-heartedly for it. The current situation is simply not good enough, and we are already working to address the factors that resulted in this backlog, which include understaffing and some process and system problems.
"We have given an assurance to the Information Commissioner that we will clear the backlog over the coming months, along with an apology which we are happy to repeat to customers who have been affected.”
Adam Carey
