What barriers get in the way of organisations delivering a better service?

Organisations reported a range of barriers to delivering a better service. These included the pressures on resource and the challenges applying the law to large and complex records brings. They had mixed views on how the ICO was best placed to help overcome these. 

Key findings: 

• Resource pressures
  • Professionals cared deeply about delivering a good service for care-experienced people and wanted to protect and support them. But they were under immense pressure, with large workloads, tight deadlines, and limited resources.
  • Social workers and GPs were also under pressure, and there were vital touchpoints in the process.
  • Teams lacked senior support, often didn’t have formal training, and may have spent years trying to get extra resources or overtime.

• Interactions with the ICO
  • Pressure from the ICO could motivate senior management and help unlock resources that improved the process for everyone.
  • Opinions on the our complaints handling were mixed; some felt we didn’t provide enough nuanced advice and acted more as a problem-solver than a sounding board.
  • Participants often felt that we sided with requesters who brought complaints to us and would like a chance to respond before we make a decision on a case.

Resource 

Organisations across all nations cited resourcing of teams dealing with requests as the number one barrier to providing a better service. Securing senior buy-in to resource teams was one of the key challenges, with two participants highlighting a six-year attempt to secure greater resource without success. The resource challenge was also a reflection of the volume and complexity of records, particularly the time it took for redactions. 

Team size varied massively between organisations, from teams of one to teams of 18 full-time equivalent. 

Social care-related SARs made up a large portion of requests, ranging from 25-60%. Some organisations reported that the number of these requests had doubled in recent years. 

Participants spoke about the ICO, particularly with fines or other enforcement action, being a key motivator for senior staff. This also linked to the other key factor of backlogs and crisis points in handling requests. 

Personal pressure 

Staff reported feeling under great personal pressure, both due to the resource constraints but also because they recognised the importance of getting this right. It was described by one participant as a “huge responsibility”. Staff also reported that the material in some records was distressing, and that some staff absences were due to the strain of dealing with the records process. Staff absence was also something which risked exacerbating the challenges. 

Staff recognised the complexity of the records, but also were worried about making mistakes. This often added time to reviewing records manually to ensure they didn’t release information inappropriately. 

There was also recognition that records handling often relied on other services that were busy, such as social work or health teams. 

Document access 

There was a significant range of types of information contained within records, and how easy it was to locate and consider. Tasks like scanning paper records could take up significant time. Working with external organisations to determine whether information could be released (eg health information or police reports), was a challenge for some. Those who had strong working relationships with these external organisations found this part of the process easier. The time taken to interact with these external organisations increased the pressure on responding within the timescale. 

Judgement calls, consistency and redaction

A lot of participants reflected that making decisions about releasing records involved difficult judgement calls, and that the process would benefit from more consistency. A comment was made that even if you give team members the same information, they may reach different conclusions. This was in part due to what training was available, but also the complex and subjective nature of making decisions on redactions. 

“You have to balance the black and white of the law with the grey area of real life.”

A participant from an organisation responding to requests for information

Generally, participants took a cautious ‘if in doubt, take it out’ approach. This led to them redacting more records, although they did recognise the challenges this brought for requesters. They felt that the law meant they should redact third-party information and potentially harmful language. 

Several talked about taking a rights-based approach and aiming to release as much as possible while taking into account the broader context (eg family dynamics, mental health and timing). Personal contact with the requester to understand what they already knew, could lead to better service:

“The more they can tell us, the more we feel we can leave in”.

A participant from an organisation responding to requests for information

Timescales 

Most participants felt that the time limits were not long enough to properly handle these requests, particularly for older records. One participant told us their “average social care request is 8,000 pages long. We have a case that is 20,000 pages long”.

Some participants found the three-month limit (applied to complex cases) was more manageable, but others still described this as very difficult to achieve. 

Complaints and the ICO 

Most organisations had received complaints about their handling of requests. Some welcomed the escalation provided to check their approach, others felt complaints could be used as a threat to get them to release more information. Some reflected that requesters for care records often didn’t escalate matters to the ICO. This is reflected in our survey research around the experience of people requesting their information.