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What price freedom?

Local government has been at the forefront of openness in the UK. Since 2005, councils have received 60-70% of all Freedom of Information requests. As we move into more reform of the local government sector, what is the impact of FOI requests upon local democracy and governance? A new study is attempting to find this out, says Ben Worthy.

Freedom of Information is presented as a very effective measure to improve public governance and realign the relationship between state and citizen for the better. Certainly there have been huge gains for UK citizens in relation to central government since the Act was implemented in 2005. But no one has attempted any systematic measurement of how FOI has impacted on local government – an essential task if anyone wants to understand how FOI is working in Britain as a whole. Around two-thirds of all FOI requests in Britain are sent to local authorities.

Following a study of FOI’s impact on Whitehall – published this Summer as Does FOI work? –the Constitution Unit at University College London has just begun the first study of the objectives, benefits and consequences of FOI on English local government.

Part of the difficulty of any assessment of FOI – in any country – is deciding exactly what it is supposed to do. While a ‘right to information’ for citizens is increasingly seen as necessary to any well-functioning democracy, there has been little debate and understanding about what the UK’s Act was supposed to do for public authorities, and even less for local councils in particular. Without a purpose clause, the objectives of the UK’s Act are left to the statements of politicians and policy papers. The Unit’s previous work on FOI has identified six concretes objectives set for the Act. These are:

  1. Increased transparency
  2. Increased accountability
  3. Better decision making
  4. Better public understanding of decision-making
  5. Greater public participation
  6. Increased public trust

In the case of central government, FOI has met its core objectives of transparency and accountability. Yet it has not achieved the secondary objectives, the ‘wider transformative’ aims, that flow from them. That this is not the fault of FOI, as  understanding, trust and participation are in fact influenced by many wider societal and political forces. But could things be different at the local level?

Local government in Britain has been subject to openness legislation since the 1960s. Does a history of information sharing mean local government is better prepared, or more willing, to share information when asked for it, compared to other public bodies?

The research

The Constitution Unit’s study will measure FOI against the objectives set for it, asking whether FOI has improved decision-making, and made local government more transparent and accountable. It will also attempt to measure whether FOI has increased public understanding, participation and trust in local government.

The study will evaluate the impact of the legislation by speaking to officials who work with it across 15 different local authorities across England, including press officers, lawyers and chief executives. The project will also look at case law from the ICO and Tribunal, survey requesters who use FOI, and interview local journalists and analyse media articles that report FOI.

The context of local government and FOI

The wide-ranging reform of local government during the last decade may also mean FOI plays out differently to Whitehall. The study will also ask how FOI has impacted upon the new model of local governance – local political leadership, local accountability, partnership working and local service provision. The creation of cabinets and scrutiny committees means accountability is built into the governance structures of local councils. At the same time, with so much of local government’s tasks outsourced to privately owned third parties, can all their actions be held to account through FOI?

There are other aspects of FOI and local government that, currently, there are no answers for:

  • Why have the number of requests to local government risen by 96% since the Act came into force (especially as central government has not experienced a similar phenomenon)?
  • Who are the requesters, and why to do they request? What do requests achieve for them?
  • What role does the media play? How does FOI influence what media attention councils receive?
  • Have local councils experienced the ‘chilling effect’, as officials fear the consequences of disclosure and simply stop taking accurate records?

What we know

Constitution Unit surveys of local government officials over the last four years have tracked the kinds of information people are requesting from councils, how often councils withhold information and how officials feel about the impact of FOI on their organisation.

Officials have articulated the benefits of FOI to their councils: that it meant councils had improved their records management, or that it helped information sharing between departments, or it had made management more aware of the consequences of their decisions.

But they have also shown how FOI has caused them and their council problems. Many object to the use that businesses make of the Act, obtaining information that is then sold on. The media’s agenda – which is often in conflict with FOI’s objectives – means that it can be stories of mismanagement or waste that result from FOI requests. Surely no council is seeking this kind of publicity.

Lack of resourcing has been a common problem cited by officials, as the number of requests to local government increases year-on-year, with no corresponding rise in the amount resources devoted to dealing with them. Recently several councils have publicly expressed their frustration with supposed frivolous and vexatious requests in a stressful economic climate. It is estimated that FOI costs local government £34 million per annum.

What is still unknown

While some research has been done about how officials feel about FOI, we are still asking what does it really mean for citizens to have the right to ask their local council for information, or for councils to have an obligation to publish information?

The new coalition government is promising to force the publication of local government spending and salaries, in the hope of  restoring trust in government and promoting public participation. The prevailing view on trust and public confidence in elected officials is that the ‘closer’ the proximity to the voter, the easier it is to appear trustworthy. It is also assumed that it is easier for people to participate politically on a smaller scale. Will transparency be ‘helped along’ by these conditions that are part of the local government context? Has FOI opened local government up for the better?

Ben Worthy is a Research Associate in the Constitution Unit at University College London. He can be contacted on 020 7679 4974

For more information on the project, click here.

For the results of the latest survey of local government officials, click here.