A London council has been accused of “eroding trust in democracy” by failing to respond to more than 300 requests for information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said Lewisham Council kept “hundreds of people in the dark” about data “they have a right to ask for”.
The watchdog on Wednesday announced it was taking enforcement action against the local authority after it failed to respond to 338 Freedom of Information Act requests within the 20-day time limit.
At the end of 2022, some 221 requests were over 12 months old. The oldest unanswered question was submitted more than two years ago on December 3, 2020, the Commissioner said.
Warren Seddon, Director of Transparency at the ICO, said: “By failing to respond to these requests, Lewisham Council is keeping hundreds of people in the dark about information they have a right to ask for.
“People need to have confidence in the decisions being made by their local authority and this council’s failure to comply with the law erodes trust in democracy and open government.
“This is our second Freedom of Information enforcement notice in recent months, and I hope it is clear that we will be taking action when public authorities fail to be transparent and accountable.”
The ICO said the true extent of Lewisham's poor performance on information access was also “much worse than statistics it recently published online” suggested.
It said the council was focusing on new requests to improve its compliance, but this had come at the expense of older enquiries.
The town hall had “no concrete plans to address this issue”, the ICO said.
The enforcement notice requires the council to respond to all outstanding requests over 20 working days old within six months.
It must also publish an action plan to mitigate any future delays to FOI enquiries.
A Lewisham Council spokesman said: “We wholly accept the enforcement notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office and recognise our current performance in responding to freedom of information requests is not acceptable.
“We are already taking steps to address this, including bringing in extra staff to focus on resolving older cases. We are fully cooperating with the ICO and will be publishing our improvement plan in due course.”
