The information commissioner has issued an enforcement notice requiring Brighton and Hove City Council to speed up its response to requests for information.
The watchdog issued the notice after an increase in the number of complaints about the council taking too long to reply to freedom of information (FoI) requests.
The council had a backlog of almost 300 requests in August, with 11 outstanding from last year.
When someone sends a written request to a public body, such as the council, the Freedom of Information Act sets out the steps that it must take.
It is generally required to say whether it holds the information that has been requested and, subject to exemptions, to send the information within 20 working days.
The enforcement notice said: “The age profile of the backlog demonstrates that the delays are not confined to recent or isolated cases.
“The spreadsheet (of outstanding requests) listed 11 requests received in 2025, including requests received as far back as April 2025, as well as a substantial number of requests received during the first half of 2026.”
The commissioner said that the council had too few staff dealing with requests for information “but that permission had been obtained to recruit new staff and overtime working on overdue cases was taking place”.
Senior officials were also monitoring progress which, the information commissioner said, was a “very positive recent action”.
The enforcement notice requires the council to “publish on its website an action plan, supported by a lessons learned exercise identifying the root causes of delays in handling FoI requests and formalising the measures it will take to mitigate those delays”.
If the council failed to comply with the notice, the information commissioner said, it could face legal action in the High Court and “may be dealt with as if it had committed a contempt of court”.
The council has published its web action plan here.
Green councillor Steve Davis, the leader of the opposition on the council, asked about FoI delays at a meeting of the full council in July.
He said that in the first quarter of 2025-26, almost three-quarters of cases, or 417 out of 561, had received a response within the statutory deadline.
But the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – since renamed the Information Commission – said that a compliance rate of under 90 per cent was “unsatisfactory”.
The council said that, since the start of the current financial year in April, it had received an average of 200 FoI requests a month and 75 subject access requests (SAR) requests.
A subject access request is made by someone asking an organisation what information it holds about them and is governed by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Labour councillor Jacob Allen, the council’s cabinet member for customer services, the public realm and local government, said that there had been a significant increase in the volume and complexity of requests.
The number of FoI requests had gone up 41 per cent since 2023 and subject access requests had increased up 136 per cent.
He said: “We acknowledge the ICO’s enforcement notice and accept that the council has not met the required timescales for responding to some information rights requests.
“But we have already made significant progress, with 56 per cent of the backlog reviewed or cleared, additional capacity deployed and stronger oversight arrangements put in place.
“The ICO has recognised this progress, noting that the council has made ‘great strides in responding to overdue requests’.
“We have published an improvement plan, which has been shared with the ICO, setting out the actions we are taking to strengthen our processes.
“Our focus is on meeting the requirements of the enforcement notice, clearing the backlog and ensuring we have stronger arrangements in place for the future.”
To read the enforcement notice, click here.
If they’re late replying to your FOI request, try asking your local councillor to prompt them. It can elicit the information within a couple of hours. Mind you, the information received is not always correct and requires another request and subsequent lengthy delay before it is made right.
Whether or not a councillor can help get the information requested, the council should still adhere to legislation and respond to FOI requests it receives within the legal timeframe to respond, AND publish the information requested on its disclosure log. A councillor sending info to a resident because the council is not replying to an FOI request limits the info being shared only via email to one person, not published in a disclosure log and available for wider public scrutiny.
It’s not just a staffing issue either, an FOI request made to the council (ironically?) about FOI delays unearthed a BHCC report that said “One reason given for the drop in FOI compliance says there is: “nervousness around releasing certain information, leading to pressure on the team to agree exemptions.” That’s pretty questionable imo. Who is the pressure on the team to agree exemptions coming from, and why is there “nervousness” about releasing information and pressure being put on the team to agree exemptions so the information isn’t published.
Lots of questions on this issue, and good that the problems in the council’s FOI team and the resulting impact on information being suppressed and delayed is good.
You’ve shared some very interesting points about the pressure officers sense and their subsequent nervousness, Fletcher. Thank you. As for my comment about asking councillors to prompt them release of information, the information that’s then released has come from the FOI office, not from the councillors. Just wanted to clarify.
Interesting but unsurprising that the number of FOI requests have increased so much under this administration. When our leaders do so much to limit debate and suppress information people will seek other channels, and this ruling is just the chickens coming home to roost.
From the information I am aware of the backlogs are caused not because of stuff shortages is because they are going through the information to hide anything that could be detrimental to themselves and individual offices.
I believe that is why the vote for transparency got voted down by the labor group bella was cheering once it got voted down ,you can see it on the YouTube recording of the meeting .
So it seems that Honesty transparency is not what Brighton and Hove city council is aiming for stopped the measure for openness and transparency.
Ironically this ruling seems to pushed for exactly that Freedom of Information requests for that. They might as well include the housing Ombudsman and other negative rulings regarding staff and the organization.
You really do have to think why would a labor group be so desperate to hide information when the Prime Minister and leader of that group is everyday pushing for further openness transparency and honesty from public bodies and a staff.
Good to see the council have published a plan for improvement – it has fallen off a cliff in the last year or so. I would suggest that at least some of the increase in volume is down to a general lack of transparency across some areas of the council. Residents shouldn’t be needing to ask for things like public consultation questions and responses – those should be published as standard.
The bit that is lacking is any commitment to publish FOI performance. This is something the Information Commissioner called eight other councils up for in July this year. Although I guess the report could be FOId every quarter – but that would just add to the workload.
Toto, quite so. To fail to answer the public’s questions is unfortunate. To require intervention from the Information Commissioner before doing so begins to look remarkably like a policy.
One is, however, rather surprised by the absence of the trademarked one from these proceedings. Surely an opportunity to explain why the Council’s inability to answer questions is, in fact, a triumph of transparency would ordinarily be too tempting to resist?
Yours truly,
Augusta
Councils, God complex at its worst.
It would help if they actually answered the questions. The usual flim flam response is they cannot release information because it is “commercially sensitive” Or answers are half redacted for no logical reason. I am sure they would love nothing better than to close this department down altogether. “Labour” and “democracy” are not two words which belong together in the same sentence.
My own experiences in submitting FOI requests to BHCC have been very frustrating.
Time is often wasted through the application of incorrect exemptions leading to internal reviews. Answers that are given tend to be evasive or vague, often answering a different question than the one asked, even when the question is structured in a clear and concise way.
This then leads to an ICO investigation, who sadly have a huge backlog themselves.