We have taken action against four public authorities for continued failings to meet their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
City of London Police has been issued with an enforcement notice for its FOI failings. Staffordshire Police, Dorset Police and Goldsmiths, University of London have been given practice recommendations setting out improvements they can make to better comply with their legal obligations under FOIA.
ICO Head of FOI Complaints and Appeals, Phillip Angell, said:
“People have the legal right to promptly receive information they’re entitled to. This right is important as transparency and accountability are fundamental to our democracy.
“As the regulator of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we support public authorities to be transparent and accountable about the decisions they make and the public money they spend. Where authorities let people down by failure to comply with the law on responding to information requests, we can and will take regulatory action so people’s rights are upheld.”
Action we’ve taken
City of London Police
We regularly review information about FOI performance published on the National Police Chiefs’ Council website. In April 2024, we noticed that the recent FOIA compliance statistics from City of London Police (CoLP) were absent so we wrote to the force to ask for them.
After a significant delay, the force responded that its average compliance rate in the financial year 2023/24 was 68%, which we consider to be low.
CoLP also had a large, rising backlog of older requests it had yet to respond to. From June 2023 to date, we dealt with 12 complaints about CoLP which involved timeliness issues.
The force said the issues had been caused by staffing challenges at the same time as an increase in the number and complexity of FOI requests.
The enforcement notice orders the force to devise and publish an action plan in the next 30 days, which must detail how they will comply with their duties to respond to information requests in a timely manner. The force has been given six months to clear the existing backlog.
Staffordshire Police
We have seen an increase in complaints received about Staffordshire Police. Of greatest concern is the backlog of aged requests which remain open with the force and that no action plan has been implemented to resolve this.
A practice recommendation has been issued to the force to support it in improving its information rights practices.
Dorset Police
We carried out an FOI audit of Devon and Cornwall and Dorset Police (which have a shared FOI service) during which various concerns were found over FOI compliance performance. We continued to monitor FOI performance for the next 12 months, but performance is still poor. There are concerns both about performance in terms of the time limit for complying with information requests and the time it takes to complete internal reviews.
A practice recommendation has been issued to ensure there is transparency about the action being taken by drawing wider attention to the issue.
Goldsmiths, University of London
Goldsmiths College wrote to us in August 2024 explaining that due to various factors it was currently unable to meet its obligations to provide timely responses to people about their information rights request. The college had seen an increase in requests with many of those being more complex than usual. As a result, a backlog of requests had built up.
We have issued Goldsmiths with a practice recommendation to support the college’s plans to stabilise and improve its information rights practices.
If you would like to make a complaint regarding an organisation and its FOI compliance, please do so here.