Secrecy rulings 'taking too long'

Public authorities must be willing to release more information, the ICO says

Complaints about rejected Freedom of Information requests are taking too long to resolve, campaigners say.

People whose FOI requests are turned down can ask for a ruling from the information commissioner.

But the Campaign for FOI said it took an average 19.7 months to issue formal notices - one took nearly four years.

The commissioner's office said only 10% of cases resulted in a formal notice and said they were working to speed up their response.

The Campaign for Freedom of Information report analysed 500 decision notices issued up to March 2009 and found the average delay in issuing them was 19.7 months.

'Major threat'

It found 46% of notices took between one and two years to issue, 25% took two to three years and 5% - or 23 cases - took more than three years.

One, a complaint lodged in April 2005 from someone who wanted West Yorkshire Police to release a report on gun crime, did not have a formal notice lodged until March 2009 - nearly four years later.

The credibility of the commissioner in cracking down on delays in government is seriously undermined as long as his own office is taking an excessive time to deal with many complaints Martin Rosenbaum Read Open Secrets in full

The report's authors concluded that the delays were "sufficiently serious and widespread to represent a major threat to the FOI Act's effectiveness and public confidence in it".

They said it was taking so long the original information might be outdated and people would be put off making requests.

"Finally if authorities calculate that they can safely withhold information for several years before the commissioner compels disclosure, a minority may do so deliberately, just to buy time," they said.

The Information Commissioner's Office said the vast majority of complaints were dealt with without having to resort to a formal decision notice - but the 10% that did so took longer "than we would like".

A spokesman said FOI was so popular they were getting much more complaints referred to them than forecast and were making changes to "resolve the increasing numbers of complaints as quickly and efficiently as possible within the resources available to us".

"Last month we published a new FOI strategy outlining how we will resolve more cases informally and shorten the length of decision notices," he said.

He added that public authorities had to be more "proactive" in disclosing official information.