FOI bill almost £500k

7:00am Wednesday 24th October 2012 in News

FOI bill almost £500k FOI bill almost £500k

THE cost of answering questions from the public at Warrington Borough Council was around £440,000 in the past year.

The revelation comes as the council relaunches its information available online to try and reduce the number of requests being submitted.

In the last financial year the authority faced 852 requests for topics while in the first three months of this year 200 requests have already been submitted.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made to the council took an estimated 23,000 hours of staff time to process in 2011/2012 which saw the cost run well into six figures.

Any publicly funded body can be subject to questions from the public on a range of items.

Now because of the cost the council is reviewing its FOI publication scheme and open data sections of warrington.gov.uk to make it a source of more information - hopefully answering some of the requests.

Leader of the council Clr Terry O’Neill (LAB - Burtonwood and Winwick) said: “Often the FOI process is used by organisations or individuals to save them time and research costs and in doing so this is being passed on to the tax payers of Warrington.

“I’d appeal to anyone thinking about putting a request in with us in the future to consider carefully if the information can be gained in other ways.

“The staff time and effort that is required to deal with the increasing volume of requests is detracting from frontline services in tough financial times.”

Information such as allowances, council policies, any money over £500 spent by staff and population profiles and statistics are all available now on the website.

“One of this council’s pledges is to be as open and transparent as possible in serving our residents. Whilst FOI legislation puts a legal duty on the council to respond to requests for information a good deal of this is already available on our website and more will be added soon," added Clr O’Neill.

Comments(14)

Daz@SankeyviaOrford says...
7:48am Wed 24 Oct 12

That is one hell of a lot of money for forwarding info of the council website ! (in most cases).. That's an average cost of just over £19 an hour surley this could have been managed better .

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Richard Nixon says...
8:25am Wed 24 Oct 12

If the officers were not so deceitful a lot of FOI's could be avoided in the first place. I am of course referring to the legal services and planning department. Examples, Peel Hall, Walton Gardens, Marton Close, ...the list goes on

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Nick Tessla says...
8:38am Wed 24 Oct 12

I was a little surprised when I read that the Labour MP had to use FOI requests to get information from Terry O.Neilll's Labour council - if her colleagues on the council aren't open with her then what chance do the rest of us have.

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Nick Tessla says...
8:53am Wed 24 Oct 12

Let's get the figure in perspective - by the way it is normal practice to round a figure of 4.4 down not up.

How few times would this pay for the saalry and allowances of the Council's "temporary" Chief Executive - who has just had his "temporary" contract extended again.


Personally I would rather see Terry O'Neill looking to scrap a couple of senior posts (and perhaps share some senior officers with other authorities) than to whinge about the cost of being transparent.

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Nick Tessla says...
9:06am Wed 24 Oct 12

My apologies - misread the report I saw elsewhere - the decision to extend the contract hasn't been made yet.

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Richard Nixon says...
11:08am Wed 24 Oct 12

Nick Tessla wrote:
I was a little surprised when I read that the Labour MP had to use FOI requests to get information from Terry O.Neilll's Labour council - if her colleagues on the council aren't open with her then what chance do the rest of us have.
Nick, it does not matter which party is in charge. The problem is that some of the OFFICERS, are deceitful. There is no doubt of this, time and time again legal services officers and planning officers have been caught telling lies. The fact that an MP has to use FOI's to get to the truth, is a terrible indictment on those officers who are trusted to run the council.

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Daz@SankeyviaOrford says...
11:43am Wed 24 Oct 12

Just a thought , maybe FOI,s could be a chargeable request if a commercial organisation requests it .. For example media requests could be chargeable as they often use the information to make money and sell news papers!

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Gorsedd says...
3:22pm Wed 24 Oct 12

There are too many unanswered questions on events going back many years for anyone on the Council to begin to say convincingly, they have honoured pledges to be as open and transparent as possible in serving the residents. The Council is now reaping what it repeatedly sowed in refusing to accept what residents have been trying to tell them for years. But administration after administration refused to listen, and instead put their trust in those who plainly could not be trusted. The opportunity to re-establish trust with the residents came and went when those who could not be trusted remained and continued as before as though there had been no wrong doing. Trust slipped further with the public inquiry earlier this year. That told us no more than came to light in the Ombudsman's investigation and played down the seriousness of what had actually taken place. It comes as no surprise residents have so little faith in what the Council is prepared to publish because in Warrington gilding the Lilly has always taken priority over facing facts and meeting them head on regardless of who they might inconvenience. The residents are not fooled by covering up or spreading blame so widely to make it difficult to identify blameworthy individuals. It will take actions not the words we have heard so many times before, to re-establish a trustworthy connection between the residents and their Council.

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dickemery47 says...
9:12pm Wed 24 Oct 12

Mmm interesting isn't ! Hope the ones making this kind of demand on the already tight budget this council have are very proud of themselves ! this equates to a few jobs and community centers

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Nick Tessla says...
8:54am Thu 25 Oct 12

dickemery47 wrote:
Mmm interesting isn't ! Hope the ones making this kind of demand on the already tight budget this council have are very proud of themselves ! this equates to a few jobs and community centers
We have a right to know what is being done in our name.


The real point is why is the Council so inefficient ? The fact that it costs so much and takes so much time to provide what should be readily available information is indicative of their inefficiency and money wasting - this waste equates to MANY jobs and community centres.


Cutting some of the deadwood at the top would easily cover the cost of efficiently providing the information.

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Gorsedd says...
11:09am Thu 25 Oct 12

Nick Tessla wrote:
dickemery47 wrote:
Mmm interesting isn't ! Hope the ones making this kind of demand on the already tight budget this council have are very proud of themselves ! this equates to a few jobs and community centers
We have a right to know what is being done in our name.


The real point is why is the Council so inefficient ? The fact that it costs so much and takes so much time to provide what should be readily available information is indicative of their inefficiency and money wasting - this waste equates to MANY jobs and community centres.


Cutting some of the deadwood at the top would easily cover the cost of efficiently providing the information.
Your are right Nick. Would they have published the fact that planning records had been destroyed on the Council website? Did they publish that discussions had been held on Peel Hall before Helen Jones MP made her request? Their sums don't add up. If there is info on the website that could provide answers to some inquiries why are some of the 23,000 manhours not being used to direct questioners to that info? If there was transparency and less secrecy the number of inquiries would drop.

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Richard Nixon says...
3:33pm Thu 25 Oct 12

dickemery47 wrote:
Mmm interesting isn't ! Hope the ones making this kind of demand on the already tight budget this council have are very proud of themselves ! this equates to a few jobs and community centers
dick, dick, dick, come on, admit, you work for the council, only someone who works for this council could have the brass neck to blame the people making the enquiries. As other posters have stated, this information should be either be readily available on line, or accessed easily enough and sent out. The expense and delays are down to the fact that officers are liers, and once you start the lying game and covering up the lies, the more effort it takes to keep the truth hidden.

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

Mark Twain

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WH Smith says...
10:56pm Fri 26 Oct 12

Richard,
surely you can't believe that all officers are liars. I don't work there, but I think you'll find that most people who do, go into work to do a good job, rather than a bad one.

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Richard Nixon says...
8:47am Sat 27 Oct 12

WH Smith wrote:
Richard, surely you can't believe that all officers are liars. I don't work there, but I think you'll find that most people who do, go into work to do a good job, rather than a bad one.
Of course not all the officers are liars, but there are senior officers in both the legal services team and the planning team, who have been caught telling lies. That is beyond doubt.

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