Three Rivers District Council

Section 48 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) empowers the information Commissioner (the Commissioner) to issue a practice recommendation where it appears to him that a public authority has failed to conform, specifically, to the FOIA Codes of Practice. These failures are addressed in the recommendations section below. Section 47 of FOIA also makes clear that the Commissioner has a duty to promote the following of good practice beyond just the requirements of the Codes of Practice. The wider concerns the Commissioner has in this case are addressed in the “Other matters” section below to keep them distinct from the Section 48 related recommendations he has made.

Three Rivers District Council (the Council) has had a consistently poor level of performance in terms of its response times to FOIA requests as well as demonstrating poor engagement with the Commissioner. This has been highlighted by the number of complaints about response times submitted to the Commissioner as well as the lack of communication from the Council when case officers, on behalf of the Commissioner, have been in contact to raise such issues. The Commissioner has reached the view that the Council’s request handling practices do not conform to part 4 of the section 45 Freedom of Information Code of Practice, issued by the Cabinet Office in July 2018 (the Code).