Back on 14th February we asked the Isle of Wight council (IWC) press office for some information about council employment over the last three years.
Rather than just gather and send us the info, they chose to force our request into a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Latest data missing
Nearly a month later (11th March) we received a response from the Departmental Information Guardian.
Unfortunately, instead of providing data requested (three years worth of data from the date of the request), the Information Guardian took it upon themselves to only provide data for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012. Leaving out any data for 2013.
After pointing out the error made by the officer, asking for them to correct their mistake, we were astonished to hear that they chose not to do this, but instead would launch an internal appeal.
They wrote:
As you were dissatisfied with the initial response we shall now deal with this as an internal appeal in accordance with Council policy. Further details can be found in our Access to Information Policy available on our website at www.iwight.com. A reply will be sent to you within 20 working days.
Total waste of officer time and our money
This seemed to us a great waste of officer time, so asked the officer to call a halt to the internal appeal and use the time to answer our query instead.
We said:
I do not wish for staff time to be wasted on an internal appeal – that would be ridiculous – I’d just like the figures for 2013 please as first requested. Please confirm that these will not be subject to the 20 working days period.
Six days later and we’ve not even had a receipt acknowledgement, never mind an answer. Let’s hope the data for this year is being gathered and we – and you – won’t have to wait much longer for it.
IW council: The most secretive in England?
What a bureaucratic mess – and the sad thing is that this is far from the first time we’ve had to deal with kind of nonsense.
Not only are the IWC actively blocking access to information that we have already waited over a month for, but it’s disturbing to see quite how happy they are to waste tax payer’s money on a completely unneeded internal investigation. The side-benefit being, further delays to information that should have just been given freely in the first place.
The only thing this kind of action does is prove, yet again, how closed to public scrutiny the Isle of Wight council is.
Image: Bloody Hell! under CC BY 2.0
