Council fail to give additional resources to the Information Governance & Data Protection Team

This is how Tony Blair berates himself in his memoirs for allowing his Labour government to proceed with introducing the Freedom of Information Act. The law, which came into force on 1 January 2005, gives everyone the right to obtain much of the information held by public authorities (with numerous substantial exceptions).

Freedom Of Information (FoI) has become a well-established tool for finding out more about the workings of central and local government and the rest of the public sector.

Under FoI, Folkestone & HytheDistrict Council, like other Local Authorities have 20 days to respond to an FoI request. There is provision for them to claim a reasonable extension to this limit, up to an additional 20 working days, if they need more time to consider the public interest test. So making a maximum of 40 days to respond.

In the last week, the Council have responded to one FoI a year after it was submitted.  Another has yet to be dealt with sixteen months after it was submitted. The Council state regarding this overdue response:

The Information Governance and Data Protection Team have suffered a spate of long-term staff absence in recent months, which has affected its ability to meet these deadlines. We understand that this isn’t considered by Information Access legislation.

In the End of Year Data Report 2022/23 it states:

A new Case Officer was appointed at the end of November 2022 which has been a positive factor for this improvement and further development and training will support the team aim to achieve target. We have identified additional resource to support the team during periods of absence and high workloads.

And in the 2023/24_Q2 (July – Sept) Key Performance Indicators report  for Q2, it states:

There has been a decrease in the percentage of FOI/EIRs going out on time in Quarter 2 compared with the same period last year. A total of 4 of the 28 overdue cases are marked as ‘overdue due to service area’, meaning that the service area did not get the required information over to the team in time for us to compile and return to the requestor. The service areas in question and their respective managers have been notified of the overdue cases and the importance of responding in a timely manner to these requests has been reiterated to the relevant departments.

The Case Management team currently have one full-time and one part-time case officer for Information Governance, along with one full-time specialist. Both case officers had periods of annual leave in July and September which has also impacted on the output of work.

Since Sept 2023, there has been “long-term staff absence in recent months“. However, at the end of 22/23, the Council make clear “We have identified additional resource to support the team during periods of absence and high workloads.” yet when push comes to shove, the “additional resources” do not seem to materialize to cover the staff absences or high workloads.

Since the introduction of FoI, it has revealed many things which would have remained hidden, eg: MPs’ expenses, Immigration, A&E ambulance delays, Unanswered 101 calls and more. It is an excellent tool in the fight against public authorities culture of excessive confidentiality.

The fact the current administration does not give  the Information Governance and Data Protection Team, the resources it deserves may well be indicative of how it values the legislation. After all the Council have failed to meet the KPI figure for FoI for the last seven years.

It’s clear the Council still clings to that old culture of excessive confidentiality which was so typical of the previous Tory administration. It also appears not to give the necessary resources to this department.

We ask, is there really much difference between the old Tory administration and the new Green led one, when it comes to information?

As always we’ll leave you to consider that.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime