Questions remain over a claim a number of Liverpool Labour councillors used a 'back door route' to get parking fines rescinded by a council officer.
In January, the ECHO revealed several councillors from the city's ruling Labour group were understood to have had parking tickets cancelled by a former Cunard officer. The issue was brought to light by Lib Dem boss Richard Kemp, who said he became aware of the situation last year and put a complaint into the council's standards board.
Cllr Kemp believes in total there have been 18 parking tickets received by Labour councillors that were wrongly cancelled by an officer who is no longer employed at the council. The ECHO has been investigating the claims for months.
READ MORE: Liverpool Labour councillors used 'back door' to get parking tickets thrown out
We first submitted a Freedom of Information request in October last year, asking for the full details of any parking tickets that had been received by elected councillors and then rescinded by officers since 2015. We did not receive any response until January.
The council said it did not hold a complete record of data relevant to our request 'such as to be able to provide a sufficiently comprehensive and accurate response.' It added that to search and gather the relevant information from the 'limited information actually held' would take more than 41 hours - more than the 18 hour limit prescribed under the Freedom of Information Act.
As such, we narrowed the scope of our questions in a new Freedom of Information request, submitted to the council in January. We have asked for the names of any councillors who had fines rescinded by the council's parking services team between 2015 and 2020 and for the details and explanations of why the fines were rescinded.
While the council has yet to provide a full response, it did offer an update to our requests on May 6. The council response states: "We write to advise you that we are considering this request as a matter of urgency and would take this opportunity to apologise sincerely for any inconvenience caused by the delay in providing you with a timely response.
"By way of explanation, we confirm that we have been undertaking comprehensive searches of all records held relating to the administration of parking services, including detailed searches by individual named elected members for the period your request covers.
"This has been time consuming reflective of the in-depth searches conducted. Elements of your request are potentially covered by one or more exemptions to disclosure which we are presently considering, particularly in relation to personal data.
"We will respond to you at the earliest opportunity once this process is concluded. We anticipate this will take place at latest within the coming weeks."
