More than half of FoI requests sent to council not satisfied in full

More than half of all Freedom of Information requests submitted to Perth and Kinross Council were not satisfied in full.

During 2019-20, the authority received 1,569 requests under the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002.

This was a decline by 6.7% from the previous year.

The information has been revealed in a report to PKC’s scrutiny committee which is due to meet tomorrow.

The council’s information governance manager said PKC’s “response rate was adversely affected by the workload arising from subject access requests and by the impact of measures to cope with coronavirus”.

He also said the “volume and complexity of requests present an ongoing challenge to meet response deadlines.”

The council processed 1,523 of the 1,569 requests but only fully satisfied 43% (653) of the 1,523 processed requests.

A further 518 (34%) were satisfied in part and almost a quarter – 352 (23%) – resulted in no information being issued to the requester.

The information governance manager added: “Where information was not provided, 35 requests were refused completely or in part on the grounds of excessive cost – the estimated cost involved in processing being in excess of £600.”

The main reasons cited by PKC for not providing information were either that the information was not held by the council; personal data or information was otherwise exempt under FOISA, or it was already available to the public.

The council received 36 requests to review its decision. Five of these were subsequently appealed to the Scottish Information Commissioner. PKC’s information governance manager said all five are still under investigation by the commissioner.

PKC’s scrutiny committee will consider and comment on the report’s findings tomorrow.