Information Commissioner issues enforcement notice against London borough over handling of FOI requests

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued an enforcement notice to Croydon Council for its poor handling of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

The move follows the watchdog directing Croydon last year (26 September 2022) to improve its compliance with FOIA.

The ICO said the council had promised improvements, and the Commissioner agreed to assess its progress after Easter 2023.

The watchdog said it had received an update from Croydon in June 2023. “This showed that the council’s progress had not been maintained, with its performance having actually declined. The Commissioner was deeply disappointed that having highlighted the high volume of decision notices issued to the council prior to issuing the Practice Recommendation, there appears to have been no discernible improvement from the council in this regard.”

Issued under s52 of FOIA, the enforcement notice requires Croydon to respond to all outstanding requests over 20 working days old, no later than six months from the date of the notice. It is also required to devise and publish an action plan to mitigate any future delays to FOI requests, within 35 days from the date of the notice.

The ICO noted that the consequence of failing to comply with an enforcement notice is that the Commissioner may make written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of FOIA. Upon consideration and inquiry by the High Court, the council may be dealt with as if it had committed a contempt of court.

Phillip Angell, Head of FOI Casework at the ICO, said: “People have a legal right to be able to ask their council about its actions and receive an answer promptly. What we have seen with Croydon Council is repeated, systemic failures at complying with transparency legislation. They are failing their residents, and we are now compelling them to do better.”

“Any public authority with poor Freedom of Information compliance levels may be subject to enforcement or practice recommendations as part of the ICO’s commitment to promoting openness, transparency and accountability.”

Croydon Council has been approached for comment.

In May this year the ICO reprimanded Plymouth City Council and Norfolk County Council for repeatedly failing to meet the legal deadline of one to three months for responding to a subject access request.

The watchdog also issued an enforcement notice the same month against Shropshire Council for poor handling of FOI requests. The ICO said the unitary authority had a backlog of information requests as a result of a "weak" FOI request handling system, in which individual service areas were responsible for recording and collating their own FOI requests.

In May 2023 the ICO issued an enforcement notice to the London Borough of Lewisham for failing to respond to hundreds of overdue requests made under FOIA. The notice came after information access requests by the ICO revealed that the local authority's poor performance was much worse than statistics previously published online.