Devon County Council refusal to comply with FOI and EIR requests
Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,
I recently wrote to the Information Commissioner and all the Board about Devon County Council's refusal to respond to requests. They are continuing to flout FOI and EIR legislation. What action, if any, has the Information Commissioner or any member of the ICO board taken regarding Devon County Council's refusal to comply with legislation.
All the questions asked are on serious financial or safety matters. We are told by the Government we are to be armchair auditors and that matters of local government should be honest and transparent. The legislation is in place to allow this; presumably rogue councils like Devon shouldn't be allowed to stonewall.
Someone should be doing something about this repeated abuse. Over to you....what action has been taken?
Yours faithfully,
Sheila Oliver
Link: [1]File-List
03 January 2012
Case Reference Number IRQ0429495
Dear Mrs Oliver
Request for Information
Thank you for your correspondence of 01 January 2012, entitled “Freedom
of Information request - Devon County Council refusal to comply with FOI
and EIR requests”.
Your request is being dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. We will respond by 31 January 2012 which is 20
working days from the day after we received your request.
Should you wish to respond to this email please be careful not to amend
the information in the ‘subject’ field. This will ensure that the
information is added directly to your case. However, please be aware that
this is an automated process; the information will not be read by a member
of our staff until your case is allocated to a request handler.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Walsh
Lead Internal Compliance Officer
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 Fax: 01625 524 510 Web: www.ico.gov.uk
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/radAF559_files/filelist.xml
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Cheshire, SK9 5AF
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25 January 2012
Case Reference Number IRQ0429495
Dear Mrs Oliver
I am writing further to your correspondence of 01 January 2012, in which
you submitted a request for information to the Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO).
As you know, we have dealt with your request in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
In your email, you made the following statement
“I recently wrote to the Information Commissioner and all the Board
about Devon County Council's refusal to respond to requests. They
are continuing to flout FOI and EIR legislation”.
In that context, you then asked
“what action, if any, has the Information Commissioner or any member of
the ICO board taken regarding Devon County Council’s (DCC) refusal to
comply with legislation”.
I thought it would be useful if I firstly clarified my understanding of
your request. As you are perhaps aware, the ICO also regulates the Data
Protection Act (DPA) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications
Regulations (PECR). However, given the context of your submission, I have
interpreted your request as specifically for action we have taken with
regards to the legislation you have quoted (FOI and EIR).
In addition, I note you have asked for information action taken by “the
Information Commissioner or any member of the ICO board”. As you will
appreciate, the Commissioner delegates much of the handling of specific
cases and initiatives to his staff. Whilst I have therefore included the
Commissioner/ICO Board members within the scope of your request, I have
also considered more broadly any action that may have been taken on behalf
of the Commissioner.
As you might be aware, the ICO has a policy for taking regulatory action
against public authorities, which I have attached for your ease of
reference. As you will note, the policy explains the ICO’s approach to
regulatory action, setting out the nature of our various powers and how we
use them. It also explains that where authorities repeatedly or seriously
fail to meet the requirements of the legislation, the ICO will take
regulatory action. The powers listed as Regulatory Actions are Assessment,
Enforcement notice, Information notice, Decision notice, Practice
recommendation, Negotiation, Monitoring, Undertakings, Report to
Parliament, Prosecution and Contempt of Court.
For your future reference, you might be interested to note that the
following page of our website provides further details of our regulatory
actions.
[1]http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/taki...
I can confirm that with the exception of Decision Notices (please see
below), none of the other aforementioned Regulatory actions have been
taken by the ICO with regards to DCC.
In terms of the Decision Notices we have issued, they are again available
on our website via the following link, which allows you to search against
a number of different criteria, such as the public authority.
[2]http://www.ico.gov.uk/tools_and_resource...
As you will see, we have issued a Decision Notice with regards to DCC on 5
occasions and in 4 of those occasions we either upheld or partly upheld
the complaint. It might therefore be reasonable to broadly summarise that
we have “taken action” in the form of a Decision Notice on 4 occasions and
I have therefore attached the Decision Notices of those cases.
Review/Complaint Procedure
I do hope this response is helpful. If you are dissatisfied and wish to
request a review of our decision or make a complaint about how your
request has been handled you should write to the Internal Compliance Team
at the address below or e-mail [3][email address]
Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request
received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.
If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation. To make such an application, please write
to the Case Reception Team, at the address below or visit the ‘Complaints’
section of our website to make a Freedom of Information Act or
Environmental Information Regulations complaint online. A copy of our
review procedure is attached.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Walsh
Lead Internal Compliance Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
T. 01625 545363 [4]www.ico.gov.uk
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 Fax: 01625 524 510 Web: www.ico.gov.uk
References
Visible links
1. http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/taki...
2. http://www.ico.gov.uk/tools_and_resource...
3. mailto:[email address]
4. blocked::http://www.ico.gov.uk/
http://www.ico.gov.uk/
Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,
Thank you for your kind and helpful reply, which I shall try to digest.
It is perhaps useful to flag up on your site repeat FOI and EIR abusers, such as Devon and Stockport Council, so it is a matter of public record that these abuses occur and, in the cases of Stockport and Devon, are ongoing with potentially very serious consequences for people living in their areas of responsibility.
Yours faithfully,
Sheila Oliver
Thank you for emailing the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This
is an automatic acknowledgement to tell you we have received your email
safely. Please do not reply to this email.
If your email was about a new complaint or request for advice it will be
considered by our Customer Contact Department. One of our case officers
will be in touch as soon as possible.
If your email was about an ongoing case we are dealing with it will be
allocated to the person handling your case.
If your email was about a case you have already submitted, but is yet to
be allocated to one of our case officers your email will be added to your
original correspondence and will be considered when your case is
allocated.
If you require any further assistance please contact our Helpline on 0303
123 1133 or 01625 545745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.
Thank you for contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office
Yours sincerely
ICO Customer Contact Department
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 Fax: 01625 524 510 Web: www.ico.gov.uk
alan m dransfield (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
The FTT adjourned yesterdays RETRIAL and are calling for further witneses from the DCC.
The case continues
alan m dransfield (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
It is clear to me the ICO are failing their duty of care to monitor the WHATDOTHEYKNOW website and even after Mrs Oloiver has made specific cases know to them, they STILL refuse to take any action against the DCC.
A simple 5 minuute ocular inspection of the WDTK website would show the DCC are willfly flouting the FOI Act 2000.
Tim Turner left an annotation ()
The ICO has limited legal responsibilities - to promote good practice, to adjudicate on complaints made directly to the office, and to take appropriate enforcement action. They do not owe a 'duty of care' to any applicant, and I would be concerned if they spent their time (and public money) browsing What Do They Know rather than answering legitimate complaints.
alan m dransfield (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
I am afraid to say you are wrong again as the ICO do have duty of Care to the applicant under HM statute.
For a FOI expert, you don't half talk some tripe.
I don't think so Tim
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alan m dransfield (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
Mrs Oliver
The DCC continue to flout the FOI Act 2000 by IGNORING your specific request for information.
They are on record stating they are waiting for the outcome of my RETRIAL on Monday but that SHOULD not delay YOUR requests.