The start of 2025 will be the 20th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) coming into force. The Act was meant to herald a new era of openness, transparency and accountability by giving the public access to information held by public authorities. But a new report by openDemocracy, Transparency Under Threat: Monitoring FOI compliance in the UK, claims that public authorities are consistently failing to answer FOI requests within the 20 working day time limit in accordance with section 10 of the Act.
The report’s authors analysed 6,000 FOI Decision Notices issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) between 2021 and 2023. They found that almost a quarter of these related to public authorities’ failure to comply with the time limit.
Infractions include those from central government departments, and local Councils also receiving a high number of these Decision Notices. Police forces across England and Wales are also failing to meet the 20-working-day deadline. South Yorkshire Police, Dyfed Powys Police and Sussex Police are the least compliant with the legal timeframe, according to statistics compiled by the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
Despite these failures, none of the major political parties have pledged to tackle FOI in their manifestos for the upcoming general election. The Labour Party has been arguing for many years that private contractors delivering public services should be subject to FOI laws and the Conservatives have, in the past, suggested making housing associations subject to FOI. The only manifesto pledge on transparency in government is made by the Liberal Democrats who propose that “all Ministers’ instant-messaging conversations involving government business must be placed on the departmental record” and that “all lobbying of Ministers via instant messages, emails, letters and phone calls is published as part of quarterly transparency releases”.
Martin Rosenbaum, FOI specialist and ex BBC journalist, wrote on this blog last year that the ICO is issuing more Enforcement Notices and Practice Recommendations over excessive delays in dealing with FOI requests. It’s FOI team has also made progress in the past year in rectifying its own defects in processing complaints, speeding things up and tackling its backlog. Clearly more needs to be done.
Our FOI Exemptions workshop is ideal for FOI Officers who want to develop their knowledge of the exemptions and sharpen their Refusal Notice writing skills.
