Late (or non-existent) replies are a perennial Freedom of Information problem.
Jump to this week’s Freedom of Information stories…
There’s two more stories this week about rubbish response times, on top of plenty of previous ones. But if you’ve been given a deadline to respond by a First Tier Tribunal, it probably makes sense to make it a priority.
Guildford Council has avoided a contempt certification for failing to send out information by a deadline set by a tribunal.
This started with an Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) request for planning information in relation to changes to a neighbour’s roof. And various internal reviews and decision notices around whether the council had provided all the information held.
The applicant complained to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) that some relevant information appeared to have not been disclosed. The FTT found the council likely held additional information that hadn’t been disclosed. It issued a substituted decision notice setting out further searches and explanations that it should provide.
The council had 35 days to do this, with a deadline of September 24, 2025. The council sent a partial response on September 30, sent further information on November 12.
The applicant applied to the FTT on October 25, 2025, for it to certify a contempt to the Upper Tribunal on the grounds the council hadn’t fully replied. The council sent what it considered was a full response on December 19.
Council admits missed deadline.
The council’s Head of Information Governance said he hadn’t been able to meet the deadline due to a heavy workload after returning from leave and a concurrent internal audit. Things were complicated by a hearing bundle with more than 2,700 pages to go through and five new separate information requests from the applicant during September 2025.
The FTT found the council’s actions were capable of constituting contempt. But it took the view that while it was knowingly breached, it wasn’t intentionally breached.
As the information had since been provided, along with an apology, an explanation and steps to avoid a recurrence, the FTT decided it wasn’t in the public interest to certify a contempt to the Upper Tribunal.
The applicant had argued the council’s response was still incomplete. The FTT said its focus was on whether on not the order was breached (by the council missing the deadline), not whether the ‘spirit’ of the order has been fulfilled. If the applicant was unhappy with the new response, the next step would be to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Freedom of Information around the world
Another week, another place trying to make using Freedom of Information more difficult.
Proposed amendments being looked at for Germany’s Freedom of Information Act:
- People will have to prove a “legitimate interest” to obtain official information. There’s no further details on what would constitute a “legitimate interest.”
- Non-EU citizens who don’t live in Germany wouldn’t be able to use the Act.
- Only individuals would be able to make requests, organisations wouldn’t
- The government would remove the cap, currently at €500, on fees for information requests. It’s also looking at allowing authorities to charge fees on a cost-recovery basis.
- Allow routine redactions of names of public officials.
- Introduce broader restrictions for areas such as critical infrastructure, counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence and scientific research.
The proposals have been met with criticism from media organsations and civil society.
Almaz Teffera, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The German government seems to perceive transparency and freedom of information as threats and an administrative burden instead of essential safeguards in a democracy.
“Restricting access to public records denies everyone basic information, makes it harder to hold the government and authorities to account, and risks increasing public distrust in their actions.”
(That sounds familiar).
An open letter calling on the federal government to drop the plans has been signed by 122 organisations. A petition demanding the plans are stopped has hit more than 500,000 signatures in a week.
I think this might have been going on for 20 years
According to that notice, since the FOI Act came fully into effect in 2005, the Met Police has never achieved an on-time response rate of better than 75.9% (achieved in 2015).
Having decided to get a story out of a (not particularly unusual) email auto-responder, the Canary apparently decided to trust the “chronically distrusted” Met to fess up to all its FOI bad behaviour.
I can only imagine the press office questioned whether the reporter really did work for a news website due to their obvious lack of research into their story.
Interesting approach to reducing request numbers
Like everywhere, Caerphilly Council is feeling the pressure of increasing numbers of FOI requests.
The council received 422 FOI requests between January and March – the highest rate in the past three years. And it responded to around 70% of FOI requests within the legal time limit of 20 working days last year.
Council leadership and some of the officers would like councillors to stop adding to the problem by sending their own requests.
Council leader Jamie Pritchard said: “Many requests can be answered easily in shorter time frames, without needing to submit an FOI. Just come to the office and discuss the matter. It’s really not rocket science.”
Opposition councillors pointed out FOIs guaranteed accurate and timely responses as “enshrined in law”. Popping in for a chat can be handy, but if you think getting information is going to be difficult, FOI gives you much stronger access rights, including an outside appeals process.
Not a Freedom of Information request
Nearly 24,000 people hold shotgun certificates across the Devon and Cornwall Police force area, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.
As the story mentions a national figure (which local police wouldn’t hold), the figures almost certainly came from the recent release of firearm and shotgun certificate statistics.
It’s probably not helpful for request numbers when information gets labelled as only available following an FOI rather than something regularly published.
This week’s Freedom of Information stories…
Holiday childcare
There is also a postcode lottery when it comes to summer holiday provision for disabled children.
New research from the national disability charity Sense found more than 60,000 disabled children are living in areas of England with no summer holiday club options available to them.
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests submitted to every local authority in England found that, among the 114 local authorities that responded, 6% of disabled children across the country can access holiday clubs.
Nature spending
Millions of pounds from a flagship Scottish Government environmental fund has been mispent by councils, The Ferret can reveal.
The Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) – part of a strategy to tackle Scotland’s “nature emergency” – was established in 2021 to “restore nature, safeguard wildlife and tackle the causes of biodiversity loss and climate change”.
In its first four years the fund awarded £20m directly to Scotland’s local authorities. But the funding isn’t ringfenced, and almost a fifth of that total was redirected to routine spending, including vehicle maintenance and office equipment.
Records access
More than a dozen cases of wrongful access to patients’ records by staff have taken place at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since 2021.
A Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed that out of the 18 employees who wrongfully accessed medical records, eight cases were referred to the ICO.
Work from home
This feels like a ‘depends what you’re counting’ question. Unless they’re doing a monitoring/review exercise, it’s unlikely councils are counting how many people are working from their offices.
But generally, they do need to know who is on the premises. That might be through desk bookings, pass swipes or if they have a sign in system for fire safety purposes. These aren’t all going to be accurate for numbers working but they would at least give an idea of how busy things are.
Bosses at Norfolk County Council say they have no idea how many staff work from home, in an extraordinary revelation which will enrage the authority’s new Reform leadership.
County Hall officials made the admission in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from the Eastern Daily Press, saying they did not track the data.
Poor rental properties
The extent of disrepair in Northern Ireland’s private rented properties over the past five years has been revealed in new figures.
Since 2021, landlords across the north’s 11 local councils have been issued with just under 2,000 notices relating to issues with their properties.
According to the figures, which were obtained by The Irish News via Freedom of Information requests, two council areas rose above the rest as the worst place to rent private accommodation – with 84% of all unfit properties located within their districts.
The highest number of notices of unfitness over the past five years were issued in Mid & East Antrim (19) and Ards & North Down (18).
Security cameras
Several libraries in Surrey are using CCTV cameras made by a Chinese firm whose equipment is banned from sensitive government sites over security concerns.
The cameras, made by Hikvision, are in libraries in Guildford, Ash, Chertsey, Cobham, Farnham, Merstham and New Haw, according to a Freedom of Information response to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
The UK government stopped the installation of Chinese-made surveillance cameras at sensitive sites in Whitehall in 2022, citing security concerns.
Phone thefts
The number of mobile phone thefts reported to West Mercia Police have fallen by almost half since 2023.
Figures, released in a Freedom of Information Request, shows that there were 143 mobile phone robberies reported to West Mercia Police between the start of 2023 and the end of 2025.
In 2023, there were 62 reported robberies involving the theft of a mobile phone, falling to 45 in 2024 and again falling to 36 in 2025.
Long ambulance waits
Figures showing ambulances are being forced to wait for hours outside hospitals are “deeply worrying”, Scottish Labour has said.
The party highlighted freedom of information data on ambulance turnaround times outside hospitals in 2026, showing the longest wait was 18 hours.
Waits of 17 hours and 14 hours were also recorded.
Endometriosis waits
Over 400 NHS Lothian patients are waiting for surgery to treat an often debilitatingly painful condition, the Local Democracy Reporting Service can reveal.
Data obtained under freedom of information legislation also show one patient has waited 114 weeks for surgery to treat endometriosis, as of June 1.
Agency staff spend
The Scottish Conservatives say money in the NHS is being “squandered” on external administration staff, as figures revealed spending on agency workers in non-clinical roles.
Since 2022/23, around £95.8 million was spent on bank and agency staff working in areas like administration, catering and estates.
The figure was obtained through freedom of information requests to Scotland’s health boards.
Second homes
Pembrokeshire Council raised more than £12m from second-home council tax premiums last year, but says it does not record how many additional properties have been uncovered through compliance or enforcement work.
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that 4,662 properties were registered as second homes in Pembrokeshire as of June 1, 2026.
Of those, 3,798 were liable for the second-home premium.
Bridge repairs
Repairs to a bridge which was damaged after a lorry smashed into one of its sides is expected to cost about £60,000, a council said.
The lorry struck the bridge, which crosses the River Blackwater, on Church Road, Swallowfield, on February 11 causing significant damage. The council confirmed the bridge’s “pillar and most of the parapet were destroyed leaving a sheer drop into the river”, following the incident.
A freedom of information request confirmed the expected repair costs, with Wokingham Borough Council estimating the total at £60,000.
Rail delays
Making good use of more rail companies being covered by the FOI Act.
Delayed Midland rail passengers were repaid a total of more than £1 million by just two operators in the space of three-and-a-half months, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.
West Midlands Railway (WMR) and London Northwestern Railway (LNWR) – two trading brands under parent company West Midlands Trains – handed back a total of £1,048,338.40 from February 1 to 2am on May 17 this year
The payments were made under the Delay Repay scheme which provides compensation for railway journeys which arrive 15 minutes or more late.
Drug driving
New Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) statistics has revealed that for the first time on British roads, drug-driving offences were higher than drink-driving violations last year.
The data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the UK’s leading road safety charity, IAM RoadSmart, revealed that some 30,707 endorsements for drug-driving were added to licences in 2025 – up 28% from 23,981 three years earlier.
Speeding
A motorist seen speeding on a road in Shrewsbury has the dubious honour of having had the highest speed recorded by police in the UK last year having been clocked at an incredible 161mph.
The speed, faster than most cars are able to travel at, was recorded on the A5 in Bayston Hill near Shrewsbury last year.
The figures obtained by the RAC from Freedom of Information requests to UK police forces show another driver was also clocked on the southbound M6 between Stoke and Stafford travelling at the same speed as the Shrewsbury speeder, 161mph.
Leisure energy costs
A swimming pool sounds great in a heatwave but they’re costly to run (Glasgow Life runs 12 among other venues).
More than £56.13 million has been spent on energy consumption since 2021/22 by sporting charity Glasgow Life, which operates more than 100 venues across the city.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted to the organisation by councillor Paul Carey (BEM) and shared exclusively to the LDR reporting service breaks down the total year-by-year energy costs from 2021/22 to date in 2026/27.
The document shows that energy costs reached £8.2 million in 2021/22, £10.5 million in 2022/23, £12.3 million in 2023/24 and £13.5 million in 2024/25. A further £10.6 million and £892,191 has been spent in 2025/26 and 2026/27 to date respectively.
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