Council fails to meet information deadlines

In one month, Hull Council only processed one of the 45 requests it received under the Freedom of Information Act on time.

The Act, which gives people the right to request information from any public authority, requires responses to be submitted within 20 days.

Of the 599 requests made between April 2009 and January this year, only 169 were dealt with on time.

By February this year, one request was five months old and 10 were three months old.

The council was forced to apologise to one correspondent who had not received the information after they made an official complaint to the Information Commissioner.

The complaint prompted the commissioner to ask the council to explain its backlog.

A report to the council's Audit Committee next week said the backlog built up after a member of staff in the information governance team was seconded to another department in April last year.

The report said: "Following the secondment the information governance team made every effort to try to manage the workload with existing resources to avoid creating additional financial pressure on the service budget.

"There was also the possibility that the level of request could fall from April, which would have reduced pressure on the team.

"...In the event request levels did not reduce and after close monitoring over the six months from April it became clear that the workload was not sustainable without additional resource."

Since March this year, 193 requests requiring a reply have been made and three responses missed the deadline.