To inform the committee of performance in the council’s information access and information governance which includes areas of complaints, data breaches and requests for information made to the council over the municipal year 2016/17, so that the committee can be assured that high standards of openness and transparency are adhered to and that high standards of conduct are promoted.

The information access and records manager presented the report and highlighted the following: 

·         The team deal with freedom of information, subject access, and environmental information regulation requests, together with complaints and various requests from police.   The team do not operate in isolation and rely on other teams for information.

·         The council receives approximately 90-100 requests per month and the response rate compares well with other councils.   The request trend tends to be either local issues or what is in the media.   

·         The number of subject access requests which are requests for sight of personal information held by the council on an individual have grown significantly.    The fee for making a request will be removed in most cases and the time limit will be reduced down to 30 days from 40 days from April 2018.   It was indicated that this may cause a resource implication.  

·         Overall of the 600-700 complaints received approximately 20% are upheld by the council.  

·         The Local Government Ombudsman had recently provided training to social care staff on how to conduct complaint investigations.  

It was confirmed that learning from LGO complaints was captured and that the LGO did check that their recommendations had been actioned. 

It was noted that a significant theme was poor communication.     A member of the committee suggested that how the information is structured on the website is looked at so that it is more easily searchable. 

The information access and records manager confirmed that when requests are not accepted on commercially confidential grounds a full explanation is given to the requester as there was an internal review process or the requester could go to the Information Commissioners’ Officer. 

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.