Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an Enforcement Notice may be served where the Information Commissioner is satisfied that a public authority has failed to comply with any of the requirements of Part I of the Act. If a public authority fails to comply with a Notice, the Commissioner may commence court proceedings under section 54 of the Act, which may be dealt with as contempt of Court.
The ICO recently served an Enforcement Notice on both Devon and Cornwall Police and Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust for their ongoing FOI failings which have seen hundreds of information requests go unanswered.
Devon and Cornwall Police
In 2023, as part of the ICO’s routine work to monitor public authorities’ compliance, the ICO found that between 2022 and 2024 the percentage of requests responded to by Devon and Cornwall Policewithin the statutory FOI timeframe (20 working days) was consistently low (between 39% and 65%). Their rate of response to internal review requests was also poor, averaging between 0% and 22%. The Force had a backlog of older FOI requests which had increased from 77 in December 2023 to 251 in June 2024.
The ICO 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. It has also been given six months to clear the existing backlog.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust
The ICO first contacted the Trust in June 2023 due to a number of complaints received about its late compliance with FOI requests. The ICO found that, over 12 months, the Trust had only responded to 29% of requests during the statutory timeframe, with January 2024 seeing just 2.5% of requests responded to in a timely manner.
The Trust had a backlog of 589 requests in April 2024, which increased to 785 by June 2024. The ICO Enforcement Notice gives the Trust 35 days to devise and publish an action plan to clear this backlog by the end of the year.
Since last year, the ICO has pursued a tougher FOI enforcement policy. Recently it issued Enforcement Notices against three other police forces for poor FOI performance which has led to significant backlogs in their responses.
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