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Clearing the backlog of ‘freedom of information’ complaints requires
another funding boost of £750,000, the information commissioner said
today.
Richard Thomas, who regulates the freedom of information act (FOIA)
as the information commissioner, adjudicates on complaints about refusals
by public bodies to disclose requested material. He today published a progress
report on the regulator’s performance and says that the extra money
is needed to clear the backlog by March 2008.
Thomas says: “Freedom of information is trans-forming the way
we are governed. It challenges unnecessary official secrecy and brings into
the open more and more information about the activities of government and
other public services.
“The new law – a very ambitious endeavour – has had
a major impact across the whole of the public sector. And it is working.”
However, the report, which itself is a month over-due, says that the
complaints backlog would only be cleared by March 2008 if the regulator receives
an one-off £750,000 boost for the 2007/08 financial year on top of its
basic funding of £4.7 million.
It says: “With such a one-off grant, we would clear the backlog
of 450 cases that we anticipate will remain at the start of 2007/08. With
that grant, no case would wait more than 28 days to be allocated to a complaints
team. As a result, 90% of cases would take less than nine months to close.”
Without that boost, it says, “We would continue to be able to
close 50% of the new cases we receive each month within 30 days of receipt,
but most of the remaining cases would have to wait in a queue before allocation
to one of the complaints teams.
“This would mean a delay of approximately six months before we
can investigate such cases. Overall, most of these cases would take over nine
months in total to deal with, and some may take considerably longer.
“We would be unable to clear the backlog that will still remain
at the start of next [financial] year. We do not consider this to be a satisfactory
or acceptable level of service.
Thomas says that he has just requested the extra funds from the department
for constitutional affairs, which is headed by Lord Falconer, constitutional
affairs secretary.
The report says: “An early decision is vital,” adding that
the information commissioner has to be “realistic about the impact any
cuts will have on our performance levels and, ultimately, on those who lodge
complaints with us about the ‘freedom of information’ performance
of public authorities.”
“An early indication that such funding can be made available
would allow us to retain existing temporary staff into the next financial
year, maximising the benefit of their accumulated experience.”
The regulator had made a request for £1.13 million extra funding
for the 2006/07 financial year to clear the backlog of complaints by March
2007.
But, after the financial year began, the government agreed only to
an extra £550,000.
The regulator’s performance came under attack last June from
MPs on the constitutional affairs committee who reviewed the first year of
‘freedom of information’ in the UK.
In March, Thomas told the MPs that 1,500 com-plaints were yet to be
resolved, some 700 of which he described as a “backlog”.
Today’s report says that out of 4,400 complaints received since
FOIA was fully implemented in 2005, 1,200 are said to be “work in progress”,
including 700 described as the “backlog”.
“However, the volume of new cases has risen and stayed nearly
20% above projections. Even with the current level of new cases, we are closing
more cases each month than we receive.
“But we remain acutely aware that we still have a substantial
backlog, and that this is not reducing as quickly as planned because of the
higher than expected number of cases arriving each month. The legacy backlog
and the increase in new cases mean that too many cases are taking –
and will continue to take – too long to resolve.”
“Output has increased from an average of just under 140 cases
closed each month in 2005/06, to 245 each month closed in the first half of
2006/07.”
The information commissioner has received 225 FOIA complaints per month
since January, and he expects that level to continue.
The report says: “Despite the increased number of new cases received
since January this year, we believe the temporary extra funding would enable
us to achieve acceptable service levels by early 2008 if intake levels remain
the same.”
Ministers – already condemned for signalling last week possible
measures to curb FOIA – are under pressure to accept the information
commissioner’s latest request for funds to clear the complaints backlog.
Thomas is supported by the fact that the govern-ment only granted around
half of his previous request, and that extra money is set to fail to clear
the backlog by the previous target of March 2007.
The report says: “It has been a challenging time, but we are
proud of our achievements. We experienced problems over the first 12 months,
which we have tackled with great vigour.
“We can now demonstrate clear and significant improvements in
our complaints handling since the beginning of 2006. We are confident that
we are moving in the right direction and that our performance will continue
to improve.”
“During the last months of 2005, it became clear that our performance
was unsatisfactory and that changes were needed to the way ‘freedom
of information’ complaints were being handled.”
The report also repeats a previous promise made by Thomas last March
to MPs on the constitutional affairs committee of a tougher approach with
public bodies.
It says: “Perhaps, we took too tentative an approach. This is
not surprising, as many cases involved novel, and often complicated, issues
of fact and law. For a range of reasons, an unacceptable backlog of complaint
cases was building up.”
“When we started to address the problems, we found ourselves
short of resources and expertise to achieve the step change in improvement
we knew was necessary.
“With financial assistance from the department for constitutional
affairs, we were able to embark on a very focused and concentrated improvement
programme... The changes have increased product-ivity and throughput significantly.”
“We deliberately adopted a tolerant and non-con-frontational
approach towards public bodies during 2005. We felt that public authorities
needed to learn and to receive encouragement in the early days of FOIA, and
that it was highly unlikely there would be evidence of systemic failure so
soon.
“We welcome the support for our decision to take a firmer approach
towards enforcement, using the full range of our powers to improve compliance,
especially in reducing delays experienced by requestors.”
Comment
on this article
Government
set to break promise to MPs on FOIA
Ministers
consider changing FOIA charges regime
MPs:
FOIA regulator must become more ‘assertive’
DCA
agrees to half of £1m bid to clear backlog
Ministers
deny plans to increase FOIA charges
What’s up with the information
commissioner?
‘We’re
trying our best and we’re getting tougher’
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