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.
