“RESOURCE challenges” have seen the number of information requests responded to within the legal deadlines during 2023/2024 plunge at Powys council.
At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Liberal Democrat/Labour Cabinet senior councillors received a historic annual report on Information Governance covering 2023/2024.
The report showed that during that year the council received a total of 1271 information requests under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and Subject Access Requests (SAR) which is a 16 per cent increase on the 1093 received in 2022/2023.
FOI and EIR requests are supposed to receive an answer in 20 working days while for SAR the deadline is 30 days.
The performance during 2023/2024 saw was 73 per cent for FOI, 77 per cent for EIR and for SARs only 32 per cent were completed on time.
This is down on the 84 per cent for both FOI and EIRs and 57 per cent for SARs that the council achieved in 2022/2023.
The Information Commissioner expects the compliance rate to be at 90 per cent.
The report explains that the team have had staffing issues during the reporting period.
Cllr Raiff Devlin (Liberal Democrat) who was installed as the cabinet member customers, digital and customer services only last month said that an “Information Management, Assurance, and Governance plan” was in place to try and improve things.
As of the end of March last year only 35 per cent of this plan had been completed.
Cllr Devlin said: “Further work is required to meet the targets.
“Compliance rates have seen a decline, and this is as a result of resource challenges within the department.
“66 per cent of non-compliant responses were due to delays in the provision of information by the service enabling a response to be drafted or released.
“Complaints to the commissioner are mainly linked to late requests.”
“The commissioner made decisions on two complaints, over an exemption applied and information held.
“The commissioner found in favour of the council on both occasions.”
He said that the report provided “reasonable assurance” that the council’s arrangements and plan “adequately” reflect the principles of good information governance.
Cllr Devlin added: “It is important to note that this report is from 2023/2024 and many of the forward plan priorities have already been actioned by the department and that the 2024/2025 report is in development.”
Cabinet noted the report.
