Council cuts FOI target to ‘more realistic level’

BRISTOL City Council has slashed its own target for meeting Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on time - so it has a chance of achieving it.

The authority has failed to come close to replying to 90 per cent of inquiries within the required 20 working days and so has reduced its goal to 70 per cent to give itself a “more realistic” prospect.

Resources scrutiny commission chairman Cllr Geoff Gollop questioned the logic, saying targets should be set at levels the council hopes to hit and that it is counter-intuitive to cut them just so they can be met.

The city council says the aim for meeting FOI requests was lowered on the advice of the Information Commissioner’s Office to make it more achievable based on the amount of available officer time.

It came to light in a public forum question by Suzanne Audrey to the council’s scrutiny commission on Monday.

She told the meeting that the latest information on the authority’s website dated back three years and showed 427 out of 555 FOI requests - about 77 per cent were met within the 20-day deadline between January 1 and March 31, 2018.

“It seems quite a drastic drop in the target from 90 per cent to 70 per cent,” she said.

“Why has it dropped as low as that, because it’s practically that now anyway?

“I do understand it is dispiriting to repeatedly have to report a failure to meet a target, especially if that target seems unrealistic.

“But is the resources scrutiny committee satisfied that such a large reduction in the target is necessary and beneficial?”

A council officer replied: “We’ve been going for a number of years never achieving 90 or 100 per cent. The best we ever achieved was in the high 70s.

“It was noted that targets should always be stretching but achievable.

“With the level of resource that is able to be put into FOI returns, it was deemed that 70 per cent was actually quite good performance.

“That was the advice given to the service by the Information Commissioner’s Office so it decided to reduce the target to that.

“This is a more realistic target against which the council can measure progress. The target will be kept under review.”

A report to members showed only 66 per cent of FOI requests were responded to on time throughout 2020/21, which means one in three exceeded the statutory time limit.

It said this improved to 68 per cent between April 1 and June 30 this year, up from 62 per cent during the same quarter in 2020.

The officer told members: “There is a drain on resource. People are being spread more thinly.

“Ultimately 70 per cent was put in now to try to show at least we can hit that.

“If we get 70 to 72 per cent this year, the target will go up next year.

“This is a bottoming out with the realisation that we are not going to hit 90 per cent at the minute, so it’s bringing it back to where we can do something and then step it up over time.”

Conservative Cllr Gollop told the meeting: “Targets ought to be set to what we would hope to be achieving.

“To reduce something because we are failing to achieve seems counter-intuitive.”

❝ We’ve been going for a number of years never achieving 90 or 100 per cent. The best we ever achieved was in the high 70s ... targets should always be stretching but achievable ... This is a more realistic target Council officer