Agenda item

Purpose: To receive an update on actions following the previous Commission meeting.

The Commission received an update on actions from the previous meeting and made the following comments:

2.2: Councillor Virginia von Celsing asked why the Continuing Healthcare update had been postponed until April. Nick Carter responded that he and Dr Cathy Winfield (Chief Officer of North West Reading CCG) would be more able to provide a full and clear update on progress at this time. Had an update been provided at this evening’s meeting, it would not be sufficiently informative;

2.4: Councillor Tony Vickers asked what consideration had been given to the effects of road closures on ‘available routes’, identified as suitable routes for children to use when walking to school, for example when the route was flooded. The Chairman agreed to request a response for the next meeting.

2.5: David Lowe provided information in relation to Freedom of Information requests received by the Council, commenting that five years worth of data had been provided which demonstrated a year on year increase in requests for information. David Lowe clarified that the Freedom of Information Act defined situations in which an exemption could be applied to allow the Council to refuse provision of the requested information. The majority of exemptions were due to requests involving personal information, or requests that would exceed the appropriate cost limit, which allowed 18 work hours to extricate the information.

Following questioning from the Commission, David Lowe provided the following responses:

·        Approximately half of all appeals that had been escalated to the Information Commissioner had been found against the Council;

·        There was legislation in place to allow appeals to continue to tribunal should the requester or public authority be unhappy with the Information Commissioner’s findings;

·        There was no clear reason for the increase in the number of requests for information, however it was considered likely that people were becoming more aware of their right to request information under the Act. In addition it was apparent that news stories would trigger a spate of requests for related information;

·        There had been an increase in employees dealing with Freedom of Information requests from 1 FTE (full time equivalent) to 1.4 FTE. The team also dealt with corporate complaints;

·        Where a request was too large to be accepted, it was the responsibility of the Council to inform the requester of this, and to provide advice for example to suggest that the scope of the request be reduced, or that they might wish to pay for the excess time required (this would approximate to £25 per hour). To date, no one had agreed to pay for the extra time;

·        The number of people who made repeat requests was low. The number of distinct requesters would be confirmed to the Commission;

·        The increase in requests in recent years was common across the public sector and there was no indication that this would stabilise or reduce in coming years;

·        The average cost per information request was not calculated;

·        Ongoing reviews at a national level were aimed at mitigating the effect of the number of requests being received. Consideration was being given to the introduction of a charge for each request with the aim of dissuading some from making the request, however this had not been applied and there was no certainty that it would be in the future;

·        Both local and national media made requests to the Council for information, and might request information from all local authorities for the same information. However it was not possible to identify the number of requests from the media as only a name and address needed to be provided by them – it was not necessary for them to state in what capacity the request was being made;

·        It was possible to aggregate several requests from a single person to establish whether the total work would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours;

·        The team in Strategic Support was tasked with managing the process of logging the request, obtaining the information from the relevant service area, and responding within the required timescales. The team was not expected to be sufficiently knowledgeable in all areas of the organisation to be able to identify incorrect information unless it was clearly evident. It was the responsibility of individual service areas to ensure that the information they provided was accurate.

·        Should incorrect information be released, and this was identified, a correct version would be sent with an apology. The recent example of incorrect information being released and published nationally was the first occurrence of this magnitude.

RESOLVED that:

·        Caroline Corcoran would provide a response indicating what happens when ‘available routes’ become unusable due to local conditions;

·        David Lowe would confirm the total number of individuals who had made Freedom of Information requests to the Council.