Rochdale Online view: Council being ludicrously obstructive with Freedom of Information requests

Taxpayers' money spent on lamp post flags

Rochdale Borough Council is being ludicrously obstructive with Freedom of Information requests despite seeking to paint itself as open and transparent.

In October 2016 a Rochdale Online reader sent photos of new banners that had appeared on lamp posts around Rochdale and asked if we could find out "how much money is yet again being wasted on pointless propaganda at a time of drastic cuts to council services and staff".

Rochdale Online sent a Freedom of Information request to the Council asking how much the Council had spent. The Council refused to answer. We appealed - a pointless exercise in our experience as it is the Council that the appeal has to be submitted to. No surprise when the appeal was unsuccessful.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/107057/a-question-the-council-refuses-to-answer

The Council had claimed it would release the information in May this year (some seven months on); May came and went and the Council did not release the information.

In the meantime we submitted an appeal to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) on the grounds that the Council should not be allowed to refuse to answer when it has no intention of publishing the answer to a question within a reasonable time frame.

Last week (24 August) the ICO finally got around to investigating and notified the Council - lo and behold, the Council sent an email saying:

Rochdale Borough Council are [sic] happy to revise the initial response provided, and provide you with the following information:

The cost of producing and installing the banners at Edinburgh Way and Halifax Road was £3,044.68.

It took 10 months and the ICO to find the answer to a simple question and for the council to stop being obstructive, or so we thought.

Until that is we asked the Council to clarify how many banners the £3,000 related to - two minutes to look it up and reply but instead the Council decides that question should be a new Freedom of Information request to be considered by the Council's FOI officer! Of course giving the Council another 20 working days to reply, if they do not once again refuse to answer.

Open and transparent?

The Commissioner issued a decision notice that the Council breached section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act.