Information Commissioner accuses police force of “lack of seriousness about their obligations” after issuing FOI enforcement notice

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued an enforcement notice to Surrey Police after concluding that the force's failure "to meet even the basic requirements of the Freedom of Information Act is entirely unacceptable".

The information watchdog issued its notice over a backlog in responses to freedom of information requests, with the oldest dating back two years.

As part of the FOIA, public authorities, including police forces, are required to respond to FOI requests within 20 working days.

Statistics provided to the ICO showed that the police force has a significant backlog of overdue requests, including 192 over a month old, 141 over three months old and 133 between 6 months and over a year old.

An updated action plan that the police force submitted to the ICO highlighted staffing changes that required training and issues with pending recruitment.

The ICO also found that the police force had a compliance rate of 54% in the first quarter of 2024/25.

In the enforcement notice, the commissioner said it accepted that the police force had "limited resources processing requests under FOIA".

It added: "This is an issue across the public sector, but is particularly acute amongst police forces as new recruits must also gain a security clearance – elongating the recruitment process.

"That being said, responding to requests for information is a statutory duty."

The enforcement notice also acknowledged that the police force had been "proactively taking steps to improve".

Under the notice, the police force must now devise and publish a more detailed action plan, which formalises measures to mitigate delays and address the backlog of unanswered requests.

The action plan should be supported by a 'lessons learned' exercise, which examines the root cause of delays in the requests over the most recent four quarters, from allocation through to clearance at different stages, with mitigations for any recurring problems addressed specifically in the plan.

Phillip Angell, the ICO's Head of Freedom of Information Casework, said: "Timely responses to Freedom of Information requests are essential for maintaining transparency and trust in public bodies like police forces. The failure of Surrey Police to meet even the basic requirements of the Freedom of Information Act is entirely unacceptable."

He added: "A worsening backlog, with requests as old as two years, shows a lack of seriousness about their obligations and a failure to prioritise transparency. This cannot continue: the public deserves better, and we have issued this enforcement notice to ensure that they get it."

A spokesperson for Surrey Police said: "Surrey Police Assistant Chief Constable, Peter Gardner, said: "We take our obligations in processing FOI requests seriously and fully accept that our service levels have fallen below expected standards.

“This year we had an exceptionally high turnover of staff within Information Management, resulting in a large proportion of the team being new in post. This has had an impact on our compliance rate - which we submit monthly to the ICO - and we are working to reduce this backlog as quickly as possible.

“We recognised that our service levels were not good enough and this was raised as a Force risk in May and an action plan was put in place to address this.

“Whilst recruitment and training of new staff has been underway, priority was given to Rights of Access and Court Order requests which have continued to be processed within the statutory timeframes.

“The public absolutely have a right to transparency of information under FOI and we are working hard to ensure our performance in this area returns to the standards they expect from us.”

Adam Carey