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Freedom of Information

A little festive cheer from Nottingham

Dec 16th, 2011
by Anna Bailey.
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Christmas greetings from the Midlands, where long-suffering Nottingham taxpayers have been brought a little bit of festive cheer. Nottingham City Council has opted for more frugal celebrations after last year’s splurge on a £5,000 Christmas tree for its headquarters building.

According to the Nottingham Post the 2010 tree was rented for just 35 days, meaning it cost nearly £143 per day. Now where would Nottingham City Council, which likes to tell us it is too cash-strapped to publish its spending over £500 like every other council in the country, get that kind of money to burn?

At the time, council leader Jon Collins rushed to tell his Twitter followers that the tree was sponsored and so did not cost Nottingham taxpayers a penny. But a recent Freedom of Information request revealed that only £550 of sponsorship was received. The council’s FOI response claimed that this was used to buy presents for needy children, but the council later told the Nottingham Post that this was incorrect and the £550 was actually set against the cost of the tree (meaning that Nottingham taxpayers footed the bill for the remaining £4,450).

Confused? Probably not as confused as NCC’s Information Governance staff at the misinformation apparently fed to them by their council colleagues. If the council’s long-winded sign-off procedure for FOIs – inadvertently revealed by a council worker earlier this year to cause delays to issuing responses – isn’t picking up fundamental errors like this, what is it doing?

Nevertheless, thank goodness for Freedom of Information or cases like this might never be exposed in the first place. Not to mention that the leader of Nottingham City Council might never find out what his council is actually spending. Except Mr Collins doesn’t like FOI much. A few months ago he tweeted that FOIs cost the council £500,000 per year, and that ‘you could save a lot of services with that’.

Is that figure any more accurate than his Christmas tree tweet? Not if the council’s accounts are anything to go by. In 2010/11 the council’s Information Governance department spent £236,000, actually coming in under budget by nearly £67,000. And remember that FOI is only one of Information Governance’s responsibilities, along with data protection, access to personal data and licences for public sector information. Of course, this figure does not include the cost to other departments of gathering data for FOI requests. But it is hard to believe that that cost amounts to more than the entire budget of the Information Governance department.

After all the negative publicity surrounding the infamous giant tree in the local press, Nottingham City Council has decided to do without a similar tree this year. A small victory for Nottingham taxpayers brought about by a simple FOI request. Now how much more money could be saved if the council actually answered all the FOI requests it receives, rather than using every means possible to block and delay them?

Who watches the watchmen? Government credit card agency in its own waste scandal

Dec 5th, 2011
by Tom Welsh.
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Who watches the watchmen? Taxpayers will be demanding answers after it was revealed that the very agency charged with delivering ‘significant sustainable cost reductions’ in public sector procurement has splurged £1.7million of taxpayers’ money in nightclubs, five star hotels and on trips to New York.

The Government Procurement Service (GPS) manages a vast scheme of government procurement cards (GPCs), some 133,000 of which have been issued since 1997. Civil servants in departments, agencies and quangos can use these cards to make purchases on behalf of government. In theory, it is a ‘fast and efficient way of purchasing different types of goods and services’, speeding up transactions and ensuring prompt payment to the businesses that supply these services.  Spending on credit cards has got way out of hand.  We need more transparency and accountability and fewer civil servants running up extravagant bills and leaving them to taxpayers. Civil servants have legitimate expenses, but there is no excuse for some of the lavish spending that has been uncovered .

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has attacked wasteful GPC spending many times before:

  • In November this year we revealed the £185,000 credit-card spend at the Sustainable Development Commission between April 2009 and March 2011 – including £10,000 on air travel, and £14,000 in 4-star hotels.
  • In August, we exposed the £20,000 put on government credit cards by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in payments to political parties.
  • In June, we condemned the £25m spent by 18 Whitehall departments, including £60,000 dining at exclusive restaurants.

Today’s news is a stark reminder of how deeply a culture of profligacy can take root. Taxpayers must have trust that there are controls in place to prevent unauthorised and wasteful spending. So when those who should be strict financial guardians indulge their personal fantasies at Newz nightclub in Liverpool (popular with Cheryl Cole) or spend £6,000 in New York hotels, it’s clear that the problem is systemic and won’t be solved by shuffling around personnel.

It’s good news that the Government has begun publishing all spending on GPCs over £500. But £500 is an arbitrary figure and taxpayers clearly can’t trust government watchdogs to be stringent and critical on sums beneath this level. Government should publish GPC and credit card statements in full (personal details redacted, of course) so taxpayers can judge for themselves what is necessary and what is wasteful.

Bath councillors exposed

Nov 23rd, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Finally, a response, on appeal, to my Freedom of Information request about Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES) councillors not paying their council tax. Shockingly, it has revealed that one Bath councillor has had to have legal action taken against him or her to recover the outstanding council tax. Who this is has not been disclosed.

Initially my FoI request was turned down by B&NES council, but I appealed and the Head of Audit, Risk and Information stated that the original refusal by the council ‘was applied incorrectly and the requested information should be provided to you.’ The information he passed on reveals that over the last two years a total of eight B&NES councillors have been sent reminder letters for late payment of their council tax—an amount totalling £3,429.55. Three of these councillors then had to be sent a second reminder letter—at taxpayers’ expense—for a total of £491. One of these then had to have legal action taken against them to recover the outstanding tax.

Bath TPA supporters protest outside B&NES Guildhall, with Tim Newark (centre) displaying his Freedom of Information request

We are all human and we all make mistakes, but councillors are elected by us to represent us and we are entitled to expect them to act with due responsibility when it comes to paying their council tax—the money that funds our local government. They should display leadership and lead by example—not delay or avoid paying their council tax. Can they not set up a direct debit payment?

Such information is only being revealed by FoI requests and yet elsewhere in the South-West there are signs that councils are trying to close down these avenues of legitimate enquiry. North Devon Council is introducing charges for material printed as part of FoI requests, as well as charging £25 per hour for public access to environmental information.

North Devon councillors say they are levying the charges to curb excessive requests made under the information laws, but their decision comes a month after the North Devon Journal used FoI requests to reveal that some of these councillors had made late payments of council tax. ‘They are obviously smarting from this exposure,’ says Bideford TPA supporter Graham Jones, ‘particularly as they were also claiming allowances at the same time.’

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Town Hall bosses’ spending on credit cards revealed

Oct 18th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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The latest in a series of investigations by the Daily Telegraph into public bodies’ use of credit cards exposes the bills run up by local authority chief executives across the UK. Earlier this year we led the campaign to uncover huge amounts being spent by Whitehall civil servants racking up million pound credit card bills, and have exposed similar waste at many of Britain’s biggest quangos.

The findings show that town hall bosses spent £2.6million on luxury perks using corporate credit cards, including concerts, sport events, dining at Michelin-starred restaurants, tailored clothing and fine whiskies. Council chief executives themselves have expenses tens of thousands of pounds, despite many enjoying six-figure salaries, and at a time when councils need to make all of the savings they can.

Some of the biggest expenses claims were from Colin Carmichael, chief executive of Canterbury Council (salary £135,000), who claimed expenses totalling £18,181; Tim Shields, the chief executive of Hackney council (£203,376), claimed £34,186; Andrew Taylor, chief executive of Lincoln City Council (£149,445), claimed £11,403; and John Foster, chief executive of Islington Council (£210,000), claimed £14,815.

Here are just a few of their claims:

  •  The chief executive of Hackney council spent £6,000 on flights to the 2008 Beijing Olympics for “training” to which he flew business class.
  • Colin Hilton, former chief executive at Liverpool City council, spent £1,152 taking colleagues to a sold out Coldplay concert.
  • Andrew Taylor, chief executive of Lincoln City Council charged more than £4,000 to his card for flights to Beijing, Frankfurt and Krakow for his assistant, the mayor and his wife. Other items he charged for included £2.17 mini-bar bill and a cash withdrawal of £362.77 which was classified as “unidentified expenditure” when asked by the Telegraph.

Of course many chief executives use corporate credit cards to expense small work-related items, and this is often the most cost effective means of doing so. But evidence suggests that, in practice, taxpayers are footing the bill for much more.

Some of the other favourite destinations include the luxury Dorchester Hotel in London; the Hotel Gray D’Albion in Cannes; the Hard Day’s Night, a Beatles themed hotel in Liverpool; trips to the world renowned Belfry Golf Course; a five star spa in Cardiff Bay; and Lushy Beg, a private 75-acre island.

Many of the items claimed for have little relevance and questionable benefit to the residents council bosses work for. Council chief executives already receive more than substantial salaries that, if they feel they need to stay in luxury hotels, mean they could easily pay for it themselves. This sentiment was echoed by an unidentified chief executive of a UK local authority who said:

“If I spend any money for work I just get it reimbursed but champagne lunches and first class travel is shocking. Chief executives incur costs in their jobs but we are paid well and you should not exploit that. No-one expects a chief executive to stay in a fleapit, but there is a big difference between the Dorchester and a fleapit.”

Unsurprisingly, the LGA has leapt to councils’ defence. They claim:

“It is part and parcel of the job that they have to travel to meet top people from the public and private sectors, and this can involve stays in hotels and the proportionate use of hospitality.”

But they completely miss the point. No-one is claiming council chief executives won’t incur reasonable expenses while carrying out their day jobs, but it is unacceptable for taxpayers to pick up the bill for visits to the Dorchester and luxury restaurants that many can only dream of. Such a staunch defence of irresponsible spending suggests the LGA doesn’t care about the interests of taxpayers or residents. If councils were transparent, residents could decide whether they agree with this sort of spending. The LGA claim that the spending is “properly audited and transparent”, but if it weren’t for newspapers like the Telegraph and bodies like ourselves, such waste would go unnoticed.

While they are one of the more cost-effective means of paying for items, corporate credit cards are inadequately monitored. Far too many dubious claims slip through the net and must be brought under control. If chief executives had to pay for the items up-front and then wait before being reimbursed, the number of lavish claims would almost certainly fall considerably.

Procurement cards were supposed to improve this more inefficient system of claiming expenses, but our research, along with the Telegraph’s inquiry, shows that this system needs to be tightened up to stop taxpayers picking up the bill for unnecessary luxuries.

More privileges for prisoners

Oct 17th, 2011
by Darren Rutland.
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The Ministry of Justice has spent £5.4 million to ensure prisoners can watch digital television on 42 inch plasma screens. A Freedom of Information request has revealed the extent of just some of the excesses of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s department.

The news has already been criticised by Mark Freeman, Deputy General Secretary of the Prison Officers Association. He said it was “shameful so much money has been wasted on upgrading the television system in prisons”. The priorities of the Ministry of Justice must be questioned. Taxpayers would rather see their cash funding prison places, especially with prison numbers at a record high in England and Wales.

Recently it was revealed that inmates in Wales are to claim that access to Sky Sports 2 and 3 is a human right – a claim that was rebutted by our Campaign Director Emma Boon on BBC Radio Humberside last month. The Ministry of Justice’s budget is coming under greater scrutiny, so excessive spending on entertainment for inmates cannot continue.

Inmates are in prisons because they have committed crimes. Prisons are there to punish criminals, not entertain them. It can’t be right to give prisoners a whole range of channels to watch on a large plasma screen, especially when taxpayers across the country cannot afford such luxuries themselves. While prison must help rehabilitate offenders, it should not be a place to enjoy things that law-abiding people can’t always afford. Digital television on big screens isn’t likely to cut reoffending rates, but it will leave taxpayers with a large, unwelcome bill.

Council spends £330,000 on severance packages, only to rehire the employees a month later

Oct 13th, 2011
by Liz Holliday.
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A Freedom of Information request has revealed that Stoke-on-Trent City Council made 25 members of its staff redundant and offered them a total of £330,000 in severance pay, only to then rehire the workers into different positions approximately a month later.

At a time when most councils are finding savings and making redundancies where they can, it is absurd that a single council could dish out so much of taxpayers’ money only to reassign the workers new roles a short time later.

The revelation is rightfully being blasted as “scandalously wasting vital taxpayers’ cash”. A justifiable criticism, as £330,000 could have been saved by simply moving the redundant employees to different departments straight away instead of creating cost and admin work around making them redundant and paying huge amounts for a month of missed work. Considering a cuts package of £36 million will be required from the authority that, according to Councillor Dave Conway, is “down to its bare knuckles already”, this looks like a massive misuse of funds.

Taxpayers will wonder why HR were unaware there were other roles that departing staff could fill that were about to open up at the council. Sadly, redundancies are likely to be the way to achieve at least part of the savings that Stoke-on-Trent has to make, but the redistribution of the workers within the council should have been the first and most obvious step before redundancies were considered. By skipping it, the workers were given large amounts of taxpayers’ money – effectively giving them a holiday at the taxpayers’ expense.

£330,000 isn’t about to make a significant dent in the national debt, but one wonders where the council’s priorities lie when it is looking at cuts to funding in educational support for deaf children. Helping deaf children seems far more admirable than offering generous redundancy packages to someone who can be hired back a month later.

We’re not talking about a year-long hiatus either. One employee was reemployed at the council just 27 days after his redundancy, and two more waited only 32 days, according to the Staffordshire Sentinel. Further, the notion that these public servants accepted the payments as they walked out the front door only to later come back in through the back door with a new title is offensive and a blatant waste of taxpayers’ funds.

New LGA Chief hired on package worth nearly £200,000

Sep 20th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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The new head of the Local Government Association (LGA) has been hired on a package worth nearly £200,000 a year. Carolyn Downs will replace outgoing interim Chief Executive John Ransford and enjoy a salary of £169,000 plus a generous pension amounting to almost £27,000 per year.

Our Campaign Director, Emma Boon offered her reaction to the news:

“The LGA lobbies government to further its own political interests and

 agitates for higher pay for senior council staff, so it’s unsurprising to see them giving their own chief executive such a great deal. This salary is an insult to ordinary families and shows how out of touch the LGA is with taxpayers who fund it and with public sector workers who are subject to a two-year pay freeze.”

Eric Pickles has urged pay restraint across all councils, however the size of this package shows the LGA think such control does not apply to them. This local government lobbying organisation does not act in taxpayers’ interests. Councils spend millions of pounds in total each year in subscriptions to the LGA for supposed benefits many rarely use. Earlier this year Windsor and Maidenhead council concluded they could put their £40,000 annual subscription to better use. As for the services they receive in return, they decided that it would be cheaper for them to source them on an ad hoc basis.

They are not the only ones though, Barking & Dagenham and Greenwich in London, Test Valley, South Cambridgeshire and Rutland councils have all served notice to leave. This is in addition to Rochford, Doncaster, Slough, Barnet, Kingston upon Thames and Sutton councils, who have all served out their notice.

While the eye-watering pay packet is hardly the act of an organisation in touch with ordinary taxpayers, the LGA can at least be commended for displaying the remuneration package of their incoming Chief Executive on the front page of their website. Despite being an organisation funded by taxpayers and entirely concerned with local government, it does not fall under the Freedom of Information Act.

Innovative councils do not need spoon-fed assistance from the LGA and are beginning to leave. The size of the pay packet for its new chief should provides another reason for councils across the country to reconsider their membership of this costly organisation.

Public bodies need to take Freedom of Information more seriously

Sep 16th, 2011
by Darren Rutland.
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Freedom of Information (FOI) laws help expose wasteful spending. They have also helped to put pressure on public bodies to publish spending data. Organisations subject to the Act are obliged to respond to requests within 20 working days of receiving them.

However, such laws continue to be ignored by a number of bodies, and they sometimes deliver incorrect or late information.

Most FOI officials are helpful, and do their best to send the correct information out on time. But our friends at Big Brother Watch wrote about some frustrations they encountered earlier this year, citing the example of Northamptonshire Police.

In late 2010, the Information Commissioner’s Officer named and shamed more than 30 public bodies, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence, for their continuing lack of adherence to FOI rules.

I recently submitted an FOI request about a local GP surgery in Crawley which is due to close over the next few weeks. I wrote to the local Primary Care Trust, as well as the surgery itself. It was public knowledge that the surgery had building work done on it over the last few years, so I asked the PCT how much money they had given the surgery for this – making it crystal clear the building I was referring to.

At the same time, I asked the surgery how much money they had spent refurbishing their building. The request was submitted on 1st August, but to date, I have not received a response. What was more interesting was the reply from the PCT. They said that they over the last three years, they had given almost £55,000 to the surgery for building work, which is now due to shut.

However, when this figure was questioned by a local newspaper, it turns out that the PCT had actually given the money to a nearby surgery operated by the same group. With seemingly little contrition, they issued a statement seeking to clarify the matter. But such errors can cause confusion and misinform debate.

It is disappointing that many organisations funded by taxpayers still do not take their Freedom of Information responsibilities and obligations as seriously as they should do. Mistakes happen, and it’s good that they explained their error, but in the interests of the transparency which public bodies speak of, this situation must improve.

FOI reveals Department for Work and Pensions still expanding its bureaucrat headcount

Sep 2nd, 2011
by Rory Meakin.
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Far from the rhetoric of “savage cuts” hyperbole being bandied about by commentators and politicians, in the real world staff numbers in the Department for Work and Pensions rocketed last year.

A Freedom of Information request by the TaxPayers’ Alliance has revealed that staff numbers rose from 96,066 in 2009-10 to 108,856 last year. The figures speak for themselves, and the contrast with the hot air about cuts could scarcely be more stark: 12,790 more staff, a 13.3 per cent increase in the headcount. George Osborne should mull over these figures the next time he wonders why the UK’s growth rate is so disappointing and then read the point Daniel Hannan MEP made yesterday in his Telegraph blog.

Here’s the thing: the relative prosperity of the South East comes, not despite the fact that it is getting less public subsidy than the other regions, but because of it. Government subventions can become like narcotics, debilitating their recipients, encouraging them to arrange their affairs around the next fix. In parts of the country where the state controls most of the economy, school leavers who might otherwise have become entrepreneurs instead join the public sector. A vicious circle is established.

The Government should start to cut overall spending now. Britain’s faltering economy needs less regulation and lower taxes. But with the deficit at such an unsustainable level, the Chancellor has no room to cut taxes without matching spending cuts. It’s time for the Government to find its reverse gear and bring back down swelling departmental staff numbers.

Cornwall: Have your councillors been paying their taxes?

Aug 18th, 2011
by Robert Oxley.
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Councillors in Cornwall haven’t been paying their council tax. Let me say that again: the people who set the rates of council taxation, who stand on a manifesto of delivering services for residents and who are paid generous allowances from taxpayers’ money, have been failing to pay their council tax.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that 17 councillors in Cornwall – that’s one in seven of the men and women charged with setting council tax rates – had to be sent payment reminders. It appears only 3 took heed of this, as 14 required a second reminder letter. Councils frequently encourage residents to set up direct debits to avoid this kind of problem, maybe the councillors in questions should practice a bit of what they preach?

Worst of all, one case led to court action, resulting in a farcical situation where Cornwall council instigated court proceedings against its own councillor while they continued to collect their allowances and perks. Maybe they should have used those allowances to pay up?

At first, the identity of the worst offenders was unknown, but two have now been exposed. Councillor Andrew Wallis, representing Porthleven and Helston South, had a court action taken against him for getting into arrears.

On his website, Cllr Wallis explained what happened. “Two years ago I failed to pay my council tax on time which led to court action,” he confessed. “Like many people in Cornwall I was faced with the problem of juggling mounting bills with a limited income and at that time I chose to pay for essentials such as rent, electricity and food rather than pay my council tax bill.” Wouldn’t we all rather do that! “Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he continued, “but I made that choice of not paying and I will have to live with it.”

Cornwall Council has refused to name any further councillors and the details of their arrears on the grounds that it would breach data privacy laws. This is wrong; standing in a democratic election means a commitment to being held to account for your actions while in public office. Failure to pay your council tax in a timely fashion costs the council money in administration, and ending up in court means further expense. The councillors’ negligence in paying their bills on time will almost certainly have cost local taxpayers money.

Councillors are responsible for spending local taxpayers’ cash, setting the rate of council tax and even deciding policy over tax write-offs. A councillor not paying their council tax is surely compromised when discussing these issues. A councillor taken to court by their own council cannot be a credible representative of the community they wish to represent.

Claims from civil servants they need a ‘safe space’ to think freely are undermined by today’s FT front page

Jul 28th, 2011
by Matthew Sinclair.
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I’m currently appealing to the Information Tribunal against the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s refusal to answer a Freedom of Information (FOI) request I submitted about the economic and financial cost of the higher emissions target they want. TPA research suggests that could be extremely expensive. But the Government are refusing to let us know the cost estimate they have been basing their position on.

One of the grounds for that refusal relies on an exception in FOI law for internal communications which is intended to avoid, in the words of the Information Tribunal, the “threat of lurid headlines depicting that which has merely been broached as agreed policy”. The idea is to ensure that people can still freely discuss ideas within a ‘safe space’ in government. My request doesn’t do anything to seriously threaten that safe space, but a civil service leak today completely undermined it. Another example of how something can be a matter of principle and ensuring good government for officials when it suits them, and discarded just as quickly when it doesn’t.

Climate change targets are a big deal. The Government put the cost of the Climate Change Act 2008, which enshrines a target for an 80 per cent cut by 2050 in law, at £324 to £404 billion. It is vital that we are able to scrutinise the likely costs of new targets before the Government signs up to them at an international conference. I requested what they thought the cost would be after the conference in Copenhagen where the pledge was made. The only reason we didn’t sign up to such a target is that the Chinese and Indian negotiators understandably wouldn’t accept binding limits on their own emissions. The policy therefore clearly hadn’t merely been broached and there is no reason they shouldn’t release an estimate of the likely cost of a target they are still pushing for at an EU level.  It is vital we know the expected cost of these policies so that there can be proper democratic scrutiny of the Government’s estimates and decisions.

That makes it particularly annoying to see the front page of the Financial Times today with a very lurid headline: “Abolish jobcentres, scrap maternity leave, suspect consumer rights – Cameron’s strategy chief peddles a radical agenda”. The journalists have done their job and the story does explain that these were just ideas from Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s Strategy Director, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the safe space exception is supposed to protect. And who has breached it?

Over the past few months, government officials have told the Financial Times of some of Mr Hilton’s quirkiest ideas, which failed to make the government’s red tape review, being announced today.

Steve Hilton’s ideas may be good, bad or just impractical. He is certainly right that maternity pay clearly does make it harder for small firms in particular to recruit young women. The solution might be paying for it in another way so that it is less of a burden on a specific employer. But all that is neither here nor there for the time being. Clearly the civil servants are finding looking into these ideas a hassle, or just haven’t taken to Steve Hilton as a colleague. So they have taken ideas which the Government isn’t intending to pursue and leaked them to journalists.

When officials want to avoid scrutiny over the costs of climate targets, the safe space is sacred, but when someone actually uses that space for its intended purpose, they will happily violate it themselves. Apparently some in Whitehall are still attached to Sir Humphrey’s old tricks.

Kirklees Council leader accused of meddling with information

Jul 26th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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After I wrote yesterday about some councils not complying with Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation, a supporter left a comment alerting us to a story in Kirklees.

It was reported in March in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner that the leader of Kirklees Council, Cllr Mehboob Khan, had been meddling in public information. Cllr Khan instructed staff to let him see FOI responses going to members of the public so he could amend them if necessary, and the newspaper obtained e-mails proving this. Cllr Khan says freedom of information is important and he only wanted to ensure the correct responses were going out, although the opportunity for him to make politically motivated amendments is there, something he vigorously denies. 

Leader of Kirklees Council, Clr Mehboob Khan

To give you an example, one of the newspaper’s reporters, Katie Grant, issued an FOI asking how much council tax is currently owed by people living in Kirklees – including all overdue payments. The FOI officer prepared a thorough report going back to 1993, which was then sent to Cllr Khan. He refused to let it go out, and instead told officers to prepare a report covering 2010/11 – a financial year which at the time had not finished.

When asked by Katie Grant why he had interfered in such a way, he responded by saying:

“This area falls into the portfolio shared by myself and Clr Shabir Pandor and we would want to see this kind of information as a matter of course. In terms of this particular response, after discussing with colleagues, I felt that the figures were less clear when they covered several years all the way back to 1993 and masked the real facts which was about how much as a council we had outstanding and how much we had collected in council tax in 2009/10. I think the picture given in the response was a clear one about the current situation.”

If there are still outstanding council tax payments owed covering previous years, it reflects badly on the council. I don’t think the initial report prepared was ‘less clear’. Nor do I think it ‘masked the real facts’. It strikes me that Cllr Khan was using his position to act as a spin doctor, ensuring the council was painted in the best possible light.

Bringing this story up-to-date, is has now been reported Cllr Khan is being investigated for misconduct, and rightly so, although the process will be conducted behind closed doors! I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on you. We have a council leader who has interfered in the FOI process being investigated behind closed doors, and the council will not even supply any information about it, including the date of the hearing. All the council will say is, “Due process is now being followed and we will not comment further until completion.”

When the newspaper informed the council they would be running a story about this non-transparent process, the Head of Legal Services said they would explain why. They then promptly pulled out of the interview, without giving an explanation.  I have spoken to the newspaper this morning, and the council’s position has not changed.

The way some councils abuse the FOI process is nothing short of criminal. They don’t respond in time, or give wholly inadequate responses. They manipulate data to suit their own ends, and try to limit our right to freedom of information. Barely a day goes by without a supporter or a journalist contacting me about problems they are encountering or a story they want giving a wider airing.

Taxpayers in Kirklees do not have faith in a process that hides itself away. By refusing to give the names of those investigating Cllr Khan’s alleged misconduct, and by also refusing to give a date when the hearing will take place, it further undermines the trust it has with the people it’s supposed to serve.

Needless bureaucracy and how FOI compliance should be much cheaper

Jul 26th, 2011
by Rory Meakin.
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Anna Bailey recently chronicled the difficulties faced by people trying to exercise their legal right to get information from Nottingham City Council. The point of the Freedom of Information Act was to open up public information to greater scrutiny and make government more transparent. It was intended that public bodies would begin to routinely publish most information and that requests would only need to be made for the most obscure items that no one would be likely to request anyway. Sadly, many organisations have treated the Act as simply another layer of bureaucracy requiring more staff and, naturally, more funding.

No shortage of bureaucracy in the NHS

Despite recent advances in opening up official information to public scrutiny, those of us who wish to get hold of information often have to rely on the Freedom of Information Act in order to do our bit in holding those who spend taxpayers’ money to account. Sadly, instead of embracing the transparency agenda, many authorities choose instead to waste staff time and taxpayers’ money in attempts to hide what they are doing in our names and with our money.

I’ve copied below the transcript of an email exchange I recently enjoyed with an official in the NHS and someone with a fancier job title who I presume was her manager.

——————————————————————————————-
Hi Rory

Please find attached the information as per your FOI request as discussed.
Assistant Bureaucrat
——————————————————————————————-
Hello Assistant Bureaucrat,

Thank you for your email. The attachment you sent appears to be a scanned in PDF of a printed out spreadsheet. Would it be possible to kindly send the spreadsheet itself?

Kind regards,
Rory Meakin
——————————————————————————————-
Hi Rory

Just to confirm that we do not normally send out editable documents when replying to FOI requests.

Many thanks
Senior Bureaucrat
——————————————————————————————-
Hello Senior Bureaucrat,

I’d like to confirm that I wanted to know if you would provide the document I requested rather than what you normally do.

As you have taken the time to convert the information from a versatile, easy-to-use document into a unflexible, difficult-to-use alternative, you will appreciate this hampers our ability to scrutinise the information and therefore acts as a barrier to accountability, transparency and openness, for what seems to be no better reason than it is existing practice to do so.

Could you kindly reconsider my request?

Many thanks,
Rory
——————————————————————————————-
Hi Rory

Spreadsheet attached as requested.

Regards,
Assistant Bureaucrat

Accessing information

Jul 25th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Last week, Anna Bailey wrote about Nottingham City Council’s cavalier attitude to transparency. Unfortunately, this council is not alone. One of our supporters from Hertfordshire has been experiencing difficulties with his local council, and the secretary from our West Yorkshire Branch, Nigel Shaw, and I have been in a battle with Bradford Council.

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 clearly states public authorities must reply promptly, and in any event not later than the twentieth working day following the date of receipt. In all fairness, most of them do, and give you full answers to your questions. The councils I am concerned about are the exceptions to the rule, but unfortunately these exceptions seem to be growing and perversely are trying to use the Act to prevent you from accessing information.

For example, Nottingham City Council is trying to prevent individuals from issuing more than one FOI request every 60 days, saying such requests may be regarded as vexatious. This is nonsense, not least because a vexatious request is one intended to disrupt an authority, irrespective of when the applicant last submitted a request. Nottingham might be confusing ‘repeated’ requests and ‘aggregating’ requests for the purposes of the 18 hour limit.

In the case of Nottingham, if they published spending above £500 online, they wouldn’t receive as many FOIs. There are also those who are more interested in council spending than others. Eric Pickles wants armchair auditors around the country to examine their council’s accounts. If they cannot send more than one FOI every 60 days, this seriously hampers their efforts.

East Herts Council has failed to respond to 165 FOIs in the last six years within the statutory 20 working days. In percentage terms, the council has gradually got worse year-on-year.

On a recent FOI sent to Bradford Council, I received a completely unsatisfactory response, and asked for the decision to be reviewed. The council promised a response within 20 working days. This is now over a week late. Not only has Bradford Council refused to give me information other councils have freely given, it also can’t be bothered to review its decision and get back to me in the time scale the law stipulates.

Councils who keep on thwarting the public’s right to access information need naming and shaming. They may not have anything to hide (although I doubt it) but by acting in the way they do, they give the impression they have something to hide.

Last week the Department for Communities and Local Government launched a new website. It is not widely known that councils must make their accounts available to the public for twenty days a year, and if you enter your postcode, or address, or the name of your council into the search engine, you can find out when your council’s accounts from the last financial year are open for public scrutiny. Please remember you will be able to check all spending, not just spending above £500. This is your once in a year right, so please use it, and if you find anything interesting, make a note of it, and get in touch.

If you are also experiencing difficulties accessing information through the Freedom of Information Act, please let us know. We need more transparency, not less of it. Exposing waste and getting better value for money for taxpayers is something councils should welcome, not discourage.

Nottingham City Council fails again on transparency

Jul 21st, 2011
by Anna Bailey.
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Transparency watchers are all too well aware that Nottingham City Council is the only local authority in England refusing to publish all spending over £500. What is less well known is the accountability-dodging council’s repeated flouting of Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), and the role the council’s leadership plays in blocking FOI responses.

Nottingham City fails to answer an astonishing 40 percent of FOI requests within the statutory deadline of 20 working days. These figures were revealed by an FOI request which, ironically enough, took the council 36 working days to respond to, and only then when the requester had asked for the case to go to internal review.

Of the 623 cases that were responded to late, a ‘clerical error’ was listed as a factor in eighteen of them. What then of the other 605 cases? A brief glance over Nottingham City’s FOI responses on the What do they know? website reveals the following introductory passage appearing with alarming regularity:

‘Initially, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the delay in responding to your request. This is due to us encountering problems obtaining the information from the relevant department(s).’

One can sense the frustration among NCC’s FOI officers in this little paragraph. Trying to extract information from their City Hall colleagues is clearly like pulling teeth; the fact that the council is legally obliged to provide requested information does not seem to count for much. Publically placing blame on another department in your organisation is generally considered a cardinal sin in the public sector. If Nottingham City’s information officers are forced to publically reveal the difficulties they have in getting other departments in the council to hand over information, you can be sure the problem is endemic.

NCC make no secret of their disdain for FoI legislation

In fact, evidence is beginning to grow that the council’s leadership is blocking the work of its own information officers. It has emerged that in December last year council leader Jon Collins refused to let Information Governance staff carry out an automated search of his e-mail account to answer an FOI request from a Liberal Democrat councillor.  The council’s head of communications Stephen Barker also blocked the publication of council publicity plans alleged to show publicly-funded publicity for the council and the Labour party in the run-up to the 2007 elections. The spin chief denied the council held such plans, then handed them over once the legal deadline to respond to the FOI had passed. An angry information officer emailed the council’s head of legal services, pointing out that the council was in danger of committing a criminal offence:

‘I found the actions of communications colleagues particularly unhelpful on this matter, with Stephen’s actions potentially placing him as the individual, or the council, at risk of committing a criminal offence by asserting information isn’t held and then subsequently disclosing it.’

Collins himself has made no secret of his disdain for FOI, recently tweeting, ‘£500,000 a year on FOIs – could save a lot of services with that.’ It would be interesting to know how much of this supposed cost is self-inflicted by the council’s persistent attempts to block the FOI process. The time wasted by information officers having to repeatedly chase up officials who do not provide information; the large number of cases that go to internal review and the Information Commissioner because the council has refused to answer them; lawyers’ time spent concocting dubious uses of exemptions to avoid releasing information… these must be significant costs.

One instance of the latter tactic is the council’s attempt to silence a local blogger, Andy Platt, who uses FOI to scrutinise the council’s leadership and spending. When Platt asked for copies of internal reports on the housing allocations scandal in the council (which Notts Police controversially agreed to let the council investigate for itself), the council invoked Section 14 of the Act, accusing Platt of making ‘vexatious’ requests. The basis for the ‘vexatious’ claim was that Platt had made twenty FOI requests in a year (which it classed as ‘obsessive’, despite the fact that they were on unrelated subjects), and that he often publishes findings from his requests on his satirical blog mocking NCC’s leadership (by some mysterious tenuous link his requests are thereby said to be ‘harassing the Authority and distressing its  colleagues’).

This contradicts FOI guidance, which clearly states that it must be the requests themselves which are vexatious, not the requester and not any use to which the information may be put. Unfortunately for the council, no sooner had it brushed off Platt than another – presumably less vexatious – requester asked for copies of the same internal reports. The council reverted to its default tactic for dealing with FOIs. It simply ignored the request.

Nottingham City’s repeated flouting of FOI legislation has caught the attention of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which placed the council under a period of special monitoring that came to an end on 30 June (at least it had company – 11 other councils were also on the monitoring list). The council, however, is as contemptuous of the ICO as it is of the general public. On numerous occasions the ICO has ordered NCC to release requested information, and on numerous occasions NCC has simply ignored those orders. Given the repeated and systemic violations of FOI legislation at Nottingham City Council, it will be interesting to find out just how sharp the ICO’s teeth really are and what action it will take against the council. We will certainly keep you posted.

Public sector organisations should publish lists of websites visited by staff on taxpayers’ time

Jul 18th, 2011
by John O'Connell.
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Yesterday, the Sunday Express reported on our Freedom of Information request about Departmental internet usage. We asked each Government Department to send us a list of websites their staff had visited, in order of frequency, and the amount of time spent on these sites. We also asked for details of disciplinary procedures linked to internet usage. The only Department that provided the information was the Department for Work and Pensions. They provided a Monthly list of the top 100 websites visited, in order of frequency. It didn’t quite fulfil our response, but they at least were able to easily obtain this information from their internet provider.

No other department could answer the main part of this request – what websites, in order of frequency visited, have staff been logging on to. That’s pretty damning. It should be relatively straightforward to hold this information centrally, or do as DWP did and ask their internet provider for a list.

As outlined in the Sunday Express report, DWP staff spent a lot of time on shopping websites. There were also lots of visits to nationalrail.co.uk and numerous holiday websites. Perhaps the civil servants were more keen on getting away then getting on with work.

Staff time is the biggest item of expenditure for most public sector organisations, so it’s crucial that time at work is spent productively to give taxpayers value for money.

We feel that each Department – and eventually all public sector bodies – should publish this kind of information as a matter of course. It’s simply not good enough that no other Department aside from DWP could get this information. How do they know whether their staff are focussed on the job?

Have a look through DWP’s response below and see what websites staff are visiting on taxpayers’ time.

Click here to download

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