Council criticised over delays to FoI requests
CITY council staff have been slammed for failing to reply to Freedom of Information requests within legal time limits.
Public service union Unison complained to the Scottish Information Commissioner after the local authority did not respond in time to a request for details about building standards.
The information was sent too late to be used in a Unison report about councils across Scotland.
The commissioner’s report said: “This illustrates the importance of authorities responding timeously to requests for information.”
According to Unison, the council’s response was that funding of new staff within its FoI team had been approved.
But according to Dave Watson, the union’s head of policy and public affairs, a recent FoI request to the city council on roads was acknowledged but a response was not received in time.
The union has now pledged to chase up councils, health boards and other public bodies which fail to respond on time.
Recent meetings of the Scottish Public Information Forum noted many organisations, journalists and campaigners are regularly frustrated by late responses or sometimes no responses in breach of legislation.
Mr Watson said: “Unison regularly uses FoI requests to compile information across a range of public bodies, for example about the numbers of assaults on public service workers.
“Like other organisations we want to have a full picture of what is happening across Scotland, as we did on building standards in this case.
“That is not possible if we don’t get responses and it happens too frequently, totally in contravention of the legislation.
“We noted in our review request and our appeal to the commissioner that workers involved in dealing with requests – often our members – can be under immense pressure due to austerity staffing cuts.
“But FoI legislation must be adhered to and public bodies should ensure they have sufficient staff to do this.”
A city council spokesman said: “Glasgow City Council handles more requests under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act than any other local authority.
“It responds to the overwhelming majority of those within target timescales and performance is in line with the national average.”