The Information Commissioner’s Office has taken action against five public authorities, including the Financial Ombudsman Service, under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Fos has been given recommendations by the ICO setting out improvements it can make to better comply with its legal obligations.
According to the ICO, this was because the Fos showed ‘significant inconsistency’ in FOI request response times which it said was due to key staff leaving the Fos in August 2023.
In 2022/23, reportedly only 65 per cent of requests were responded to by the Fos within the statutory timeframe.
According to the ICO, things temporarily improved in 2023/24 but the number of requests responded to within the statutory time limits has been continually dropping since August 2023, reaching 23 per cent in November 2023.
The Freedom of Information Act allows the public to request information from public authorities including the FCA.
Recommendation of steps to be taken by the Fos included:
- The service should ensure that requests for information are responded to in a timely manner.
- The Fos should publish its information access request statistics and make these easily accessible on its website. The statistics should include the number of information access requests that have not been processed and the number of completed requests where the processing took longer than 20 working days.
- The service must also ensure that it has sufficient numbers of information rights trained staff to prevent request handling times falling below a compliant level in the event of the departure or absence of key staff members.
In an open letter to the public, information commissioner John Edwards said: “FOI is a fundamental part of transparency. Getting it wrong can mean additional resources are needed to deal with complaints and appeals about decisions, at a time when services are under sustained pressure and resources are stretched. It is in your interest to get it right.”
A spokesperson for the Fos said it has implemented a "robust action plan" which details the numerous measures it is taking to improve its compliance rate in responding to FOI requests.
This included expanding the team who deals with these requests, improving the tools it uses to manage requests, educating teams throughout the organisation, and monitoring performance on a weekly basis to ensure targets are met.
“We take our commitments to the Freedom of Information Act incredibly seriously, and are working hard to improve our response rate to requests.We're already making significant strides in improving our performance and addressing the issues raised by the ICO.
“As we continue to drive our improvements, we will remain in dialogue with the ICO and will keep them up to date with our progress,” the spokesperson added.
The Fos has until May 31 2024 to comply with the ICOs recommendations. Failure to comply may result in an enforcement notice being issued.
alina.khan@ft.com
