READING Borough Council has underperformed in its obligation to respond to Freedom of Information requests for the fourth year running, according to an information request and public report.
After receiving a number of complaints since 2019, the council has again been found to be failing to respond to the requests within 20 working days, which is an obligation.
The Information Commission Office sets a target of 95% of requests to be responded to within this time period, though it is a legal obligation that all should receive such a response.
During the 2021/2022 period, one in three FOI requests (33%) was not responded to within the obligatory 20 working days.
This constitutes a success rate of 66%, well below the “adequate” rate of 90% or more.
This is up from the 2018/2019 and 2019/20 periods, where around one in four (25% and 26%, respectively) had not been responded to within the requisite time period.
A complaint, made by Jason Collie, against the council was upheld in 2019 and an internal audit report confirmed that the council had not met the necessary level of timely responses.
The report made a number of recommendations to the council to improve its response times to FOI requests.
A public report, dated September 19, 2019, laid out thirteen separate recommendations, including updating guidance and procedures, provision of staff training, implementation of software, and publication of monthly reporting on performance.
Despite a suspension to the service for three months in 2020, the council had still not rectified the shortfall as of November that year, with one in four still going without a response within 20 working days.
The council agreed in November 2020 that the investigation resulting from the original complaint should be escalated to a Stage 2 investigation.
Reading Borough Council’s Deputy Director Jon Dickinson then conducted an investigation, which also found that the complaints made against the council should be upheld.
From February 2021, the council advised that key recommendations from the internal audit regarding the software used to handle the complaints were due for implementation in spring 2021.
In a report by investigating officer Zoe Hanim, dated March 3, 2021, it was agreed that the ongoing complaint “about Reading Borough Council’s failure to meet its legal obligations” should be again upheld.
It was again put forward in the report that software implementation was planned and would improve compliance rates.
On July 6, 2022, a further complaint was made to the council by Mr Collie shortly after a Freedom of Information request revealed that while the number of overall requests had dropped, the rate of failure to meet response times had risen.
In the 2020/2021 period, non-compliance rates had grown to one in three which did not receive a response within the obligatory 20 working days.
A spokesperson for Reading Borough Council said: “These latest FOI response time figures are obviously disappointing given that the Council has implemented all of the recommendations which followed an internal review and subsequent Audit and Governance report.
“These included a new case management recording system for FOIs across the organisation, with associated staff training, one team to co-ordinate all FOI requests across the Council, weekly overdue reports to senior management and quarterly reports across directorates.”
They explained that while all of the measures have been implemented successfully in themselves, “there have been some pockets of improvement with some services answering requests at a level of 80% to 90%, but the overall response rate across the Council remains unacceptably low.
“The Council considers openness and transparency a key element of Local Government, just one example being the Council choosing to publish an ethnicity pay gap report even though it is not currently required by law.
“We remain determined to do everything we can to drive up FOI response times and are looking again at all aspects of the process to identify what action is be needed in order to improve.
“Details of an updated action plan will be presented to a meeting of Audit and Governance Committee in September.”
Mr Collie, who has lodged the complaints, said: “The council has given us excuse after excuse after excuse for the systemic failure over a number of years.
“Which bit of ‘this is the law’ do they not understand?
“The council’s ‘new’ management systems were brought in in 2021.
“They’ve had their best go at doing it and failed, so they need to bring in an outside organisation that is competent, rather than taking our money and giving us sop after PR sop.”
The council is set to release details of its updated plans to an Audits and Governance meeting due in September.
