The Data Detectives at BCC

A recent news report on Bristol Live by one of our Local Democracy Reporters Alex Seabrook, covered the Audit Committee Meeting held on 28 Jul 2025 where Freedom of Information was discussed:

Last year the Information Commissioner’s Office ordered Bristol City Council to get better at responding to freedom of information requests (FoIs). The watchdog said Bristol was “consistently” one of the councils which had sparked the most complaints about FoIs in recent years.

A top council lawyer has taken the unprecedented step of appealing an enforcement notice from a regulator to improve transparency. Persistent failures to provide the public with information within legal time limits has caused Bristol councillors to raise fears about a culture of secrecy.

Green Councillor David Wilcox said: “I’ve been on audit for four years now. Why is this the first time we’ve heard that the ICO is contesting our work as a council? I would have thought that would come to audit in some way, as it’s a reputational risk for the council.”

We accept the difficulties public authorities have in allocating their scarce resources we accept that complying with these requirements takes resources away from other areas, however the requirement to do so is a regulatory requirement and relates to the statutory right of applicants. It is vital that a public authority abides by such requirements. Significant delays can cause real difficulties to applicants, who often need information within a particular period of time for important reasons. It cannot be correct or fair for requests to not be dealt with for 3 years without any sanctions. The suggested action plan that preceded the enforcement notice would have required over 3 years to clear the backlog and ensure that requesters received responses to their FOIA requests. The ICO did not consider this timescale to be reasonable and we agree. It undermines the legislation for this to be the case. We therefore conclude that this is an appropriate case for enforcement action and we refuse the appeal. We do note - for completeness - the steps that have been taken by the Council and the cooperation between the parties that has continued throughout the proceedings. We hope that this continues.

Timeline

August 2023 - ICO Recommendation Notice

Bristol City Council (the Council) has had a consistently poor level of performance in terms of its response times to FOIA requests. This has been highlighted by the disproportionately high number of complaints about response times submitted to the Information Commissioner. Following engagement by his staff with the Council about the underlying reasons for these failings, the Commissioner has reached the view that the Council’s request handling practices do not conform to part 4 of the section 45 Freedom of Information Code of Practice, issued by the Cabinet Office in July 2018 (the Code).

Despite ongoing informal engagement over a significant period around the issue of timeliness, the Council’s timeliness rate for responding to information requests continues to be poor. The Commissioner has therefore designed the following recommendations to support and enhance the Council’s plans to improve its information rights practices. In considering these recommendations, we expect the Council to ensure that it meets the requirements of all information rights legislation to which it is subject.

November 2023 - Bristol Cable Article

Even when we managed to uncover information in the public interest, our experience was that the council often took far longer than 20 days to respond. So, we set out to find out how it compares to similar-sized provincial cities, by sending requests asking about their FOI performance. The results were striking.

Over the last five years Bristol has managed to respond on average to just under 70% of requests on time, with some years well below that. This compares with nearly 90% for cities like Bradford, Leeds and Manchester – and almost 100% for Leicester. This June, only 56% of Bristol’s requests were answered on time, the notice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) this summer revealed.

March 2024 - ICO Enforcement Notice

Bristol City Council (the Council) has been served with an Enforcement Notice as a result of evidence seen by the Commissioner about its performance in relation to its statutory duties under the Freedom of information Act. At the date of the notice the Council had a significant backlog of requests.

The Enforcement Notice requires the Council to provide responses to requests that are over 20 working days old and to devise and publish an action plan to mitigate delays.

Information Tribunal FT/EA/2024/0140 under appeal.

February 2025 - ICO Decision Notice

This decision is related to a specific FOI Request.

The complainant requested the register of interests and the diaries for a
number of elected officials for May 2024. Bristol City Council (the
Council) confirmed that the register of interests was published on its
website and withheld the diary entries under section 36(2)(c) (prejudice
to the effective conduct of public affairs) of the FOIA.

The Commissioner’s decision is that the Council has failed to
demonstrate that the exemption is engaged. The Commissioner also
finds that the Council breached section 10(1) by failing to respond to the
request within 20 working days.

The Commissioner requires the Council to take the following steps to
ensure compliance with the legislation.
• Issue a fresh response to the request which does not cite section
36(2)(c) of the FOIA.

The public authority must take these steps within 30 calendar days of
the date of this decision notice. Failure to comply may result in the
Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court
pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt
of court.

March 2025 - FOI Request about FOI Performance

As part of my analysis into BCC FOI Requests, I submitted an FOI Request about FOI Requests (I know that sounds a bit daft) on 23/03/2025. You can see all the details by clicking on the link above.

I received the information requested on 23/04/2025. Some of it was available on a public website, and I was a bit embarrassed that I hadn't found it myself as that's what I am supposed to be good at! Although I did find an error in their published data which you find out about a bit further on.

BCC did sent me a copy of the Action Plan that the ICO had required them to produce.

There are 14 Actions listed in the Plan recorded as having these status values:

• Complete (1)
• Ongoing (4)
• Pending (3)
• To address in 2024 (6)

As the Action Plan was sent to me in March 2025 it appears that the plan had not been updated since 2023. Here you can see a few of the action items in the plan:

The plan also contained responses to questions that were used to identify issues. You can see some of them below:

The plan also provided responses to three specific questions. Some of the responses were truncated in the PDF version I received, but I think this was just a simple mistake rather than an attempt to withhold information.

The Current Situation

BCC Performance Data

These charts use the performance data published by BCC.

Compliance Target

The compliance target rate has been taken from the ICO Practice Recommendation issued to BCC in August 2023. Requests are supposed to be responded to within 20 working days.

The Council should create an action plan, incorporating any recovery plan already in development, with appropriate processes put into place to ensure 90% timeliness is achieved by the end of December 2023.

The target compliance rate of 90% has not been met for any quarter between Q2 2021 and Q1 2025.

Error in BCC Performance Data

The performance figures provided for Q2 2024 are incorrect.

"Reponses issued within statutory deadline" + "Responses not issued within statutory deadline" should equal the "Total requests".

But 400 + 120 does not equal 543

I have assumed the compliance rate is correct at 77% and adjusted the figures for that quarter accordingly in my charts.

WhatDoTheyKnow

Whilst BCC do not publish the details of the FOI Requests they receive, many people submit their FOI Requests via WhatDoTheyKnow (WDTK) where anyone can view FOI requests and also the responses to those requests.

However, the data from WDTK cannot be reliably used to measure performance as it relies on submitters updating the status of their requests, which some people do, but many people do not. Volunteers are able to update the status of other peoples requests and I am slowly working through the BCC Requests and updating the status data where I can.

The following charts show information about BCC Requests made via WDTK since Jan 2024.

Blue ones are still active and grey ones have been closed.

Here are some examples of recent requests:

Here are the people who have submitted the most FOI Requests to BCC:

You might have noticed that I appear on this list and these are the requests I have made:

My reports also include FOI Requests for other Bristol Organisations:

I have submitted some requests (along with a few other people) to Bristol Waste:

You can see that Bristol Waste only receive a few requests, but they do a poor job with their responses. I had to complain to the ICO about their lack of response, and things did appear to improve a bit after that.

Summary

I believe that BCC have put efforts into improving their responses to FOI requests. Whilst there are more improvements they can make I think they are on the right track. There is a risk that politically sensitive requests could be "interfered with" by Senior Management, but I do not have any direct evidence that this is taking place.

The people who have dealt with my BCC requests have done a very good job and I would like to commend them for their efforts.

Update on ICO Decision Notices

I have analysed ICO Decision Notices for Local Authorities since 2005 and found that BCC has the 2nd highest number of issued notices during this period, but 57% of them were "Not Upheld". The source data comes from the ICO and you can see my reports in the usual place (look for Freedom of Information).